Surveying the Gen X landscape and the origins of geek
Kid also appears to be dressed up as Barnabas Collins. Wrong holiday, kid! The first goth?
You can also see MPC’s Carry Case Castle on the bottom right. I’m not sure what the other box is.
UPDATE (12/21/15): I’m pretty sure the other box is MPC’s Space Control Center, seen below.
(Top photo via TimeWarp Toys)
Listen to the whole thing at Power Records. I thought it was fun.
(Images via My Little Underground)
That’s Mattel’s Cathy Quick Curl Doll on the right. Mikey Walters has a number of Kenner’s Six Million Dollar Man and Bionic Woman catalogs, boxes, and instruction manuals on display here.
If My Pet Monster was your bag, you have to check out Warpo’s Don’t Cuddle the Krampus, “the first retro collectible toy line based on Santa’s wicked counterpart, reimagined as an iconic monster toy of 1986.” See some pics below. Jim Groman, who worked on My Pet Monster and Madballs in the ’80s, among many other popular toy lines, designed, illustrated, and sculpted the Krampus and the Naughty Kids. Donna Miranda, who also worked on the original My Pet Monster, handled the plush duties.
Check out the Kickstarter for all the details and extras. Only 43 hours left to pledge!
The kid is Matt on Fire, and he is also wearing Lazer Tag pajamas, a version of which can be seen below via Kitschy Kitschy Coo.
Tyco also released a glow-in-the-dark slot car set for the Transformers, shown below. There was also a slot car set for the GoBots (Space Chase, by LJN) and Voltron (Spinout in Space, by LJN). Such was the transforming robot craze of ’84 to ’86.
You can also see a Cobra Rattler in the background. There’s another G.I. Joe box on the left. Can’t make it out.
All I wanted for Christmas in 1984 were Transformers, and I got GoBots instead. My bitterness has faded with time. The truth is, both Hasbro and Tonka made imaginative toys based on superior Japanese productions.
The Command Center commercial is great (“Your parents put it together”), and the toy is actually pretty neat.
(Photo via Miles Smith)
The ads are via Roboplastic Apocalypse, the most comprehensive robot toy site on the internet. Notice that Santa is riding the Viper in the first ad, followed by his other outer space reindeer. Very clever.
The last ad features Combatra, the priciest item on the Shogun Warriors menu, selling mostly at high end department stores for $49.99 or more. There’s a great entry on the toy at CollectionDX, where I got the pictures below. Click on the link to see all five vehicles combine into a giant robot, long before Matchbox’s Voltron entered the fray.
2 Warps to Neptune 