Toy Bender

As I’ve probably said before, I’ve got a project going while I’m unemployed. It’s a non-fiction book that I’m hoping a publisher will pick up which basically involves me writing about geek things. Because of this project, I’ve watched a lot of Star Trek in the last few months, so I’m still riding high on Trek fever. While doing research, I ran across some cool Star Trek ads for the old Trek Playmates line that I thought I’d share here. First up is a money shot of the Enterprise D:

Playmates sure knew how to make a sweet Enterprise. Hot damn, I curse myself now for not getting one of these back in the day.

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And that, my friends, is the world’s fastest talking man and one of his many pitches for Micro Machines. When I was a kid, I never really got into Micro Machines. My cousins went nuts for the things, but I couldn’t really get into the whole owning tiny cars and trucks thing. I think part of the problem was that I enjoyed telling stories in my play time and I really couldn’t do that with miniature cars and trucks. All I could do with them was, “Vrroom Vroom look at me go!” when I was creating epic stories with my 3 3/4ths scale figures that would make J.R.R. Tolkien weep tears bitter jealousy.

I also kind of didn’t like the commercials, because the fast talking thing is kind of annoying.

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Today, I present to you a commercial for the little known 1980s toy property known as Centurions by Kenner. I recently became reacquainted with the Centurions when I found their cartoon airing on the Boomerang network:

I had Ace McCloud and my cousins had a couple of the other guys. The Centurions were each themed by a particular environment. You had your sea guy, your air guy, and your land guy. You know, all the dudes needed to get the job done. The Centurions were cool mainly because they were modular, meaning you could switch their weapons and armor bits around via the plugs on their suits or you could even swap weapons and armor with the other characters. You could even buy weapons packs that were sort of like their vehicles for the line. It was kind of like having different Barbie outfits to put on Barbie dolls, but for dudes.

The bad guys were pretty boss on their own, because they were evil cyborgs. Both of the ones my cousins had could be basically split in half, one half was their human side and the other was their robot. It was gross and cool at the same time, so it kind of fit into our whole boyhood worldview at that time.

Sadly, the Centurions never caught on. I’d imagine that their size alone didn’t help. In a world where 3 3/4″ scale figures were king, the Centurions were 12″ giants. It certainly made it hard to integrate them into my play world with Captain Power, Star Wars, and my G.I. Joes. Speaking of Joes, it would be neat to see a Centurion inspired Joe like they did with MASK, but that will probably never happen. Still, with all the tech that the Centurions had, it certainly fit in the world of the Joeverse. What do you say, Hasbro?

By the way, if anyone reading this has some Centurions stuff they’d like to get rid of, let me know. I’d like to fix up my old Ace McCloud as well as get my hands on some of the other cool weapons and figures.

If you want to check out an episode of the Centurions series, I posted an entire one on Robot’s Pajamas.

Today’s Star Trek themed toy commercial is from the rather successful Playmates Star Trek run. This time it’s from the Next Generation line of figures:

The computer voice is annoying, but if this commercial does one thing well it’s make the figures look friggen awesome. I never cared for the Playmates Star Trek figures at the time. I guess I was turned off by their unrealistic proportions. Now after watching this commercial, I kind of wish I would have at least gotten that bridge set and a few of the core bridge crew. Curse my metal hide!

I love the little thing at the end with Patrick Stewart asking us to come and see the Christmas Carol with him. If he was in my town asking me personally to attend his showing, I’d be a damned bloody fool if I didn’t go.

I fall in and out of geek franchises all the time and for a few reasons my liking of Star Trek has been reignited a bit. Sure the upcoming J.J. Abrams film might have a bit to do with it, but I can thank unemployment that allowed me to watch lots of Next Generation on TV again. There’s also a writing project I’m working on that has me writing about the show, and then there’s the fact that I’m the biggest geek ever and I picked up a Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual at Half Price Books the other day. Don’t look at me, I’m so hideously nerdy I might offend your sensibilities.

Anyway, this new found love of Star Trek had me thinking I should see what was out there for Star Trek toy ads. I found a few good ones so I’ll be posting them in the upcoming weeks in honor of the upcoming Abrams Star Trek flick.

