Aw Yeah, Mantooth!

Managed to slip across the border this weekend and hit Motor City Comic Con and while I saw and picked up a lot of fun things (which I'll share this week), my favorite by far has to be this Brick Sketch by Art Baltazar.

Art's Tiny Titans comic is by far the preferred reading material in my household so I'm really jazzed about this immortalization.

Spider-Man is Coming to Walgreens!

Free Spider Buttons? That would motivate me now to be first in line let alone as a kid....

Send us your Mall Appearance photos!

Dawn of the Super Jocks

Schaper Toys had a real hit in their hands in 1975 when they released "Super Toe Football" the first of their "Super Jocks" line of toys. So by 1978, it should come as no surprise that they had expanded into other events such as Baseball, Basketball, Soccer and Hockey.

The President of Schaper introduces Super Toe while chomping on a stogie..

Alex Karras, fresh from "Blazing Saddles" is brought in to hawk Super Toe in 1975.

Check out the 1975 Schaper Super Jocks Catalog Here

Other Sports Related Catalogs:

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Live Long and Are You Going to Finish Your Fries?

I kind of went "primal geek" this past weekend when I took my kids to Burger King. The current Star Trek (well deserved) movie hype and promotion harkens back to when I was a lad and McDonalds ran their Star Trek Happy Meals. Somehow I conned my Mum into going more than once during that period (which was rare) and just went Trek mad with this promotion.

You can click on the boxes to get a good look at the art, truly these are Happy Meals. I don't even really like fast food much anymore but these things are great memories of when I did. Even though the Motion Picture ended up kind of boring, I was still into it, devouring the Mego Toys, reading the cool Marvel comic, good times.

And of course, each meal included a prize, my children got way cool talking toys over the weekend ( I never tired of hearing "kirk to Enterprise" on the 4 hour road trip the next day) but I really loved this cheap-o wrist communicator dealie, I had fun with it for a whole afternoon. This one won't fit me, so I'll leave it in the package.

I have more happy meal boxes, one of these days I'll make a gallery.

Star Trek the Motion Picture Related Links:

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Future Fashions

Kind of getting a "Logan's Run" vibe from these ensembles. All they need is some sort of wrist communicator dealy...

Kitchen Tables of the Past

Any of these look familiar? My grandparents had #3 in their apartment, which was fine by me because it was like we were eating on "Star Trek". This trek motif worked well, as the living room was covered in a "space age" plastic and they were Scottish.

A celebration of the Intruders

In 1976, Hasbro decided to change the game for it's G.I. Joe line, hoping to improve sales. So not only did Joe get a Superheroic sidekick in Bulletman but he also got his first bonafied enemy. Before then, Joe always seemed to fight a faceless foe or an angry animal. I guess you could count the Soliders of the World but I'm not.

So after 13 years, what did Hasbro make as G.I. Joe's new foe? A caveman from outer space of course!

The intruders are a race of muscle bound savages,who have come to earth in a meteor and plan to kick a little ass. Not exactly a grand scale invasion, did I mention they're unarmed?

The figure itself was a good deal shorter than Joe and far stockier, his articulation was limited and the button on his back allowed you to bear hug things.

Overall, it's a very strange toy and really wouldn't a mad scientist have been a better foe for our heroes? What does it say about you when your arch enemy doesn't have shoes?

As you probably know, 1976 saw the demise of the adventure team and the 12" joe. The intruders were not well recieved and actually languished a bit on store shelves. Finding one MOC isn't easy now however and i gotta admit, years later, I've grown fond of the character despite his short comings. My main reason for liking the Intruder are the two good things that came as a result.

1) The Capture Copter

This was my sixth birthday present, to me this is the single coolest G.I. Joe vehicle,

2) Big Trapper

While I never had this vehicle as a kid, I own one now and it looks like it popped out of "Damnation Alley" or "Ark 2". I love this stuff, so I guess the Intruder isn't all bad.

Disco Darci

It's raining here, all yard sales and outdoor fairs are cancelled and I'm feeling like just staying in and watching movies. So here is a movie for everybody, this is a 1979 commercial for Kenner's Disco Darci line, something I don't remember but love the fact that it's Disco.

More Video:

The Top Ten Coolest Star Trek Toys of the 1970s

With the J.J. Abram's helmed film poised to be a block buster, I thought it only fitting to do a top ten list of some of the better 23rd century items we got in the 1970s. Many might seem crude by todays standards but most have never been topped in the fun department.

The 1970s were truly the golden age of Star Trek merchandise, prior to that companies just lazily put the words "Star Trek" on recycled space guns and "Astro trains"(?) but the 1970s saw the biggest merchandising spree this side of Planet of the Apes.

Click Here to Read the Top Ten Coolest 70s Star Trek Toys

More Top Ten Rants:

Battle of the Planets Rack Toys

American kids kind of got the shaft when it came to "Battle of the Planets' merchandise, a board game, some models and these generic rack toys by Gordy. Which while fun in their own right were likely recylced from something else and would be again.

Some of these toys however are hard to find now days, I'm pretty sure I've never seen some of these on the secondary market ever.

