Spotlight :: Vintage Toys :: A Long Time Ago, in a Basement Far, Far Away...

Do not ask me where the vinyl cape went. I SAID DON'T ASK!

Helping.

"But mom, you can never have enough Stormtroopers!"

"Or Snowtroopers!"

On to shelf two!

Still helping.

"Hey. Who's that guy with the big head?"

One to shelf three!

 Pretty sure that smaller block went with the Slave-1 vehicle.

 

And done.

And as a bonus, I also have about a half-dozen card backs that managed to not get tossed. Here's a couple I had framed.

I do believe the missing proof of purchase 

was used to get the free 4-LOM figure. 

One of the elements I had always intended to include in this blog was to throw a spotlight on the old toys and games of my misspent youth but just like with almost everything else I never really got around to do anything with this notion. UNTIL TODAY! Here, is a really, really bad photo essay -- a collage, if you're feeling generous, of unpacking my old Star Wars action figures and putting them out for viewing in a makeshift display case of my own haphazard design. (Note the old re-purposed cassette tape cases for shelving.) I do apologize for the piss-poor quality of the photos; the camera app on my phone is worthless, but the one for Twitter takes better pictures. This, of course, I found out when I was almost done. Alas! 

First figure I ever received. Still have it. 

Anyhoo, about 90% of these were what I played with as a kid with the other 10% picked up hither and yon when antique malls were a thing. The accessories are only about 60 to 70% original with a lot of repro-weapons purchased as replacements. Most of the variants were bought back in the day and didn't even realize I had them until that became a thing in the collector's market. *shrug*. And I'd like to give a huge shout-out to the coolest Mama Bear in the galaxy who gifted me nearly everything in the damned Kenner catalogue from 1978-1985 (-- there's a ton of old Christmas photos that I hope to post in the future), and then didn't throw any of these away. At least what managed to survive in one piece -- my fault, not hers. Yeah. Most of my old playsets are long gone after years of use and abuse but I do still have a few vehicles, which we'll save for another post on another day. 

Favorites :: Vintage Ads :: 132 Pieces! Two Complete Armies! Historical Action at a Scale You Won't Believe!

For those wondering if these things actually existed, and if so, what they really looked like, well, you're in luck. For, back in the days of 4-Color yore, enticed by that great Russ Heath art on the majority of these ads, I managed to con my folks into letting me mail in my hard earned allowance and aluminum can recycling money on a couple of these enticing offers. Including this one...

And after several months of agonized waiting, this junk arrived.

Pfeh. Not quite what six year old me had imagined. Double pfeh. It's not that the ad lied, mind you. Everything promised was there, just not quite to scale as imagined. And for someone used to the stuff Marx was putting out (Battleground, Comanche Pass, Fort Apache and Navarone playsets), it should come as a surprise to no one that the majority of these wound up as melted slag, victim of my Mattel Godzilla and a handy Zippo. Speaking of scale...

The only other Lucky Product Inc. set I managed to order and receive was the Revolutionary War playset. Again, not quite the scale I was expecting, which is never mentioned in any of these ads, 'natch. Officially, they're HO scale, which, in layman's terms, is really, really, really tiny. Anyhoo, despite the size and a lot of defective mold work, these were kinda fun -- at least they weren't flat. And after some digging, I managed to unearth the right coffee can that held what has survived since the summer of 1976.

Now, sharp eyes will quickly note these two opposing armies consisted of the exact same figures (-- with horse and rider counting as two separate figures), with the exact same sculpts, with the only difference being the color. Also scattered among these figures were some Cowboys and Indians that I couldn't quite place with any comic book ad:

But after some more digging, I found out they were most probably a premium from the long gone Post cereal, Sugar Coated Rice Krinkles.

And we'll polish this post off with a great parody ad from the comic mag, What The -- ?: