The main reason I’m placing Burnin’ Key Cars in the TATTF vault is that this toy line was one of those toys I had as a kid that was just kind of there, and I never knew the actual name of until I found this ad. Bless you internet, one of life’s mysteries now solved.
This commercial features the usual mop topped kids with the token black child thrown in for good measure. It’s a pretty standard “kids going nuts with their most favorite toy in the whole world” milieu.
The cars were pretty neat, but they suffered one gigantic flaw. If you lost the key, the wheels would lock up and you were left with a toy car that was useless. Friggen fantastic. I held on to mine for years hoping that stupid key would show up. Nope, it went the way of half my G.I. Joe vehicle parts and Transformer guns, into the vortex of lost toy parts.
With the release of the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle film that everyone assures me is the cat’s pajamas, I thought it would be time to take a look back at an ad from the Turtles’ past.
First of all, I must apologize to all you toy ad fans as the G.I. Joe article I wrote took the place of last week’s installment of Toy Ads That Time Forgot. A million pardons, I beg of you. This week I decided to go back to the comic book well to make up for it and find an ad for something mega-crappy, and I did!
You might be familiar with the Transformers or their shoddy imitator the Go-Bots, but I’m sure you’ve never heard of the mighty Trans-bots before this ad:
What we have here is a half page ad for some bootleg Transformers. I apologize for the quality of the thing as the ink hasn’t been kind enough to keep it nice and clear. I’ll do my best to translate this mess, however. Please note the picture of Starscream at left, Megatron at bottom, and a pile of various parts flying in space on the right.
I’d like to focus on a classic toy of the late seventies and early eighties that might not be remembered as well as other lines from that era. That toy is ROM, and even though it didn’t last very long on store shelves, it has a rather interesting history.
ROM was invented by a guy named Bing McCoy (not kidding), who then sold the idea to Parker Brothers. At that time Parker Brothers was interested in entering the toy market outside of their board game business. For various reasons, the toy never caught on. Before fading into obscurity however, ROM had made the cover of Time in 1979 and spawned a fairly successful comic book tie-in (more on that later). Here’s a full color comic book ad for the toy:
Now that’s a collection of supermobiles anyone would be happy to own. Sure there are more than a few duds in this set, like the boring Superman van and Daily Planet truck, but they are overshadowed by that sweet ass Batmobile, Batcycle, and Batcopter. Even Wonder Woman gets a classy ride, and Captain Marvel’s got a great car too. Wait… how does that work when he’s really a little kid? I guess the rules are different if you can punch a crook’s lungs out with a single blow.
As a toy collector who is a boy, it’s easy to forget that there are female toy collectors out there. More times than not, the female collector is forgotten. Well, if there’s one thing I like doing it’s pleasing the ladies. Come on guys, get your minds out of the gutter. Today I have two lovely girl themed videos provided by the magic of YouTube for all you lovely ladies out there. The first is for a toy called Dazzle:
I have no idea who Dazzle is, but check out her huge porno hair. Wowza!
The second video is for a toy based on someone that long ago reached the peak of their success:
That’s one hot Brooke Shields doll. It’s so lifelike that it’s nearly Satanic. And that look in the girl’s eyes at the fifteen second mark? F’ing creepy. That’s the kind of look you’ll see in a kid’s eyes when they will talk to their doll for the next thirty years.
There are a lot of toy ads I find in comics that make me wistful for the toys of my youth. There are still others, many more I’m afraid, that beg the question, “Just what in the hell is that?” The Zorcom Spaceship is just such a toy.
This week’s high calorie, no fat serving of toy Ads That Time Forgot visits a small section of the 80s toy universe:
Starting with the basic scientific concept that dinosaurs rule, toy maker Tyco decided to build upon that foundation the only way that they knew how, by taking wicked cool dinosaurs and outfitting them with missiles and laser bazookas. This then created the wet dream of many a twelve year old boy in the form of Dino-Riders. Even before Dino-riders came out, I was up-armoring my plastic molded dinosaur toys with spring loaded missile launchers (otherwise known as pens). I’m guessing that this is some sort of stepping stone in nerd evolution.
If I was in the board room the day this concept was brought up, my head would have exploded. The only words the design team would have to say would be, “Dinosaurs with lasers” and I’d have had a heart attack and died a happy man. My friends would say, “He died doing what he loved, thinking about armored thunder lizards.”
