WHAT'S IN THE BOX? 2-23-11

In my previous post I promised to reveal the remaining contents of the shoebox (80s time capsule) that I bought from the thrift store.
Along with the stack of Atari catalogs and manuals, there were 81 mini-comics. The majority of these came along with action figures during the 80s and contain stories regarding whatever character they were packaged with.

There are:
57 Masters of the Universe
7 Sectaurs
2 Robo Force
3 Captain America
and 2 Transformers

Most of these have some sort of ads for the other figures/vehicles/playsets in the series and fan club mail-aways.

Here are scans of the Masters of the Universe comics:













Here are the back covers with pics of the other toys in the line.













I never had any of these as a kid. I remember going over to other kid's houses and playing "HeMan" but I didn't know anything about the characters and I only watched the cartoon a handful of times.
In the late 80s they had a "white elephant" sale at my school's fall fun-fair and I traded in a bunch of tickets for a huge box of Masters of the Universe figures. My best friend and I took them back to my house and spent the rest of the afternoon on the roof of my bike shed dropping large rocks on to them.
It makes me cringe every time I think about how much those things are worth now. Ughh.

Like most toys I lost or broke (or never got to get as a kid) I've amassed quite a collection of them as an adult and still pick them up if I run across them at garage sales or whatever.

The next set of figures I found mini-comics to I vaguely remember...

Sectaurs which are genetically mutated characters mixed with bugs. The story is really windy and it's hard to tell who the good guys/bad guys are or what the plot involves but pretty much they are just bug-people with their own powers and a personal bug creature that comes along with each one. According to the fan site there was a short-lived cartoon (5 episodes) and a line of comics.

http://sectaurs.fansector.com/

Here are the mini-comic scans (missing one I forgot to scan)









In a stroke of coincidental luck, I actually found one of these action figures at the thrift store a week ago still in the box!? I bought it for $3.



It has a beetle that you can use as a grappling hook. I thought about taking it out of the package to play with it but I saw on Ebay that it's worth $30-40.

Another toy series I remember but never got into was Robo Force. There were two mini-comics in the shoebox for this line.





I do remember my brother got one of these for Christmas one year but we didn't really know anything about them. I thought they were made by Tomy but I guess not.

I didn't scan the rest of the stuff but there are duplicates of the majority of these. There was also 3 copies of Captain America meets the Asthma Monster, some Transformers comics magazine, and manuals for electronic handheld games (M.O.T.U., Double Dragon etc).

BREAKING THE LAWN?

About two weeks ago my wife and I were over at my brother John's house hanging out. He knows I'm a big garage sale/thrift store hunter and he told me I should keep my eyes peeled for lawn darts. He said they no longer made them any more and they were worth a small fortune if you could get your hands on a set.
When I was a kid in the 80s it seemed like every family had a set of these in their garage, right along with badminton and a slip-and-slide. We played it at many a family barbecue.
It's funny how when someone mentions something you haven't thought about in years, it always seems like you run into it soon after. That's exactly what happened in this case.
I had just finished purchasing some great finds at a garage sale I stopped by last Friday. I was already stoked because I found one of those creepy motorized monkeys that squeaks and bangs the cymbals together and I was headed back down the driveway to my car when I almost tripped over a cardboard box. Looking down I was surprised to find it was an unopened set of lawn darts still in the original box! I was hoping the owners were unaware of it's value as I headed back to purchase the set. It was priced at $3.00 and as I handed the woman the money she commented to the person next to her, "Aren't these illegal?"
As soon as I got home with my find I hopped on the internet to get the dirt...



