More Monster Rack Toys

With Halloween appraoching, it seemed like a great time to showcase all the little additions I have for the various Rack Toy pages on the site. It's all about the Monsters this week.

Above is a carded Azrak Hamway Frankenstein, later issue than the one previously featured on the site, the card now includes Dracula (and sadly, deep sixes the Creature). The doll no longer has a green body or a shirt. As crude as this is, I am really smitten with this one it looks like a guy wearing a Frankenstein Halloween mask.

This is an early version of the Mummy, he's kind of got a skirt going on with those bandages. Dig the blood all over him, he's been a busy boy.


This is an AHI jointed wrist Frankenstein, showing off his ability. He needs a jacket to be complete.

I'm normally not a big Dracula guy but I totally love this Bendy by AHI. Bendy figures are a weakness of mine and this guy also kind of resembles the Dracula puppet in "Forgetting Sarah Marshall".

Another Bendy from AHI, this time it's the Wolfman, a favorite character of mine. These things are not only adorable but totally addictive. If anybody has the Mummy or the Creature for sale, drop me a line.

This young lady was apparently marketed as a "victim" to go along with the Lincoln Monsters by a catalog company. One of my sources believes it was the Harriet Carter Catalog, anybody remember or possibly have a scan?

Finally, we have a variant of the Lincoln Phantom of the Opera, I am really fond of this one because it's the same version I had as a kid. The other version has ripped sleeves and lacks the ruffles, the Phantom was a better dresser in my eyes. I'm also pretty positive this is the same figure I owned but stupidly sold in the eighties, the battered card it came on looks awfully familiar.

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Son of Vintage Trick or Treat

Kicking it off today is my pal Lee wearing a Ben Cooper Hulk suit, nobody loves the Hulk more than Lee.

Speaking of big fans, here is Lou in a Collegeville Jaws costume, Lou is still actively involved in Jaws Fandom, check out this youtube link.

I'm Batman! Here's Chris Franklin as the caped crusader, Chris grew up to do neat stuff like the packaging for the new Captain Action dolls

From Gotham City to Eternia, here's Chris as He-Man a few years later.

Casey sent in this cool Peter Criss Kiss Costume, say that three times fast.

Vintage Trick or Treat

Time to unveil more of the fabulous vintage photos you kind folks have sent me this month, above is Wes Booth as a Cylon long before they were called "Toasters".

Alisha sent in this wicked picture of her as Princess Leia, that's her dad as a musical ghost behind her. I think if I saw that costume coming towards me I'd run in an unmasculine way....

Kolin sent in this trippy shot of himself as an X wing Pilot, that's a great costume.

And here is Kolin's class from an earlier year, love that Ben Cooper Spider-Man.

More Tomorrow!

The 1981 Remco Catalog means Monsters

In 1981, Remco, a division of Azrak Hamway International for almost the past decade, went through some changes in their product line.

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Demand for many of the items that had been staples for the company such as Utility belts and powerzed Superheroes was starting to wane. All the Hulk merchandise and the Star Trek CSF sets of previous years were now gone.

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Instead, Remco began to expand with things like Crayon cosmetics for girls and by expanding upon their Universal Monster license with a new series of mini monsters and two new additions to the 9" series in the form of the Creature and the Phantom.

As an added bonus click on the Monster pages to see a full gallery of packaged figures and playsets.

Check out the 1981 Remco Catalog Here

Want more Remco toys in your diet? Click the Linkage below:

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Spoooooky Games

While Monster Toys often get the shaft in department store catalogs for being too seasonal , the one place where that doesn't seem to happen is the games section which always have a few monster items in for good measure.

Take this 1971 spread for instance, we've got the classic Green Ghost game , something called "Which Witch" and a TV boardgame from the popular daytime horror show Dark Shadows.

Hand Puppet Horrors!

The Remco Monsters at Home series is a weird little footnote in Monster toy lore, basically the company took the heads and hands of their 9" Universal Monster dolls and made these charming little hand puppets complete with a plastic environment.

What's weird is, it all sort of makes sense, Dracula has a coffin, the Mummy a tomb, the Creature a sea chest and Frankenstein..... OK they don't all work but there is something likable about this line.

I wonder why the Wolfman and Phantom of the Opera didn't make it though, the Phantom could have popped out of an organ...

Carded Dracula

Mummy Mint On Card, he looks pretty sleepy.

