I’ve written about video game tie-in merchandise before, but it’s definitely a part of my collection that has grown steadily in recent years. I definitely like the fact that it gives a more tangible quality to the characters that have been trapped in our televisions and cartridges and – let’s face it – our hearts for many years. Let’s see what Mario Claus brought for Ben, shall we?

I grew up in the age of Nintendo, so arcade classics like Berserk and Zaxxon are a little bit before my time. However, you can’t deny that the graphics on these old Milton Bradley board games are amazing. There was really a passion that went into translating arcade games into two-dimensional boards while attempting to recreate the arcade action in the first place. My sister picked these up from a friend in North Carolina. They are both SEALED, which is incredible. It also makes me very glad I passed on an opened, incomplete, and played with version of the Berserk board game I saw at a flea market this summer for $40.

There was a time before Super Mario Bros. 2 when Luigi was just a green and white version of his brother Mario. Therefore, you can date something like this pretty easily to the time in between Mario’s release in 1985 and when Luigi developed his current look. This plush doll is humongous. My mom picked it up for me at a local community yard sale for ten bucks. I don’t have the Mario equivalent (yet), but I kind of like the fact that for the moment, Luigi will get the spotlight in my collection.

Who you gonna call? MARIO BROTHERS! I have actually had several opportunities to purchase this awesome vintage phone, but that’s only if I wanted to spend at least $80 on it. My sister pulled this at a flea market for ten bucks in the fall and it’s definitely one of the most awesome finds she made. And yes, I know it would be more appropriate if the Warp Pipe was in green instead of red. The color is irrelevant. You will look awesome talking on this phone no matter the color.

Street Fighter merchandise isn’t hard to come by…if you’re in the market for action figures. However, there are plenty of other merchandising tie-ins that are much more difficult to find. I’m not saying this pinball game is impossible to find – one just sold on eBay not that long ago – but it’s certainly not something I can say I see pop up that often. It makes sound effects from the video game, too! The artwork is key art, but it’s key art from when the art at Capcom really took a step up in terms of dynamic appearance. My sister found this at a yard sale for three bucks, and I KNOW it’s worth more than that.

Finally, we have something really weird. This is some sort of Sega counter display. I don’t know exactly how it was used. It comes with a pen that had a stretchy cord attached to it. I don’t know if this was for filling out a contest or mail information cards or something, but it’s clearly from the early 1990s and it’s clearly not something that was ever meant to be sold, which is the kind of awesome, interesting, and different piece I love to have to round out a collection and make it unique. If you know anything about exactly what this MIGHT be, be sure to contact me! This, of course, came from a flea market, because how could it not?

The post A Hodgepodge of Video Game Tie-In Merchandise appeared first on The Collector Gene.

Gumball Machine Monster Jigglers

So if you haven’t been clued in to the world of jigglers yet, let me bring you up to speed. Jigglers are toys made out of a springy and flexible rubber that literally jiggles when you move it. If you were a kid between the 60’s- the 80’s, you probably had at least one. Though they came into popularity in the 1960’s, you can still find toys made like this today. In fact, you can still find some of the same jiggler designs of 40+ years ago in stores if you look hard enough, but I will address that later. Russ Berrie is famous for making larger gift ware jigglers that were sold in novelty shops and gift shops in the 60’s and 70’s. Most of their jigglers are animal characters with plastic inset eyes. They are made out of an oily rubber that will stain anything it touches if you leave it long enough, but they still have a following today regardless. Ben Cooper also made some cool jigglers including Marvel and DC super heroes and Universal Monsters. Yes, this is the Ben Cooper that made cheap Halloween costumes, but they also did dime store toys in the form of rubber jigglers. The rubber used by Ben cooper is more like the rubber on the toys I am talking about today (less oily). With the success of jigglers in the 1960’s, cheap-toy companies decided to jump on the band wagon and create small jigglers that could fit into a capsule in a gumball machine. You could fold the flexible rubber into a capsule and it would spring back good as new when the toy was removed.  Many of them are in the form of bizarre monsters, and those are the jigglers I am discussing today.

Flat Monster Jigglers just like the ones I had as a kid!

Now I should make it clear that these jigglers weren’t only sold in gumball machines. Some were also sold bagged and carded, and you could probably buy them individually in your local dime store. I remember the ones that my mom gave out at Halloween came in a big bag filled with a couple dozen of them. They were cheap to produce and kids loved them. The ones above are like the ones I had as a kid. They are what I would call flat jigglers, and they were still producing them up through at least the 1980’s when I had them.

Finger Puppet Jigglers.  That sad red fella on the far right is totally a new Jiggler.

One of the most incredible aspects of these small jigglers is that some of these designs, or bootlegs of these designs, are still being produced today. They are often sold as party favors for kids birthday parties. That means that some of these toys have had a consistent run of production for at least 40 years. In many ways that puts them in a league with Barbie, Hotwheels, and G.I. Joe when it comes to longevity, but because they are small and innocuous we never see them that way. The finger puppet jigglers are still made today. Though the designs have changed a bit over time, the concept remains the same.