Dino-Riders. I ask you, what can be a better concept of that? In the cartoon (according to my zero research and my fuzzy memory) space travelers crash land on a dinosaur loaded planet and end up fighting other bad guys that have chased them. If my space ship crash landed on a planet full of dinosaurs, my first move would to be to mount the indigenous reptiles before I worked on building a shelter, getting food, or even tending to the injured.
Let’s bust out an old Star Wars ad from a cartoon that I fondly remember:
That’s right this is for Droids, one of the two Star Wars Saturday morning cartoons. Both Droids and it’s sister cartoon Ewoks first aired at the very end of Star Wars original popularity, so naturally toys made from these licenses are some of the rarest ones in the crazy world Star Wars collecting. In fact, in Brian’s Toys latest buy list they were offering two grand for a loose Vlix. Good luck searching for one at yard sales to get rich quick, Vlix was more common in Brazil and was basically nonexistent in the states.
Who knew that those kids in the ad are playing with a small fortune worth of toys, or that those very toys went on clearance racks in the 80s?
You might have noticed (but most likely you haven’t) that I haven’t had any old comic book ads in a long time, which is the real premise of this feature. To be frank, I’ve pretty much run dry on comics with good ads. Once the 80s rolled around, almost all the ads found in comic books became videogame or candy related. Don’t worry; I’m always looking for more ads like this Star Wars two page spread below. I pretty much consider this to be one of the greatest finds I’ve come across thus far. That’s right, it’s so good I used the word thus. Behold the sweetness:
Since this was a two page ad and I didn’t want to ruin the comic book with my scanning, it may look a little funky as I had to piece it together in Photoshop. Here’s each half in more detail:
Just look at all those great vintage Star Wars figures and vehicles. It makes me wish I had a couple of million dollars like big daddy Star Wars collector Steve Sansweet, whose obsession with Star Wars collecting borders on the unholy.
But enough about rich Star Wars collecting zealots. Despite the fact that all of these toys are drawings, they sure as hell do the trick of making them look desirable and representing what they actually look like. Do you see that almost disembodied head looking down at his toys? He’s displaying the same kind of feeling I’d get if I all that great Star Wars merch, even if I was forced to wear turtleneck sweaters.
I’ve been a bit of a superhero streak, so this Toy Ads That Time Forgot installment delves into the world of Wonder Woman:
This is a pretty fun ad, but it’s a confusing mess of gender roles. The little boy is allowed to play with his sisters, but only as the boring character of Steve, Wonder Woman’s boyfriend. Why can’t he play with Wonder Woman? Instead, he has to watch his sister (I’m assuming) and her friend play act a battle where the Steve doll is in peril. In essence the old gender roles, along with the old rules of a patriarchal society, are reversed in this commercial. Wonder Woman is the proverbial knight in shining armor, while Steve is the damsel in distress. Therefore, this commercial is actually feminist in tone and was an indicator of the paradigm shift that was occurring in this time period.
The Wonder Woman doll also does a great job of representing Wonder Woman’s totally awesome boobs.
Yes, I’m trying to catch up on last week’s installment of Toy Ads That Time Forgot. We must blame the fact that I was on a business trip for the duration of last week. Yes, that must be the thing we blame. This time we have an ad for a toy line that has been generating some more interest over the last few years: The Super Powers Collection.
This commercial is great for several reasons, especially in the way it transitions from animation into the toys. When you’re a kid the best toys are those that give you the feeling that your toys could come to life. The ad also captures that great lost art of kids having the time of their lives while playing with their favorite toys. It even crosses cultural boundaries as it brings together a black kid and a white kid, just like in all those stupid story problems you had in math class.
To top it all off, there’s a plot in this commercial that would rival that of most Jerry Bruckheimer films. Nice. Personally, I really enjoyed Superman flaying his arms like he’s having a super epileptic seizure. Let’s also not forget the addition of third string villain Steppenwolf who is most known for his hit, “Magic Carpet Ride.” Why on Earth he comes with an ax and not a magic carpet is a complete mystery to me.
With the craziness of the holidays, my stressful job, and my monthly transformation into a werewolf last night, you Toy Bender fans have needlessly suffered and I’m sorry. Unless the three people I killed in my werewolf rampage were Toy Bender fans, then their deaths served to quench my primitive animal rage and their suffering was not in vain. Speaking of animal rage, I thought I’d catch up on this week’s Toy Ads That Time Forgot with a toy I always thought was great: The Animal.
