Mego gunned hard for the girls aisle and put a real dent in Barbie's sales with their celebrity based fashion dolls. Cher was a huge hit and Farrah was also a best seller (Hasbro was no doubt ticked because of competition with their Charlies Angels line).
While Mego had a lot of success with these two, other celebrity licenses such as Captain & Tenneil and Suzzane Somers, were flops.
Mego also made a Sonny and some rather weird outfits for him, more on that in the future......
I loved this set so much as a kid that it makes me a little emotional. Such durable toys that 75% of this stuff is still intact including my beloved Gorilla. What bargain at under $12.
The Space:1999 merchandising explosion was a one year affair but some really cool toys made it out during that period. The pinnacle (for me, besides the Mego figures) is the Mattel Eagle Playset with figures, this was two years before Star Wars, nobody had ever done a space ship with 3 3/4" figures before.
I've owned this piece several times in my life, it's HUGE and doesn't really fit in with my collection, I always end up selling it and losing money. I saw one last month at a toyshow and came close to a "re buy" until i had a premonition of what my wife would say. Common sense sometimes doesn't apply in toy collecting.
This page reminds me of how much I've always wanted a color organ, not because it would go great next to my hookah or anything, like many small animals, pretty colors fascinate me.
These things will forever remind me of older brothers.
I tried explaining Saturday Morning to my four year old, he didn't seem to grasp the concept that only having one day of cartoons (and Sunday reruns) was somehow better than his current "on Demand" channel of Cartoons and DVDs. Dammit, they were special!
I never had any Space Lego as a kid, it was the one that got away but I'd hang out with the nerdiest kid on the block for hours just to look at his collection. What wasn't to love? the ships with the little cars inside, the happy little spacemen, agh what bliss.
Nowadays, my wife collects this stuff, it's great to live vicariously through her....
I ventured to the stinky flea market today with both kids (our coats are now outside) and scored this awesome Micronauts three pack of Whitman comics. I used to love these poly bags of reprints but this one is especially cool thanks to the screen printing and the BI-Way price tag on it. Bi-Way was a Canadian chain of "Bargain" stores that had some pretty killer toys in the 70's, they died around 1999.
I'm going to try and find the Star Wars and Charlton versions of these poly bags, I needed another obsession.....
After the little war, all the people of the city of domes will wear these snappy unisex numbers.
Lame catalog shoot or press photos from a failed pilot for a follow up series to Charlies Angels? You decide? The guy in the middle is my favorite, he's dreamy.
Finishing off the 1980 Mattel Catalog with the Barbie selection from that time as well as the cool ass Marvel Superhero Hotwheels. The Mattel catalog now will be a permanent feature at Plaidstallions.com
A two for one today, the uber cool Flash Gordon toy line based on the Filmation cartoon and the Mork and Mindy toy line which is made of 100% recycled ideas!
This week is going to focus on the 1980 Mattel catalog, which has a great deal of hold over products from the 1970's. I even am working a Barbie section, seriously!
Today's feature are some of the cool and creative Monster toys produced by Mattel, including Slime, Gre-Gory, Suckerman and the ever popular Creepy Crawlers thingmaker.
Unless you're in some sort of band, it's not cool to wear matching red denim outfits. When a guy willingly starts doing stuff like this, his friends can kiss him goodbye. Trust me, that's the expression my buddy had when I last saw him, it's been two years......
My favourite motel is in Clarence NY, it's a series of little cottages next to a cemetary.
I kid you not, both of these items are in my grandmother's basement. She still swears the "belt massager" or as I like to call it "the Ass Jiggler" helped her lose 10 pounds. The thing is hilarious, you stand there and it massages your butt. When we were kids my sister and I would sit in it like a swing and the other would turn it on, it was like a mechanical bull.
And here is the ad for Super Joe villain, Darkon. I really remember this as a kid, I can't believe I never noticed that Darkon is just Super Joe painted green. Way to recycle Hasbro!
Being injured sucks but it did finally give me the time to find this cool clip of me destroying a boxed Mattel Big Jim, hands right through the cello window. No wonder I collect toys.....
www.plaidstallions.com
After the great response to our previous feature on 1970's Toy Stores I decided to try and find some more images and it turned out better than i hoped.
Check out a pile of cool images from stores like Woolco, Macy's, Kuhn's Big K, Jeffersons and more. Toys include Star Wars, Mego Micronauts, Charlies Angels, Tonka Trucks, Fisher Price just to name a few.
See if any of these stores are where you bought your toys.
When you buy a vintage catalog, sometimes you get duds, no good toys, respectable clothes, it's a real downer. Other times, you strike comedy gold. The discovery of the "Man Mates" was the equivalent of striking oil, diamonds and uranium all at once
Not only is this line of clothing woefully named but it's also the tackiest, most infamous clothing line to ever grace the small screen, why is that you ask?
Because Man Mates is known better by another name, perhaps you've heard of it
That's right, the worlds most famous bachelour stepped off the fashion train wearing Man Mates and history was made! I'll won't be releasing this all at one, no we must savour, it's that good.
There you have it folks, 34 years ago, I hated my first Halloween
It wasn't until a few years later and a visit from a certain caped crusader that I changed my mind...
I'm the guy in the generic Spiderman Knock off costume (Thank you, Woolco!), Batman had let himself go and Robin smelled of drinking but I was enthralled with this visit. I couldn't get over how much the dynamic duo looked like friends of my Dads.....
Got a fun extra for Halloween this year, some cool vintage trade advertising for companies like Ben Cooper and Don Post. Enjoy and have a great evening!
Ok, wanting to punch John Travolta is perfectly understandable, especially if you've seen "Be Cool" but why would you want to punch Frank from the Monster Squad? He's a good guy!
Actually this is a piece of merch from the show I'd never heard about, the only thing I'd ever seen before was the Board Game.
Also, did you know that comedian Marty Allen was on Monster Squad? His site includes some rare pics from the series.
I'm not wrestling that guy, he's got a boner!
Pumpkin Spider!
Pamper Me!
The Signature Skit: Blinded by the Light
More Halloween stuff on Monday
I'd never seen this Monster Bust set but I gotta say it's pretty sweet. I like the fact that replaced Dracula with the Creature from the Black Lagoon.
I wonder if most kids slathered on the testors red paint when putting these together? Most of the vintage kits I see with "little kid paint jobs" go nuts with the blood.......
Lots more Monster Stuff to come.
Concepts like this copycast make your own monster factory really appealed to me as a kid, I was just missing two things to really make them work, skill and patience. I'd have become Homer Simpson working on that thing......
I have a weird story about the Hasbro moving Monster Gun which projected pictures of Monsters on the wall. A school friend named Richard had one of these tucked in his closet. I was over at his house once and thought it was the coolest toy ever made. Richard seized the opportunity and said if i wanted to play with with it, I'd have to pay him, eventhough it was obvious he didn't care for it.
I contemplated just grabbing the gun and making a run for it but Richard's parents lived in the middle of nowhere. Needless to say, our friendship dissolved.
The Mego Mad Monsters are some of the best known Monster toys of the seventies and the story of their inception is kind of interesting.
Mego was scooping up licenses like crazy in the mid seventies but according to Neal Kublan, Universal wanted too much money for the rights to produce monster dolls (Rival AHI scooped up the rights and produced 8" Monsters of their own). So Mego produced generic monsters to keep the retail space.
Despite the limitations, the Mad Monsters have a wonderful charm to them, Frankenstein has bolts in his forehead, the Wolfman looks a lot like he stepped out of a Grimm fairy tale. The figure's eyes and hands glow in the dark, mine still do to this day.
The absolute bomb is the Mad Monster Castle however, a fantastic backdrop for your Mad Monster figures and the lab even has an eyechart because 20/20 vision is important to the undead......
Two things keep them from greatness, the first thing is the glow in the dark plastic really obscures Ken Sheller's amazing sculpts, all of the monsters (Save for the rather generic Dracula) have beautiful likeness to the original actor.
The second thing are the bodies, Remco included a squeezing action feature that allows the figures to "hug" things, it kind of limited play value
Still, it's a really nice line and the monsterizer is one of the best play sets ever made, look at that thing! Remco also made a Phantom and Creature from the Black Lagoon a year later, they are the best figures in the series and of course, near impossible to find........
I absolutely love the Remco 3 3/4" Universal Mini Monster figures, they are just so perfectly functional. The campy copywriting in this JC Penney page is also a nice touch.
Remco cleverly recycled the carrying case/playset in their Sgt. Rock line a couple of years later (I just bought one, it rocks!). There was also a really cool Monsterizer playset, that is a must own.
Why don't I own these?
Can I tell you how much I love that Mr Spock costume? It's not helping my recent leanings to become a vintage Star Trek collector, I especially covet that Remco Belt.
Notice that Steve Austin and Jamie Summers outfits are actually different that yesterdays. The thing I remember best about those masks besides the cheap elastic (which many folks pointed out yesterday that they would break before you went trick or treating) was the tiny little mouth hole they had, a gerbil couldn't breath through that!
I love how Batman has his name written across his logo, he's so hard to recognize otherwise. Note the Remco Utility belt at the bottom, God I loved that thing!
Sure, they marketed them as "Play suits" but we all knew what they were. These ones were just a notch above the "smock and mask" I got at Halloween, plus these ones weren't knockoffs!( More on that later)
I love the Bionic people's exposed circutry arms, the fact that Superman has a mask but I wonder if Kong Kong would really need to wear a shirt with his picture on it?
Oh and what an interesting move it is to throw the Remco Spiderman Utility belt on this page but isn't Batman more famous for such an item?
I love this Wards catalog spread, what could be cooler than the Mego Worlds Greatest Superheroes kicking the crap out of the Lincoln Monsters? Look how Shazam just pushes the Mummy aside. Despite being kind of Dime store, the Lincoln Monsters were distributed by Galoob for a while so they got some cool catalog representation.
Speaking of Monsters, the Hilarious House of Frightenstein is now on DVD, in the US you get the syndicated Half hour shows. Canadians get an exclusive boxed set (when do Canadians get anything exclusive?) that includes 13 of the original hour long episodes! How cool is that?
Frightenstein is also on Drive In Classics and the Space Channel currently as well, now here's my favourite sequence from the show, The Wolfman!
Here's a king sized depressing fact, we almost got Monster Squad and Kids from C.A.P.E.R action figures! This page from an Ideal Toys catalog (borrowed from the Mego Museum) shows a series of six inch figures based on those Saturday morning series using what appears to be Evel Kneviel body.
I'd have killed for these figures as a kid, Monster Squad was one of my favourite shows. Very little merchandising was released (although I'll be featuring some this week). It's funny that they didn't make a figure of Fred Grandy's character (who seemed to serve the same role as Frank on Electra Woman, sit in the basement) but Mego would give him his due later.