It can sometimes be very difficult to tell an older jiggler from a new one, but there are a few tricks to help you decipher age. One of the easiest ways to tell age is to look at the markings. This trick I am about to mention will help you date a lot of toys besides jigglers. If the jiggler is marked “Hong Kong” it was made 1985 or prior. If it is marked “China” it is made after 1985. Another way to tell is the rubber. This is hard for me to describe in a blog post, but there is a different feel to the older rubber. When you have a China jiggler and a Hong Kong jiggler to compare you will see what I mean. They feel different. Finally, not every design has been produced over and over for years. In general, the octopus jigglers or spider jigglers aren’t being produced today and probably haven’t been for decades. The frog looking ones are the same. The main two still being produced are the finger puppets and the flat jigglers.

Octopus/ Spider Monster Jigglers.  These are some of my favorites.  Look at those crazy designs!

Frog Monster Jigglers.  Two eyes would just be too normal.  It’s either one or five with these guys.  The frogs are also some of my favorites.  I mean, just look at them.

One of my favorite aspects of jigglers is you can see their progression through time as different companies rip each others designs and make slight alterations. They shrink and grow, and they gain limbs and they lose limbs.   They come in different rubbers and plastics, and they change color as they go. As I find jigglers digging through bins at flea markets I watch them evolve over time, and I feel like a biologist finding a new species when I find a slight variation on a design. Flea markets are the Galapagos Islands of jigglers! It makes them particularly fun to collect. I never find the exact same jiggler twice.

The same jiggler can take on many forms.  Clearly these are the same design, but the one on the right has a horn.  Based on the rubber, the one on the right is also probably the older one.

These two have very similar faces, but different legs.  Another one of my favorite aspects of these toys is their evolution over the decades they were created.

These two may be the closest yet, but if you look carefully you will see that they are two totally different sculpts.  One is most likely a shameless rip off of the other.  They weren’t even trying to make it something different!

That tiny guy on the left was probably created in the 80’s and is clearly based on the guy on the right.  That being said, they made a lot of changes in the leg department.  What a crazy evolution!

I also want to take time to point out how weird and awesome some of these designs are. They are brilliant! As an artist, I love every one of them as these incredible and interesting sci-fi monsters. This is because many of these designs are based on work by well known artists such as Wally Wood and Basil Wolverton that were done for a line of Topps trading cards (the jigglers are clearly bootlegs). Others are based on other toy line such as The Outer Space Men by Colorforms, and some designs were done in house at the cheap toy companies based on these designs. Of course, as bootlegs of work by popular artists, these toys have garnered quite a following.

Does Barry look familiar to you? His doppelganger is in the top left corner of the photo of the spider/ octopus jigglers.

My fried Ed is in the top row second from the right.  You can probably thank Wally Wood for these nightmares.

Remember those multi-eyed frog jigglers?  You can call them Steve!

Finally Iris shares a striking resemblance to the rat bug jiggler in the next photo down.  This is the least obvious of the bootlegs, but the idea is still present.

These Jigglers are more figural.  Two monkeys, a bootleg of a larger jiggler line called De Horribles, and a rat bug.  I like the rat bug (but really, I just like them all).

Thanks to having a bag of flat jigglers as a kid from a Halloween party, I became hooked on monster jigglers. Their wacky and wonderfully disturbing designs intrigue me and keep me searching the depths of dirty boxes at flea markets to rescue them from obscurity. It is a worthwhile pursuit as far as I am concerned.

Some teeny tiny jigglers.  I put a big one in the back for comparison.  These guys are less than half the size of their counterparts, and therefore are even harder to find!  They are less than an inch long!

Finally, some really cool jigglers that probably weren’t in gumball machines.  These are probably from a dime store based on their size.  Still, these are really great and were well worth sharing!

The post The Amazing Variety of Gumball Machine Monster Jigglers appeared first on The Collector Gene.

I’ve been asking that question – and formulated several reasonable answers – when it comes to the Primal Rage figure Necrosan.

Here’s Necrosan in all its glory! This figure has gotten really, really expensive lately.

Primal Rage is an arcade game that was released by Midway in 1994. Midway was responsible for the hyper violent yet massively popular Mortal Kombat series of fighting games. To capitalize on both the popularity of fighting games as well as the popularity of dinosaurs thanks to Jurassic Park, Midway created yet another hyper violent fighter starring giant dinosaurs and apes pounding each other senseless with inordinate amounts of gore spouting out across the screen.

Primal Rage ad courtesy of arcade-museum.com

What should have been a recipe for inevitable success in 1994 was not as successful as many had hoped. While Primal Rage could be found at arcades across the country, it was competing against an ever-expanding roster of fighting games that were all competing for hard-earned quarters. A sequel was planned and initially developed, but Midway decided that it wouldn’t be lucrative enough to justify production.

Despite Primal Rage only receiving one arcade entry into the series, there’s actual quite a bit of Primal Rage merchandise available to collect. It was ported onto virtually every system that was available at the time. It also received a board game, a comic book, and, I wish I was kidding, a NOVEL. But of course, it also had a corresponding series of action figures, made by Playmates toys. They were big and chunky and meant to be thrown around the same way you would have thrown around LJN WWF Wrestlers in the 1980s. They all featured actions that helped recreate their special moves in the game.

Despite not receiving a second game, Playmates actually produced a second series of action figures. Some of these were repaints of first series figures, but there were two new characters who would have shown up in the second arcade game: Slash Fang (a sabretooth tiger) and Necrosan (a…uh…a skinned…dragon…thing?).  Had the second arcade game been made, Necrosan would have been the final boss, which is something the first arcade game was lacking.

Here’s a look at the back of the package showing Necrosan, Slash Fang, and some of the other repainted Series 2 figures.

The toy series was scrapped after this second series of figures, and they were quickly discounted at Kay Bee Toys at rock bottom prices.

So why has this figure suddenly been selling at various points of the year for more than $500?

Yes, that is a real number. While most collectors of 1980s action figures scoff at the notion that anything made beyond 1989 is worth anything at all, there’s a figure from the latter part of the decade that collectors really, really want to have. To be fair, more recent sales put it closer to the $100 to $200 range for boxed, mint examples, but still, that’s much more than just about any other action figure from that particular era.

I have a couple of reasonable theories.

1.) It’s definitely a short-run figure, and I’m basing that on personal experience. I remember seeing piles of figures on clearance at Kay Bee, including the aforementioned Slash Fang. However, maybe I saw Necrosan in a store once if at all when it was a new toy. While scalpers of the day added to the rarity of certain infamous figures like the first Princess Leia, the truth is that they’ve all been very easy to obtain and aren’t worth much at all. Necrosan is one of the few domestically action figures of the 1990s that is legitimately rare.

2.) Primal Rage is picking up steam as a collectible. When I started collecting Primal Rage toys about six years ago, it was because I remembered them fondly, but it was also because they were so darned cheap, even on eBay! I could pick up large lots for $20 plus shipping without difficulty. It seems like people have come to appreciate the line (anything with dinosaurs seems to be collectible these days, if the prices on Dino Riders and Jurassic Park toys are to be believed), and so if they want a complete series of figures, then they have to track down Necrosan.

3.) He provides some of the only evidence that a second game was planned. Now, for years, Primal Rage 2 was sort of an urban legend and almost no information on the game could be found. However, my favorite arcade currently in operation, Galloping Ghost, installed a copy of Primal Rage 2, and now, you can see gameplay videos of the unreleased arcade game. Many unproduced games have found second lives through emulators, but while you can finally play Primal Rage 2 today, you couldn’t back in 1996 like what had been planned. The fact that Necrosan got released as a tie-in for a game that never got produced is pretty remarkable, as is the fact that…

4.) He is just plain crazy and horrifying. What parent would encourage their children to play with this thing? It absolutely looks like it came straight from Clive Barker’s nightmares. You have a dragon WITH ITS SKIN RIPPED OFF, revealing its innards, it’s musculature, and it’s skeletal structure. Yes, there’s a ton of merchandise today for Attack on Titan’s Colossal Titan, but all of it is meant for adult collectors, not children. I think it’s appealing to those who like monster figures, and that includes plenty of collectors out there.

A face only a collector could love…

Now, I think all of these reasons provide a more than plausible explanation as to why Necrosan has gotten to be such an expensive action figure lately. I think some combination of the four reasons is responsible for this, but I couldn’t tell you which ones carry the most weight for the people willing to spend that kind of money for it.

As for me, I bought it for $15 at a toy show last summer. I knew that was a fair price – I think maybe it was selling for $50 to $75 at the time – but I didn’t realize how much of a bargain it would be in the long run. It goes to show that the market is constantly in flux, so if you really want something for your collection and can comfortably afford it, it’s best to do so as soon as possible, because you don’t know when it’s going to become the next impossibly expensive thing that everyone else has to have!

The post Primal Rage Necrosan: A Terrifying 90s Figure that’s Terrifyingly Expensive! appeared first on The Collector Gene.

I was born in 1983, so I was about six years old when the Ninja Turtles phenomenon had really swept the nation. They were inescapable by 1989. Knowing the names of the four turtles was as essential as knowing the alphabet by the time I hit kindergarten.

There have always been hard core Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fans, but I think that fandom has become much more mainstream in recent years, and a lot more collectors are hunting for key pieces. Certain vehicles and playsets in mint condition are commanding prices that I couldn’t have dreamed of years ago, regularly reaching hundreds of dollars. I think for many years, collectors were turned off because there’s just so much TMNT merchandise to collect. It was a very successful franchise and while not as daunting to collect as something like Star Wars, it’s certainly up there in terms of popularity and the breadth of items to collect.

I was very heavily into Ninja Turtles in 1989 and 1990, but by 1991, they were replaced by Toy Biz’s X-Men figures in my house. Like any phenomenon that gets as popular as Ninja Turtles, there are a few key years where EVERYONE is into them, and then they move onto other things. But my friend Brian was different. He was completely loyal to Ninja Turtles well into their popularity and stuck with them long after most of my friends had given up on them.

Brian and I remain friends all these years later, and since we bonded early on by our shared love of toys like Battle Beasts and checking out flea markets, we often bring up those subjects in conversation all these years later. During one of these conversations a few years ago, Brian made the kind of claim I hear a lot as an action figure collector: “I had EVERY Ninja Turtle figure.”

