Dimestore Flashback

Please bear with me, for this entry I'll be going a little, as they say in radio, "local". Growing up in 70's Ontario, most summer vacations were spent up north camping or in a rented cottage. Along the way, we'd usually stop in a small town which usually had a "Stedman's" department store. Stedman's was one of those stores that smelled like inflatable vinyl pool toys and had a toy department full of King Kong jigglers and rubber alligators. If you're in the US, liken it to a Ben Franklin. I used to be able to spend the $5 my grandmother gave me rather quickly.

Flash forward to now and the Wal-Mart culture has all but killed the smaller department store. On the way to a campground, my wife mentioned we'd forgotten our daughter's bathing suit, I sarcastically commented "We'll just get one at the Stedmans" and we laughed.

So it was a complete and total shock to turn a corner two hours into our drive and find this!

I can't imagine there are too many of these left. Needless to say we stopped, I half expected to find 70's toys in there but no such luck, we did pick up a few classic rack toy items still around.

The store was out of army men so we had to settle for Cowboys and Indians (which are still being made by Imperial )I also grabbed the George Hamilton Evel Knievel film for $3. It's nowhere near as cheeseas "Viva Knievel" but it's close.

There is no better an afternoon than watching Cowboys and Indians fight mutant bugs. There were many losses on both sides, next month it's Army
men Vs Dinosaurs....

Blah! A New Trading Card!

I managed to squeak out a few new Plaidstallions Trading cards this month and while they are not in my hands yet (soon!) I thought I'd share the first one now.

The AHI Monsters were an easy choice for card #5, I've grown rather smitten with them since I started covering rack toys for the site (one of the drawbacks of cataloging things is you want to own them). This image from the 1973 Alden's catalog was graciously scanned for me by Benjamin Holcomb, author of the Mego book "World's Greatest Toys".

You might notice that the cards have changed templates, after some contemplation, I decided to abandon the original "Star Warsy" look and go with something more like the site itself. My good pal Steve Leach helped me out and created this awesome new look.

I've got more card reveals coming this month and then some (easy) contests to give them away so stay tuned...

The Coolest Batman Toys of the 1970's

With the release of "the Dark Knight" this weekend (which I can't see until next week, grrrr!) it seemed apt to pay homage to the multitude of merchandising that has been created in the Caped Crusader's name, particularly during the 1970's.

How did Bruce Wayne make his millions? Merchandising!

No Superhero is a bigger pimp in the toy aisle than Batman, his complusion for gimmicks means everything with his face on it makes some sort of sense.

The Seventies were the second round of "Bat-Mania" for children, all hopped up on syndicated runs of the 1966 Television series and the added gut punch of Batman being on two separate Saturday Morning series at the same time.

This made for a dumpster full of "Batchandise" (it's a word, I swear...) and here are the ten best pieces from that decade:

The Top Ten Coolest 70's Batman Toys

Did we miss your favorite? Leave us some feedback and tell us what it is!

Master of the Mystic Nap

When you look at vintage pajama shots, you see a lot of staples, Superman, Batman, Spider-Man and Hulk are the biggies. Rarely do you see a B-List hero in the lot (please no hate mail) such as Doctor Stephen Strange.

Doc never got much respect in the way of merch as a kid, as far as I can tell he only got a Halloween Costume and a jiggler. As a comic loving kid, I was aware of the character but never read a comic of his until my teens.

JJ and OJ

Two celebrity dolls, two very different professions. The guy on the bottom is J.J Armes by Ideal, a real life detective who lost his hands as a child and uses prosthetics. I saw the commercial for this as a kid but for a long time thought I dreamt it.

The other doll by Shindana had a real spike in value in the mid ninties, for reasons I don't want to remember.

Suicide is Painless...

I was surprised when doing my Metal Men feature last week to discover that Zee Toys also made a line of M*A*S*H items. M*A*S*H was one of my favorite shows growing up but I never had much desire to play it, probably because it was much of a drama/comedy than it was really about war. Still, the approach Zee took was a good one, centering around the base itself and not the characters, a neat concept.

It's Tuesday and here's what cool on DVD today:

It's a tad dry on the DVD front this week in terms of films or TV from the 70's, the one bright light I found was the release of Filmation's Lone Ranger and Zorro Volume 2.

I'm pretty much a sucker for anything Filmation (although I need never see "Sport Billy" again thank you) and I still hold out hope for a legitimate Tarzan release someday.

An odd bit of trivia, in this series, the Lone Ranger was voiced by none other than the late William "Cannon" Conrad.

Speaking of military toys: A piece I did for Topless Robot with editor Rob Bricken entitled The 10 lamest additions to G.I. Joe is up for your reading pleasure.

Duhnuhnuhhnuh Batman Blue Ray Winners

The results are in from our first DVD contest, my kids picked the winners this morning, because I had to be fair, there are now four prize lots. First the answers:

1) Who was the better Riddler, Frank Gorshin or John Astin? There was no wrong answer in this although I was curious if anybody preferred Astin in the role. Hey, I cried when they stopped making new coke, so it's not impossible. For the record, nobody picked Astin, who is a wonderful actor, just not the Riddler.


2) What does Batman have toruble getting rid of in the film? Well it's a bomb but I also would have accepted a shark, seeing as it's technically true.

And now Ze Winners:

1st Prize: (Batman Blue Ray and set of PS cards) Phillip Lozano

2nd Prize: (the Same as 1st) Bill McFarland

3rd Prize: (a Copy of 70's Toy Explosion and some PS cards) Chris Flagg

4th Prize: (a copy of 70's Toy Explosion and PS cards) Dave Bellmont

Congrats to all the winners, I'll be in touch this evening to gather your address info. Hopefully I'll have more fun giveaways soon

Be sure to check out this fun little Batman Boxing Game based on the Movie as well.

Sears Puts it All Together

The Evidence, she does not lie