Links to Savour....

Bikini Wednesday

Kind of phoning it in today, I'm working some trade show some where and I'm absolutely brain dead. One has to wonder about the swim suit on the left, it looks like left over wardrobe from "Space:1999" and seems to be made of the same fabric as an oven mit or an ironing board cover. Also, did people actually need a belt on their bikinis?

Birthday Bash Winners! Thanks for the amazing response to this contest, I was really touched by all the kind words you folks had for the site and I also think it's cool how many of you love rack toys.

Having said that our DVD winners are:

Erick

Michael Evenson

The next Five Names get card sets:

Robert Lindsay

Joeseph Scott Irving

Chris Cummins

Melissa Tarun

Bob Ignizio

Thanks for playing guys, I'll be in touch over the weekend to get your addresses.

Trouble Patrol

I never had the Kenner Trouble Patrol but I sure remember the Comic Book ads for this, a rogue motor cycle cop who crashes through the bank and mows down the culprits. I don't think you'd get away with this anymore.

I also love that one of the robbers is wearing "Crook" on his shirt, that should be ideal for the get away.

Planet of the Apes Mini Play Set

I get a lot of people asking on the message board who made this set, it's by Multiple Toys and they made several variations, one including a bunch of army men so you can reenact "Battle for the Planet of the Apes", it goes a little crazy with the scale but I doubt any kid complained.

This is another one of those toys that I need to track down and find, it's just so neat.

PlaidStallions 3rd Birthday Bash!!

It's our third Birthday here at PlaidStallions (give or take a week, I need to write this stuff down) so I thought what better way to celebrate than to run a contest and give out some "party favours" so to speak.

So, the theme of this contest is Favourite Things. Namely, what is your favourite thing about PlaidStallions? send it to our mail box and you're in!

The top two names drawn will get a copy of our DVD plus a complete set of trading cards, the next three will win complete sets of the trading cards including two never before seen mystery cards!

I'll announce the winners on Tuesday's blog, in the mean time, here are some of my favourite things about this project, other than the great people I've met:

Mall Appearances are just something that stuck with me as a kid, if you're reading this on Saturday morning I'm actually meeting Darth Vader right now.

Fashion Mockery Everybody kind of lost their minds in the 1970s and we're all better for it. While I can't believe some of the styles, I wish the butterfly collar would make a come back.

Lincoln Monsters working on this site reconnects me with lots of childhood favourites but none as prized for me as the Lincoln Monsters. I'm a huge geek for these hastily made figures and am still actively seeking some out (ahem)

Rack Toys I love cataloging Rack Toys, the stranger, the better. It doesn't look like I'll ever run out of material in this department.

Enough about me, tell me yours and thanks for reading my weird ramblings and ignoring my horrible grammar and Canadian spelling for these past 3 years.

The 1979 Metal Men Catalog

The Metal Men by Zee Toys were by far one of the neatest non-TV advertised toy lines around. Made entirely of die cast metal, these sleek futuristic series of robotic action figures left the back story completely to your imagination.

Check out the 1979 Metal Men Catalog

As an added bonus, we have the amazing Metal men collection of Bret showcased as well.

See Also:

Two Looks in One!

Both Crappy. I think I know what the kid in the bottom right is yelling. He kind of looks like the talking G.I. Joe box, if one of the things Joe said was "what the hell am I wearing?"

Girl's Toy Day!

Seeing as it's my darlin' daughter's birthday today and her long (and much missed) afternoon naps are what inspired me to create this blog three years and five days ago (which I probably should have mentioned) I thought I'd dedicate the day to her favorite subject, dolls!

In this case Barbie's with two classic commercials from our DVD, first is the Barbie Townhouse.

Most Mego collectors I know would liken this to the Wayne Foundation playset but did you also know it was released for Big Jim in Europe? It was a killer spy headquarters that makes you wish you born in Italy, You can see it here.

The second commercial is for the Fashion Face, which is one of those disembodied heads you put makeup on, they creep me out and my daughter wants one, in fact, she wants this one. Something tells me I won't find this at Toys R Us.

Now, if you'll excuse me I have go buy some toys...

More Summer Pimp Action

Chad and Terry are definitely more stylish than Josh and Orville, it's almost like they're forcing you too look at their belly buttons. I must....look....away....

Brick Mantooth Sings

Well not really but I kind of got inspired by this Wards photo of spokesmodel Brick Mantooth because it looked like one of those cheesy LPs my dad used to sell to truck stops and Macs milk stores back in the day. He had cases of weird country albums and 8 tracks of people I've never heard of, so I photoshopped this up:

Can you feel it? You ought to hear his rendition of "Going Out of My Head", it's panty peeler.

Torpedo Fist Trading Card

The final new card is Torpedo Fist, one of my favourite action figures as a kid mostly because, he could punch other action figures!

I didn't plan on doing two Big Jim characters so close together but when Livio from Bigjim.es put this image on the fourm, it was just too tempting not to.

As an added bonus, I've put some images of the origin of Torpedo Fist from the back of his box. It's not the most logical story in the world but it all made perfect sense to me then.