Not to brag, but I consider myself a pretty well-versed expert on the topic of action figures, so whenever someone claims they had EVERYTHING in a particular line, I immediately become suspicious. There are several incredibly rare Ninja Turtles figures that were released after most kids collected them, and even if a kid was still actively adding Ninja Turtles to his collection as late as 1994 or 1995, it’s entirely possible that they might have missed one of these rare figures.

Knowing that I was suspicious, he said, “What’s the rarest figure?” And without hesitation, I said Scratch. (I know some people will certainly debate this, but he is certainly among the top five rarest figures and is at the very top of most collectors’ want lists.)

Released in 1993, Scratch was one of a handful original characters released very, very late in the Ninja Turtles line. By 1994, the line became mostly variations of the main characters, both heroes and villains, so Scratch was one of the last completely new action figures to be released. He is literally a “cat burglar,” a mutant cat in a black-and-white jailbird outfit. While several other characters who were in the same assortment as Scratch are also very, very difficult to find, Scratch appears to be the absolute most difficult figure to find from this particular assortment.

When I described to Brian what the character looked like, he said, “Oh, I have that.” He probably knew that wasn’t good enough for me. After all, I had been led onto claims like fellow classmates owning Rocket Firing Boba Fett figures before. But Brian did have a particular advantage when it came to toys growing up: his mom worked at K-Mart, so whenever new Ninja Turtles figures were put on the shelves, his mom got first dibs. So it was entirely possible that with a connection like this, he could have gotten his hands on Scratch as a kid.

During one of his trips back home, he had me go down with him to his parents’ basement to look for his boxes of Ninja Turtles toys. We started rooting through, and sure enough, he held up a figure and said, “Is THIS the figure you were talking about?”

That moment was the first time I had ever held an honest-to-goodness example of Scratch. Brian wasn’t lying. His mom probably picked up the only Scratch figure that ever hit the shelves of our local K-Mart. While Brian clearly loved his toys, he was also about 11 or 12 years old by the time Scratch came out, so he was in much better shape than the rest of his childhood collection.

Seeing my excitement, he let me have the figure. Pretty cool, right? Still, I don’t consider myself the owner of the Scratch that I display on one of my toy shelves. Instead, I consider myself more of a caretaker. If I’m ever tempted to sell it, Brian gets the money. I mean, I HIGHLY doubt I would get rid of such a rare figure, and I’m honored that it’s getting proper display instead of sitting neglected in a basement. And it’s very cool that I can trace the lineage of the toy back to the original owner.

The moral of the story is that you should keep in touch with your childhood friends and pick their brains about their various toy memories. You might be surprised what you’ll find! Just don’t resort to Scratch-like antics and wind up in jail trying to get your grubby paws on some rare items!

The post Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Scratch (A “Tail” in Friendship) appeared first on The Collector Gene.

This tenth anniversary issue of Life magazine shows the first issue with the famous Margaret Bourke White cover.

I’m sure my love affair with Life began when I was about ten years old. Unlike just about every middle class family in America in the 1940’s, 50’s, and 60’s, my family never had a subscription to Life magazine. However, my aunts and uncles did, and they would pass along their outdated copies to us when we came to visit. Indeed, I really looked forward to riding home with several stacks of magazines piled up around me in the back of the car. Life, McCall’s, Ladies Home Journal, and National Geographic were eagerly read by me even when I was still in elementary school. Sometimes I would cut the magazines up and put photos and articles in my scrap book. When I was about 13 or 14, I started making a gigantic collage of famous people’s faces, and most of the clippings came from Life.

Now you know what a weird kid I was and how my addiction to printed matter, especially magazines, began.

Early on, when Jim and I first started going to flea markets and into antique shops over forty years ago, I would be drawn to any old magazines that I saw, and if they were affordable (i.e. cheap), I would usually buy them. With thousands upon thousands of each copy sold during its heyday, old Life magazines were not hard to find. I could usually pick up nice examples from the 1940’s and 50’s, my favorite era because the magazines were bulging with fabulous advertisements and interesting articles, for fifty cents or a dollar. Once, about thirty years ago, I came upon a table at a flea market piled high with the old Life’s for a quarter each, and I bought a couple dozen.

However, that was nothing compared to what happened about ten years ago. Our county library holds a book sale a few times a year. When I first discovered this, I went crazy and was coming home with two or three boxes full of printed matter after each sale. This is not a good thing when we already have many, many boxes full of books and magazines in the basement. On this particular occasion, I was trying to behave by avoiding the sale, but Ben ended up checking it out. At lunchtime, he reported that they had “tons” of vintage Life magazines for ten cents apiece. Ten cents! Heck, that was the original cover price in the 1930’s and 40’s! The sale closed at 3 pm, so I hopped in the car and headed to the library. My willpower had crumbled.