That theme song has been stuck in my head for the last twenty years, only to be replaced periodically with the to Quantum Leap theme song. As you probably have guessed, I really wasn’t a toy truck kind of kid so I never owned The Animal. A neighbor kid did have one so I got to indulge in a little Animal climbing action in my sandbox from time to time. It was grand even if we didn’t have a miniature river to cross and mountain to climb like those lucky bastards in the commercial.
I wonder why no truck company has gone with the paws that shoot out of the tires to help you climb stuff category yet. I can see this becoming a big thing with the hip-hop crowd and those living on Thunderskull Dinosaur Island. Okay, I made that up. There is no such thing as hip-hop.
For this special Toy Ads That Time Forgot we’ve got a television commercial AND a comic book print ad. Can you handle all of that in one sitting? I hope so, because the toy being advertised is perhaps the lamest I’ve ever seen. I present to you: The Amazing Energized Spiderman.
Here’s what this toy does best:
1. It moves up a string very slowly.
Now let’s make a list of everything else it does well:
1. Nothing.
Amazing? I think they were a little liberal with the use of the word amazing back in 1978. This is amazing in the same way that driftwood is utterly captivating. To its credit however, the Amazing Energized Spiderman does have a flashlight and nothing else says amazing like a flashlight. You know, I bet that not once in the forty odd year history of Spiderman does Spiderman use a flashlight (comic book nerds please prove me wrong), except to maybe find a lost shoe under his bed or to find some candles during a temporary power outage. Now, that’s adventure and excitement the MIGHTY MARVEL WAY!
The toy also excels with its many non-points of articulation. Go nuts and count all the places where he doesn’t move. It’s mind boggling! No movable head, legs, or arms. This thing barely even qualifies in the encyclopedic definition as a toy. It’s best classified as a piece of plastic molded to look like Spiderman with a crappy winch inside. You’d need some mighty incredible, nay Amazing imagination to play with this thing for more than five minutes. How would Spiderman punch someone? By launching himself like a wooden plank at enemies? You could basically paint a brick red and blue and it would almost approximate the myriad of play possibilities this thing offers.
Even the toy company that made this hunk of crap has a lame name. Remco. It sounds like the name of a company that would be better off making nondescript grey boxes with no practical use. The box Remco would make wouldn’t be able to be opened so you couldn’t store anything in it. It wouldn’t be sturdy enough to stand on. It’s only function would be to exist and be grey. That’s the kind of quality that Remco should be known for, and almost is because of sheer crappiness of The Amazing Energized Spiderman.
The ads point out that you can get a Spidercopter for your horrible Spiderman “toy”. A Spidercopter. The Spidercopter is five times dumber than the Spidermobile and that’s saying a lot. Spiderman should never have a themed vehicle. Ever. His only mode of transportation is swinging on an unending series of similar looking buildings with flag poles that are impossibly and insanely high. Just the very idea of a Spidercopter is an exercise in absurdity. How would Peter Parker afford the flying lessons, much less the parts needed to build his own custom helicopter? Is Peter Parker really smart enough to build his own helicopter? Could he get F.A.A. clearance for a helicopter built by a teenager? And where would he keep it? On the roof of his Aunt May’s house? That seems hardly possible, much less plausible. The weight alone would be enough to crush her house like Fatty Arbuckle crushed young starlets. Imagine how hard it would be to land a helicopter on an angled surface like that without it sliding off and ruining some unlucky bastard’s day.
And how about this for ridiculous? Spiderman comes with a ray-gun. You know, for all those Martians he’s always fighting.
That post about the Ewok Village this week got me in the mood for some more Ewok action. The stuffed Ewoks were a big favorite of mine as a child, however this commercial is ridiculous. I’d like to pretend I didn’t play with my toys like these kids do, but yep… I was this goofy at one point in my life and perhaps slightly girlish.
Welcome to Toy Bender, your source for maximum in-your-face to the extreme unleashed hardcore toy news and info. Toy Bender is updated at least five times a week with content so amazing that it could even give a woman a boner. Toy Bender covers both new and old toy lines, with a focus on anything that's totally radical. With all its mind blowing greatness, Toy Bender is your morning kick in the crotch of pure awesomicity
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