Lawn darts (also called Jarts or yard darts) is a lawn game for two players or teams. A lawn dart set usually includes four large darts and two targets. The game play and objective are similar to both horseshoes and darts. The darts are similar to the ancient Roman plumbata. They are typically 12 inches (30 cm) long with a weighted metal or plastic tip on one end and three plastic fins on a rod at the other end. The darts are intended to be tossed underhand toward a horizontal ground target, where the weighted end hits first and sticks into the ground. The target is typically a plastic ring, and landing anywhere within the ring scores a point. (Wikipedia)

Ronald Reagan and the CPSC (Consumer Product Safety Commission) banned lawn darts from sale in the United States on December 19, 1988 for good reason. According to another site, an estimated 6,100 people have been treated in hospital emergency rooms for injuries involving lawn darts from 1978 through present. At least 80 percent of the victims were younger than 15 years old, and more than 50 percent were ten years old or younger. More than half of the victims had injuries to the skull, eye, ear or face. Many children have lost the use of an eye from this "toy". Investigations indicated that severe injuries included cranial punctures, facial lacerations and fractures to skull. Although victims were often bystanders, in many cases those playing the game were children.



Lawn darts are listed on the top 10 list of the most dangerous or recalled toys in history. It is illegal to manufacture or sell them even as antiques on sites like Ebay. This is the reason they have such value. Of course most of the original sets were opened and because of the multi-part assembly which includes metal rods and plastic fins, like any dart they often broke and required reordering of parts. There are half-a-dozen websites that legally the darts as "parts" but it costs around $170.00 to assemble a set this way.

An unopened set still in the box, depending on the brand, is valued at $95.00-$120.00 to collectors. The only problem is it's still illegal to sell them.

I figured they would be a great early gift for my brother's September birthday. Not to bad for $3.00. When I gave them to him later that night he considered just tucking them away or maybe sell the parts. We agreed before I left that honestly we'll probably be playing with them the next time I come over.

It's funny how we never really considered the danger of the game as kids. Not only that but how moronic it was to invent and sell them in the first place. The boxes were all covered with these disturbing warning labels.





Maybe back in the day we should have took a closer look at the box?



Next time someone asks me about the hole shaped scar on my head, I'll have a brand new story!





You're probably wondering what "really" happened to my head, and I know I've been accused in the past about fibbing about my scars. So here's what really happened...

There were two bears right in front of me... a ferocious pair of lions right on my heels... a unicorn with a big pointy horn on my left... and then I fell off the carousel. End of story.

PAC-MAN 30TH ANNIVERSARY

One last thing and then I'll leave the Pac-man anniversary alone. Here's some great Pac-man stuff I scanned out of the 1982 Montgomery Ward Christmas catalog.







Those stuffed dolls are freaky.





This is what you would do I guess to enlarge your screen to enhance the graphics?

THRIFT STORE GOODIES

A couple days ago I found these three Diener erasers at the thrift store. Two fire trucks and a hydrant. A nice addition to my collection. I feel dumb scouring the thrift store and finally coming up to the counter to buy three little erasers. It wouldn't be the first time. The lady just gave them to me for free.

DIENER SPACE CREATURES AND MONSTERS

A large portion of my blogs gravitate around my weird quirks and obsessions and along that same track I thought I'd share a recent stop.
This summer I made a special effort to frequent the local thrift stores and garage sales and it was at one of these sales I came across a little red swamp monster made of rubber. It was buried down at the bottom of a box of old toys and as soon as I dug it out I found myself suddenly ripped back to the early 1980's file of my mind.
When I was probably three or four years old my grandma would take me on stroller rides on afternoons she babysat me and we would always stroll down Main St. where we would stop by Latta's. In the early 80's, Latta's was the equivalent of what would nowadays be a Hobby Lobby or craft/supply store. The first Latta's store was opened in 1898 by John Stuart who came from my home town of Cedar Falls. Latta's is one of the oldest school supply companies in the United States with a variety of categories including: arts and crafts, audio and visual, children books, early childhood, games, mathematics, multilingual, office supplies, science, social studies, teacher resources and more. My grandma was interested in Latta's large assortment of sewing supplies and would always stop in to pick up thing on our walks. To me the store seemed pretty boring with the exception of the eraser bins. Latta's had a long Plexiglas bin filled with hundreds of brightly colored erasers with dozens of different themes. If I behaved myself while she shopped she would always let me pick one out to take home. There were so many different ones to choose from. Farm animals, sports equipment, dinosaurs, airplanes, sea creatures, cars, popular cartoon characters like Popeye and Mickey mouse. I would pick through them to find the one I liked the best. Just holding that rubbery little figure in my hand as we strolled our way home was as good as it gets.
Flash-forward to that garage sale where I knelt by that cardboard box at the age of 32 holding that rubber monster I could remember that feeling. I recognized the little red figure as if I had just seen it yesterday.
I regret to this day tossing it back in the box because about a week later I found two more monsters from the same series at the thrift store. This time I didn't let them go, I was determined to find out more about these neat erasers and who made them.
After a quick search on the computer I discovered these erasers came from a series of monsters and space creatures created by Diener Industries the leader in eraser toys during the early 1980's, and there were a whole lot more of them than I remembered. If you were a child in the 80's you most likely ran into these at one time or another. Here is just a sample of some of the erasers:




My personal favorites are the Monsters and Space Creatures which were actually used as McDonalds Happy Meal toys in the 80's



The cool thing is these were mostly based on actual movie monsters and aliens. Lets take a closer look...


Horned Cyclops - I’m guessing this one might be an amalgam of different cyclops. Pictured is the Ray Harryhausen’s Cyclops from The 7 th Voyage of Sinbad, the Lost In Space Cyclops and the Siamese Cyclops from The Three Stooges Meet Hercules.


Winged Amphibian Creature - design based after the creature in the 1966 movie Destination Inner Space.


Vampire Bat Creature - design based after the Batman comic book character Man-Bat.


Insectman - design based after the Fly from the 1958 movie The Fly.


Lizard Man - design based after Ray Harryhausen’s creation the Ymir from the 1957 movie 20 Million Miles to Earth.


Tree Trunk Monster - design based after the aliens in the 1958 movie I Married a Monster from Outer Space.


Veined Cranium Creature - design based after the Martians in the 1957 movie Invasion of the Saucer Men.


Gil Face Creature - design based after an alien named Ikar from the 1964 television series The Outer Limits in the episode Keeper of the Purple Twilight.

These erasers are now collectables and not only are tough to find but usually sell for $10-18 a piece. I'll still keep my eye out for them but I definatly won't spend that amount of money on a 2 inch eraser. Recently I scoured a large flea market in the hopes of finding some and ended up finding one Ronald McDonald Diener figure. I wish I would have bought that "tree trunk man" swamp monster from that garage sale but, oh well.


Here's a pic of me with my 2 monsters!!


Here's my Ronald McDonald and Popeye Diener figures.

I'll post another blog if I find anymore.

LABYRINTH TOYS

I was looking for some gift items at Entertainment Earth and I ran across these new Labyrinth collectibles. Dang I would love these.


This is a plush replica of one of the door knockers. It would be a lot cooler if it wasn't a glorified stuffed animal, and if they made the other one for a pair.


These are the Jareth and Hoggle action figures that come together as a set. Fricken' awesome!


This is the 12" Jareth the Goblin King figure, it comes with additional hand holding a crystal ball, and it talks!! Here is a list of the crap it says:

"Go back to your room. Play with your toys and your costumes."

"I've brought you a gift; it's a crystal, nothing more. But if you turn it this way and look into it, it'll show you your dreams."

"But this is not a gift for an ordinary girl."

"Do you want it?"

"Don't defy me."

"You have 13 hours in which to solve the labyrinth."

"It's further than you think. Time is short."


This is the 9" plush talking Ludo that says, "Smells baaaad!" and "Sara friend?". I wish they would have made an action figure instead of a dumb stuffed animal. I guess I should be glad they made Labyrinth collectibles at all.
Also they have a replica of the bracelet that Sara gives Hoggle but last I checked it was all sold out.