Ben was right. Almost as soon as I walked in, I saw several piles of Life from the 1940’s and 50’s. Why they hadn’t all sold at that ridiculously low price was beyond my comprehension. Within minutes, my stack was an impressive size – and I’d only spent about $2.00. Then one of the volunteers at the book sale said the fateful words, “We have more magazines in the back if you’re interested.” Of course, I was. So I accompanied her to a large employee office/workroom, and there were about three or four eight-foot long tables just piled with Life magazines. I was stunned. It turned out that it was the entire archive that the library owned, and they had decided to get rid of it. There literally were hundreds of Life magazines from about 1937 to 1999. Obviously, it was not a complete collection. Certain issues had probably been lifted forty or fifty years ago. Others had probably been sold that morning at the book sale. Still and all, there were many, many issues from just about every year of publication.

Again, I dove in and started making a hand-selected pile, probably another $2.00’s worth. Then I couldn’t believe the words coming out of my mouth. “Would you be willing to sell all of them to me for one price?” I asked, knowing full well that if I bought them, Jim was surely going to kill me. In my mind, I thought that any price of $50 or less would be an absolute steal that I couldn’t turn down. Any figure above $50 would have caused me to hesitate and perhaps regain my sanity. Naturally, the woman said, “You can have them all for $50.”

And that’s how I came into possession of our county library’s Life magazine archive.

There was no way I could fit them all into the car on one trip. I took several boxes with me, and over the course of the next month or two, I would make a trip every week or so and pick up another five or ten boxes. Into the basement they went, and in the basement most of them still are.

Quite honestly, I have sold a few. I’ve certainly gotten my money back and then some. I’ve even given a few away as gifts. Life magazines are the perfect birthday or anniversary gift. It’s always fun to see what products were being advertised, what big stories were in the news, what the fashions looked like and what famous person might have been interviewed.

Whenever I go through the “archive” and try to choose a few magazines to get rid of, here’s what happens: First, I’ll see a great cover photo and be attracted to it.

Then I’ll see some ads that are colorful, nostalgic, or fun.

Then, invariably, there’s an interesting article to skim or scan or even read in depth. I swear to you that it’s a rare Life magazine that doesn’t have at least three or four different things going for it. And sometimes that’s what makes it difficult for me to part with some of them. They are like little weekly time capsules. Sometimes they capture an era with which I’m familiar – like the 1960’s or 70’s. More often, though, they bespeak a time that I either never lived through or was too young to remember.

It doesn’t matter. I love Life, and that’s that. I have promised that I will begin parting with them more seriously, and I will keep my promise. But will I always have some Life magazines in my possession? Yes, without a doubt.

The post My Love Affair With LIFE (Magazine) appeared first on The Collector Gene.

When most people start collecting little rubber and plastic figures, part of their reasoning for buying tiny toys often stems from the fact that these collections don’t take up a lot of space. You can fit hundreds of tiny figures in a shoe box if you want to, and they don’t take up a lot of shelf space if you choose to display them (and why wouldn’t you!). Beyond their ability to occupy very little space, most little figure toy lines have dozens if not hundreds of designs to collect, as well as tons of color variations. They also tend to come in all sorts of wacky and wonderful character designs, which make little rubber figure collecting very popular with both kids and adults.

One of the more popular little rubber figure lines from my childhood was Monster in my Pocket. They came out in 1990, and found success all over the world. The line consisted of a bunch of small, solid colored rubber monsters based on popular monsters from international folklore and popular culture. Everything from Frankenstein’s Monster to Baba Yaga are represented in the line. If you don’t remember Monster in my Pocket yourself or you want to know more, here is a quick pictorial crash course on the line.

A Sampling of Series 1 Monster in my Pockets.

A Sampling of Series 2 Monster in my Pockets

A Sampling of Super Scary Monster in my Pockets

U.K. Kellogg’s Sports Monsters in my Pocket

A Sampling of Monster in My Pocket Wrestlers

Now that you have met some of the Monster in my Pocket gang, I can get to the main focus of this article. Clearly I have spent a little bit of time collecting Monster in my Pocket. The photos above represent a small fraction of my collection. Monster in my Pocket were made by Matchbox and were sold in retail stores everywhere in the country. They were popular and cheap to produce, so they naturally found their way into promotional tie-ins with restaurants and food products. Most of the Monster in my Pocket figures that were produced for product tie-ins were Series 1 figures cast in different colors than the red, green, yellow, and purple seen above. Many were produced in Series 2 neon colors, with occasional oddities in slightly different shades of bright colors, or a dark forest green color.

Monsters in strange colors.  These Monster in my Pockets were packaged with food tie-ins and other Monster in My Pocket products other than the main figure lines.

Monster in my Pocket had an American cereal tie in with Nabisco Frosted Wheat Squares. They also had a promotion with Bob’s Big Boy.

The tie in that is really the point of this article is a promotion run with Spaghetti-O’s. Every kid loves Spaghetti-O’s, and what could be better than getting a free toy with your purchase? Of course they didn’t put a Monster in my Pocket in the actual can of Spaghetti-O’s. That would make a mess. You had to mail away to get them. Since kids are impatient, and Spaghetti-O’s needed to get you excited to have to wait to receive your toys, they had to find a big way to get kids attention. Behold the inflatable Spaghetti-O’s Monster that is the size of an actual child!

This inflatable display is based on a Series 2 monster design, Dryad. I wouldn’t call this figure the obvious character choice that kids could relate to, but it kind of looks like it could be made out of spaghetti when you color it red-orange like this, so I am going to go along with Spaghetti-O’s decision making process on this one.