The Front of Frankenstein's "home"

See that look? That's the same face I make when you knock on my door on Saturday morning

I'm missing the Creature if anybody has a picture they'd like to contribute, drop me a line.

Hugo: Man of a Thousand Faces

In 1975, Kenner produced a doll that was the brain child of special effects artist/director/writer Alan Ormsby who directed the film "Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things" and authored the classic scolastic book Movie Monsters which probably spawned a legion of Monster kids by itself.

Hugo was a great concept, a puppet version of Lon Chaney sr, complete with makeup kit so you could give him hundreds of combinations of creepy disguises. As a bonus (?) the Hugo puppet on it's own was creepier than ten ventriloquist dummies, his unusual stare had him featured in Pee Wee Herman's original act and on the popular "Uncle Floyd Show".

DVD DAY

Two big TV classics are out today, first is the complete box set to the Man from U.N.C.L.E series. It took me a long time but I eventually grew to love this wild sixties spy series that started a national craze. The series goes from straight to breezy to downright campy and all of it is enjoyable.

Lots of stars in this series as well from Yvonne Craig (a boyhood crush I never recovered from) to Sonny and Cher, even James Doohan as a baddie.

The other big release is one of the most seminal series of the 1970's in the release of the complete box set to the Incredible Hulk series. This long running classic show sent a nation into "Hulk Mania" and just by running through some of the toy archives on the site, you can see how big an impact this series had.

I recently rewatched the pilot movie and it still holds up, eventually the show's formula tends to grind but it's still a classic.

Puffy Monsters

I am loving these Universal Monsters Puffy Stickers produced by Gordy in 1982. I will confess I had a puffy sticker phase and did have some Monster ones but I never ran into these before, I'd have been all over them. I had have an unhealthy obsession with all things Creature from the Black Lagoon.

I think it's neat that they added stuff like Tarantula to the mix in these.

Spooky Store Displays.

Some cool items to highlight on this fine October day, this is a 1983 Collegeville store display for "Halloween Accessories" which is stuff similiar to the Imagineering stuff from yesterday. I dig the fangs and fake blood but the big ears are a little weird.

This display of Collegeville rubber masks has special meaning for me, I bought that Creature from the Black Lagoon mask that year. I saved my pennies and picked it up at SS Kresge and Co (the lunch counter in that store made every customer smell like they just made a grilled cheese)

It was slightly off model (it had big red warts) but I put on my best green sweater, a pair of green playtex gloves and skulked off a to a seventh grade dance, where i learned a valuable life lesson Girls don't dig on the gill-man.

Imagineering

Imagineering was an Arizona based company that were known for make up kits, predominately around Halloween. One of the things the company is best known for were their inexpensive rack items such as Vampire fangs and fake blood. My parents were always pretty thrifty but they'd get downright outraged if I came home with any of that kind of stuff. To a parent, it's just crap, they just don't realise the inherent awesomeness that is fake scars and evil teeth.

The aptly named "Imaginary World" website has an enviable amount of Imagineering items and catalogs (which I'm real jealous of) check it out here or click the picture to be transported.

Warning: viewing that site may have you cruising Ebay, it did with me, please don't tell my parents...

1974 Collegeville Costume Catalog

When it came to Halloween costumes, the two biggest names in the 70's were Ben Cooper and Collegeville. If one didn't have a specific license, the other surely did.

In the mid seventies, Ben Cooper had a lock on some prosperous licenses namely The Universal Monsters and Superheroes from DC and Marvel houses.

This left Collegeville with some interesting choices and a great deal of "imitation brand" characters. Concentrating on cartoon characters and popular toy brands, Collegeville has a real mix of fun knock off costumes that would be fun to collect.
While looking through this catalog, I was shocked to discover that much of my trick or treating involved Collegeville. It must have had a lot to do with my proximity to a Woolco.

Enjoy the 1974 Collegeville Halloween Costume Catalog

And if you still want to look at Halloween Costumes, check out these other two galleries:

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Leisure-A-Likes

Because looking like a gigantic sleaze isn't just for him anymore. Now you can both harrass Pat Benetar in that "Love is a Battlefield" video....

Vintage Halloween

I got a couple of cool Darth Vaders today, first off is Russ from Toytraderz again rocking this Ben Cooper set.

And here's Jason from Bif!Bang!Pow! (makers of those awesome Flash Gordon figures) looking cool as the Dark Lord of the Sith. The gloves really complete the outfit don't you think?

I'm pretty positive I went as Vader in '78 but I'll be damned if I can find evidence, thanks guys!