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Wow, it’s been a long time since I did a Toy Ads That Time Forgot, probably so long that most everyone forgot about them. Anyway, I ran across this commercial on YouTube for a doll called Baby Laugh A Lot. The gimmick is that the doll laughs. Considering the amount of things a doll can do now days it’s extremely primitive, but that’s not why I’m posting it today. I’m posting it because it’s friggen scary as hell:

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If a child of mine had one of these things, I’d throw holy water on it and smash it with the nearest hammer. There’s no way a doll that looks like that and laughs like an unhinged maniac could not be evil. Hell, even the commercial is creepy with the way the girls and the announcer all start laughing like lunatics by the end.

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This Toy Ads that Time Forgot let’s us take a look back at a highly successful toyline of the 90s, Toybiz’s X-Men line of figures. The toys came out about the same time as the amazingly good X-Men cartoon that aired on Fox. Mutant loving kids bought these figures by Toybiz in droves and they weren’t disappointed in their cool looks and awesome variety of action features.

My filthy fingers weren’t on the pulse of the toy collecting world at that time, because I was still on the bubble of wanting to play with toys while still knowing I was getting too old to do so. Collecting such things had never crossed my mind. However there was one exception. While reading a magazine, which I really want to say was Wizard because I don’t think ToyFare existed, I saw that the Wolverine seen in the above commercial was considered a “rare” figure worth about 25 bucks at the time. This resulted in me looking all over at whatever stores my mother would take me to until I eventually found this super rare figure. This Wolverine marks one of the first figures I kept “mint on card” and while he’s probably worth nothing now, I shall keep him MOC for the day when the museum dedicated towards me is opened as an example of my first shaky steps into the world of toy collecting.

Thanks to: Metal Misfit

When you think big G.I. Joe vehicles, the USS Flagg immediately springs to mind, but there doesn’t seem to be enough love for the Defiant launch complex:

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This toy commercial was fairly recently linked to on the Wizard Universe message boards and I couldn’t pass up putting it into a post.

Holy crap, it looks like the kids in this ad for Robostrux have seen the epitome of human achievement and may either A. kill themselves because there is nothing yet to live for or B. ascend to a higher level in the evolutionary cycle.

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Hey everyone, if there’s one thing that we need more of in our lives it’s Alf.

While on a search for toy commercials to write about I discovered one of the coolest toys that I never knew existed… a freaking talking Alf toy! Story Time Alf talks via cassette tapes much like the highly successful Teddy Ruxpin did. So yes, he’s just a rip off, but he’s about a million times more superior than Teddy Ruxpin. This is simply one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen.

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One toy line I hadn’t really thought about in a long time is the Robocop line. For a very short while in the early 90s Kenner had a line of 3 and 3/4ths (about) scale figures and vehicles based on a ridiculous Robocop cartoon for kids. Here’s the opening to the show. You can’t tell me that this isn’t all kinds of fucked up:

The show only lasted 13 episodes. I really don’t think you have to ask why.

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In Great Britain they never had G.I. Joe, they had Action Man. So when it came time for G.I. Joe to scale down and become G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero, the British got Action Force. (Okay, it’s a bit more complicated than that, but it pretty much boils down to G.I. Joe = Action Force in the later years of the Action Force line.) Here’s a few Action Force commercials I found on YouTube all mashed together in one convenient ad:

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Many people cite songs like Run DMC’s “Walk this Way” or Blondie’s “Rapture” as some of the hallmarks of the mainstream world’s acceptance of rap. I’d say it was really the appearance of rap in toy commercials. Take this He-Man commercial for example:

I almost feel my sanity slipping away when I hear that gravely voice associated with so much of my childhood rapping like old school is back in session. Why was rap used in a He-Man toy commercial? Why not, the kids love it! This video fits perfectly with the rapping Transformers commercials I posted awhile back.

As a toy, there’s not much to say here aside from the fact that a motorized spider named Spydor seems like the most logical choice of mount for a living skeleton faced man right after an armored purple panther.

Indiana Jones has never gotten the toy success like other movie hits like Star Wars. While Hasbro is making up for lost ground with its Indiana Jones toy line, but way back in the 80s Kenner had a short lived Jones line followed by an even shorter lived line from LJN. Here’s an amazingly well preserved television commercial for the old 3 3/4″ figures from Kenner:

Click on the more link to see the ad for the Kenner 12 inch figure!

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