When this 4ft tall pile of inflatable awesomeness found its way onto eBay several years ago I made it my mission to make him mine. In a collection that could otherwise fit in a shoe box, he is certainly a stand out. I have always liked store displays, and when I can find a display based on something I specifically collect it becomes a must own for my collection. I only wish that my local super market had had one of these guys on display when I was a kid. I am pretty sure a Monster in my Pocket taller than I was would have made my day. It sure made my day when I found one as an adult.

The post Spaghetti-O’s Monster in my Pocket Display: One Monster That Won’t Fit In Your Pocket… appeared first on The Collector Gene.

Don’t scoff at Chinatown knockoffs. One day, you’ll be paying through the nose to get them.

For as long as toys have been popular, some lame, almost-certainly-sweatshop-like factory has been churning out toys that vaguely resemble the ones you genuinely love/want. But while very successful toy companies would map out a detailed release plan each year for their most successful lines and distribute catalogs to make sure every child knew every product that was or would eventually become available, these smaller, rather unscrupulous companies would churn out chunks of plastic vaguely resembling much more popular toys and get them out to market as quickly as possible. They weren’t thinking of longevity. They were looking for every dollar they could scrape up before the toy they were copying wasn’t popular anymore, thereby rendering their similar product completely obsolete.

In recent years, some of the best collectors have gone absolutely nuts for these toy lines. They were so ubiquitous that it was almost inevitable a couple of knockoffs would have ended up among your Masters of the Universe collection when you were a kid. Because of an utter lack of documentation and wildly uneven geographic distribution, collectors love the challenge associated with knockoffs. Besides that, many of the best, craziest knockoffs have designs that are so childish, garish, and disproportionate, that collectors can’t help but fall in love with them. It’s like watching a bad movie like The Room on purpose. You know it’s horrible, you know it’s not constructed properly, and that’s what makes it more enjoyable than something that was done right.

This is very much one of those cases. Behold: WATCHFUL OWLAMO and BERANINO from SATYR MASTERS FROM ABYSS!

Satyr Masters From Abyss! SATYR MASTERS FROM ABYSS!!!

I know, I know, you probably have never heard any of those names/words spoken in succession, and therefore, I may have accidentally just opened a gate to another dimension just by typing them out. Sorry ‘bout that, time-space continuum!

I made it my mission to find these very, very, VERY strange bootleg/knockoff toys when I read about them on Evan Dorkin’s blog. Evan has a nice if strange history behind the line, and thank goodness he had the foresight to preserve the cardback so that we know a.) what the heck this toy line is called, and b.) the ridiculous names for the characters.

Examples of horrible “Engrish” are well-documented all over the Internet, and it’s easy to think that with crazy names like “Cheeky Mummiah” and “Silly Cocky” that it’s entirely possible that these figures had similar Eastern Asian origins. Not surprisingly, the cards are dated 1990, so these were undoubtedly meant to capitalize on the success of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

The name also sort of brings forth the “evil” connotations associated with the Ninja Turtles phenomenon. This video shows just how Christian groups rallied against the “false gospel” of the Ninja Turtles. When the name of your toy line includes the words “satyr” (mythical creatures depicted in Greek and Roman mythology that loved wine, women, and any type of physical pleasure) and “abyss” (in philosophy, and endless chasm that leads to the underworld or hell), it’s as though the nameless company that forged these figures through black magic wanted the same kind of publicity for these oddball figures, probably assuming that any publicity would be good publicity.

A better look at Beranino. Better is of course a relative term.

The construction is everything you’d want in a crappy, Chinatown ripoff. The mold lines are not only clear, but they don’t seem to have been sanded off properly. The two figures essentially feature the same body and are only distinguished by their heads. The paint applications leave a lot to be desired, and while it’s obvious these figures are not in mint condition, I tend to think that even in their current state, they don’t look much different than they would have appeared 23 years ago.

I do like how these are clearly inspired by sort of tough-guy stereotypes. If the card art is to be believed, these figures were armed with knives, baseball bats, and machine guns. It’s as though the toy line’s designers (I use the term loosely) played Double Dragon a couple of times and said “LIKE THIS BUT ANIMALS.” Watchful Owlamo even has a baseball cap turned sideways! He’s dope like that!

Watchful Owlamo hopes that his cool sideways cap distracts from his otherwise terrible construction as an action figure.

These showed up online labeled as “animal head wrestler action figures.” I don’t expect every toy collector to know what Satyr Masters From Abyss are off the top of their heads (until they read this article of course), but I certainly knew them from following Evan’s blog, so even mislabeled, I knew exactly what I was looking at online. Will I be able to amass the full set of 12? Will anybody ever? Has anybody tried? Does anyone want to bother to try? These questions will probably yield answers that are as mysterious as the Satyr Masters From Abyss themselves.

The post Satyr Masters From Abyss: Watchful Owlamo and Beranino appeared first on The Collector Gene.

