This is one of my greatest "wish this toy was made" events of my childhood. You see, I was the kid that preferred "The Black Hole" to Star Wars, call it hipsterism if you will but I was in that minority.
Don't get me wrong, I loved Star Wars but I didn't stop caring about the Black Hole after Empire Strikes Back, I caught the movie two more times (once in my grade school gym) and followed the adventures of the crew in the "Beyond the Black Hole" comic.
I also completely expected a sequel.
When I first saw this Palomino ship in a Mego Catalog in my teens, i remember thinking "AW COME ON!". I would have played with this for the entirety of 1980....
6 comments:
Ah, the Black Hole! I loved Star Wars as well, but I always hoped there would be more to the Black Hole, as far as sequels and all.
Aw man, a Palomino ship would've been awesome! I had scarlet fever around the time "The Black Hole" came out. I remember being confined to bed listening to the "Story of The Black Hole" album and paging through the corresponding book as well as playing with the figures. I also associate that time with Sunkist Orange pop, I guess I drank a lot of it to keep hydrated.
I noticed the Mego commercial has perhaps the earliest use of that "BWAAAAAH" sound that's used ad nauseum in movie trailers today.
I had VINCENT... but this and an Old Bob, I would have been a happy little dude.
It's a funny thing but I didn't like the Black Hole when it came out when I was a kid. I guess it's because it didn't have enough aliens in it like Star Wars did. Still, I was sick and tired (though I never let the kids at school know) of Star Wars being talked about as if it were carved-in-stone the best science fiction movie ever as much as I liked the first and second movies. But I also liked Star Trek the Motion Picture and Battlestar Galactica the movie and the Flash Gordon movie of 1980 as well. But The Black Hole I could never get into. Until I was in high school when I started taking science fiction more seriously and not just watching movies and TV shows about alien creatures. I just recently bought the movie on DVD. If I could get the action figures and model ships at a reasonable price I maybe would purchase them.
For this Anon, The Black Hole complemented my growing fascination with sci-fi. It was more than just a stop-gap until the next Star Wars movie, TBH also gave me a chance to see good 80s sci-fi with a different vision and focus. It helped me realize how movie-makers borrowed ideas from each other.
Even as a little kid I could see the "Star Droids" were just Storm Troopers with brown armour and were robots so parents wouldn't freak out about them getting shot. That was a widely-discussed criticism about Star Wars at the time. Catchy phrases like "glorifying gun violence" were still another fifteen to twenty years away, but educators and psychologists had already begun trying to emotionally "sanitize" children as far back as the 60s.
For some reason, the toy-vendors never pushed TBH merchandise all that much in the North East. I really, really wanted one of those mirror-visored, heavily-robed human-drones that crewed the Cygnus but since I was already getting both Vincent AND Maximillian at the same time (an almost unheard of event in my childhood), there was no way I could have asked for a third figure. Next time we were out shopping and visited the toy-department, they were gone. Ah well, them's the breaks.
I would have killed for a Palomino back then. I would have even eaten broccoli and cleaned up my room! Came kinda close to getting one, probably closer than our host did. My school did the Scholastic/ Troll Book Club events every months and there -was- "Press Out" (perforated punch-out and put-together papercraft) book for TBH. On the cover is, in fact, the Palomino!
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/48/58/2c/48582c0354055e98e8ce6de560d3aaa8.jpg
With a spot of digging, I found a fairly decent scan of the actual toy.
https://www.byyourcommand.net/cylongallery/displayimage.php?album=1132&pid=15811#top_display_media
It's clear enough for a serious fan to print and build a very nice copy.
I remember well, at the time The Black Hole came out, Star Wars mania had overtaken everything else in toy stores, and even the Battlestar Galactica Cylons were in the clearance bins (I still have mine). There were fewer Mego Super Heroes, and even fewer Micronauts. Somehow, I managed to get a Black Hole traveling bag in 1979- that I still have and have taken on many vacations.
Recently I started collecting soundtrack LP's of classic sci-fi. I highly recommend The Black Hole. I also have Moonraker (Shirley Bassey!), Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and Buck Rogers, with the vocal theme song.
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