In the mid-1980s, a trend started where toys weren’t just based on heroic adventurers or transforming robots or military strongmen or ninjas or what have you. Instead, many smaller companies found success in producing shocking toys that often featured grotesque appearances, silly names, blood and guts, decayed skin, and a bunch of other things that almost seemed market-tested to offend parents in the worst way possible.

The best and most successful example of this trend is the Madballs line by Amtoy, but there were many other successes in its wake. The Weird Ball series spawned a line of non-poseable figures, poseable action figures, M.U.S.C.L.E.-like wrestlers, and additional minifigures. The Garbage Pail Kids went from wildly successful trading cards to “cheap toys” sold with “crappy candy.” The Mad Scientist toy line had you literally dissecting an alien and pulling out his innards.

While some larger toy companies got into the disgusting toys game – such as Kenner and their line Savage Mondo Blitzers from the early 1990s – many of these toys were released by fly-by-night companies as an inexpensive cash grab. As such, many of these are highly prized today. Collectors remember this bygone era fondly, as it is very doubtful we will see toys like these hitting stores again anytime soon.

Toys like these were hilariously parodied by Ren and Stimpy. The childlike Stimpson J. Cat collected a line of…toys?…called Magic Nose Goblins. They were obviously his boogers, which he stuck under benches, tables, and other various surfaces. “I picked them myself!” What was funny about it was that no one would actually make those toys…OR WOULD THEY?!?!?!

One toy line I became fascinated with was one I never remember existing as a kid, despite being the perfect age to appreciate it. The line was called “Boogers from the Planet Nose,” which literally sounds like a Mad Libs title for a B-movie created by a 6-year-old obsessed with humor related to bodily functions. My friend, knowing I specialized in obscure toys, asked me if I had ever seen or heard of these figures, and I honestly had no idea what he was talking about. Even thorough searches on the internet proved utterly boogerless. A saved search on eBay that would alert me anytime someone put one up for sale yielded nothing for years. The fingers of research came up dry when reaching into the nostrils of collective toy knowledge. What the hell were Boogers from the Planet Nose?!?

I look at rare toys as a challenge. My knowledge of toys far exceeds the actual budget I have to spend on them, so my hope is always to turn up something very, very unusual at a flea market or show because no one else is looking for it or even knows what it is. What made this search especially challenging is that I genuinely had no idea what I was looking for.

Then, out of nowhere, a local auction house that regularly holds live auctions dedicated to modern toys had one for sale. It was the first time I had ever seen an image of this mysterious, gooey toyline. Though you could leave a bid online, I figured it was better if I went in person to bid on the first Boogers from the Planet Nose I had ever seen. I had dug for gold and came away with a finger full of fun!

Truly a "pick" of the week: Boogers from the Planet Nose!

Since then, I’ve gotten four of the six characters, and as far as I know, this is the first time pictures of them are being made available online. I am literally showing you the used tissue holding the fruits of my labor. Behold one of the weirdest toy lines ever manufactured.

Here is the wonderfully silly story behind Boogers from the Planet Nose:

Boogers are aliens from the planet Nose. Nose has a terrible environment (toxic waste and slime everywhere). So the Boogers decide to “blow” out of town in their Nose Cones in search of greener (their favourite colour) pastures.

Made of a grotesque, sticky material, these little wonders are sure to delight, amuse, and gross out! A periodic bath in warm water will clean the Boogers and keep them sticky.

Within two paragraphs, we’ve been given a guilty message about aliens leaving their home planet because of pollution, they have spaceships shaped like noses, and if you want them to live, you’d better give them a warm bath every once in a while. It’s exactly the kind of details I want on a toy line called Boogers from the Planet Nose.

I tend to collect loose toys, but I feel like if you want to collect this line, you almost have to find them carded. The reason for this is that the rubbery, sticky material they’re made of is prone to having dust and dirt latch onto them like crazy. I remember this being a problem when I had Tacky Stretchoid Warriors as a kid. I had fun for a couple of days with them, then they got dirty, and then I never wanted to touch them again. Chances are, once these things got dirty, they were tossed, unless you properly stored them in their “nose cones,” which have a suction cup on their back so you can stick them on the fridge and annoy your parents by keeping them in plain view. I think they were not meant to last, and that’s why they’re so incredibly difficult to find.

The back of the card introduces you to the six lovable Boogers characters!

Unfortunately, because all of my examples are carded, it’s going to be a little difficult to tell what the sculpts look like. The back of the card gives you some idea that these are all slimy creatures. For our benefit, each one has a little backstory.

Snotley Grue

Snotly Grue: The most famous rap star on Nose, he is very rich. Unfortunately for him, bacteria are not money on planet Earth.

Mukomoto

Mukomoto: From the Far Eastern part of Nose and thoroughly versed in all the nostil arts; “Muke” is the leader.

Sputo-jock: Sputo-ball is the most popular sport on Nose and this athlete is the best sputum pitcher on the planet.

Clem and Phlegm

Clem and Phlegm: Twin brothers, these jaundiced looking weaklings could really use a good infection to fatten up.

So there you go. You have a “rap star,” a martial artist, an athlete, and crazy twins…except they’re all boogers. Also, let’s face it, the color choice is a little disgusting. I understand that if they were all green that we wouldn’t be able to tell them apart, and sometimes, your sputum can come out in all different colors, but two of these characters are red. I don’t think that’s something you should be proud of in your toy line. You don’t want some impressionable youth to say to his or her parents, “Look! I made my boogies the same color as Sputo-jock!”

Boogers from the Planet Nose is a line that is almost too crazy to possibly exist, so of course it does. It is there to remind us that no matter how crazy a toy line aimed at children got, there was always a line that much weirder.

As some of you astute readers have probably already noticed, these toys are all on Canadian cards with text in both English and French. A collector friend of mine was able to find two on American cards, where instead of Grand Toys (a company that only releases toys in Canada), the toys were released by THQ, a company more known for video games. However, I almost feel like these toys were only sold in the Northern part of the United States. The friend who told me about them remembers them being sold in Spencer’s Gifts in the early 1990s. Since they used to carry awesome and oddball toys like this, that doesn’t surprise me.

So far, I’ve obtained four of the six. The last two I need are Gobby and Clotto. If you have carded examples of these figures, please let me know, as I would very much like to add them to my collection and share them with my readers. You might have to dig deep into your collection, but you may end up pulling out something very special…albeit very, very disgusting!

The post Boogers from the Planet Nose – An Actual (and Very Disgusting) Toy Line appeared first on The Collector Gene.

As a kid of the 1980s, I was inundated by product after product of all the various popular movies, television shows, and toys that a kid had to choose from in terms of entertainment. I didn’t have to see the movie Gremlins to know what Gizmo looked like. His adorable furry mug was plastered on a wide assortment of toys and plush dolls.

But Gizmo was a Mogwai. Those Gremlins (the creatures Mogwai transform into if they eat anything after midnight…I’m assuming Eastern Standard Time) terrified me. Ugly scales, sharp little teeth, evil red glaring eyes…to me, wet little monster puppets are far more realistic than anything anyone will ever be able to recreate with CGI these days. And because I was so exposed to entertainment as a kid, it was difficult for me to differentiate between reality and fantasy. So I knew that if I avoided watching either of the Gremlins movies, I wouldn’t have to fear them when the lights went out at night.

Here’s the thing: my fear of Gremlins is exactly what the filmmakers of the 1984 movie wanted me to experience. Not just anyone can create a piece of cinema where you can completely lose yourself in the moment even though you know that you’re watching puppets. As such, Gremlins holds up quite well today.

Several toy companies are churning out Gremlins collectibles in large quantities, and they’re all quite popular. In many cases, items that were released as collectibles in the last 15 years (as opposed to items contemporary to when the movies were released in 1984 and 1990) are quite a bit more valuable and desirable than their vintage counterparts.

However, my eyes have been focused on finding vintage Gremlins toys in the last couple of years, and there is some truly amazing merchandise that was made for the two movies. I would say a good 90-95% of the merchandise is based around Gizmo, and that makes a lot of sense, since he’s literally the cutest fictional character in a horror movie ever and easily marketable to children.

Today, I’m spotlighting a pair of plush toys that, as far as I can tell, were only available in the United Kingdom. It’s a set of plush dolls of Mohawk and Daffy, two of the evil Mogwai that were spawned when Gizmo gets wet in Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990) and the first Gremlins movie (1984), respectively. Like I said, the vast majority of Gremlins merchandise was based around Gizmo with a couple of items based on Stripe from the first film, so it’s nice to see Gremlins toys based on other Mogwai. There are an awful lot of plush Gremlins out there, so it’s not as though these are standouts, right?

Wait. Bear with me. It gets a whole lot better.

See, according to the rules established in the movies, if you feed a Mogwai after midnight, that’s when they transform into the titular Gremlins. Even though these are plush toys, you can pretend that these little guys got out of hand by literally pulling them inside out and exposing their true, horrific nature.

Yes, these plush toys are reversible, which allows you to transform Mohawk and Daffy back and forth between Mogwai and Gremlins. These. Are. INCREDIBLE. I was simply doing a search for vintage Gremlins toys on eBay and these popped up. I had no idea they existed. The auctions for the two plush dolls were both were in the United Kingdom, and as far as I can tell, every other example of these that I’ve been able to find has only been for sale over there, leading me to believe they’re an overseas exclusive. Much like the Japanese JUN Planning toys from the late 1990s, it seems like the best merchandise is never available in the market where it makes the most sense.

Plush toys are a tough call in the collecting world, since they’re not something that can easily be displayed on a shelf. However, once I knew these existed, I knew I had to own them, proper display space be damned. To my knowledge, they are the only transforming Gremlins toys ever made, and in this case, it makes perfect sense. The “action feature” of these toys is built around what happens to Mogwai in the films.

To my UK readers, be thankful that you have a pretty easy shot of getting these. For everyone else, time to add a saved search to eBay!

The post Reversible Plush Gremlins (Mohawk and Daffy) appeared first on The Collector Gene.

My pick of the week did not come from that flea market.

The flea market was a two-day show, and though I had the option of setting up both days, I decided against it, mostly because I’m really exhausted after just one day. Even though I was trying to take it easy the day after the show, I decided to hit a thrift store when I went out for lunch, and boy, am I glad that I did.

Bart prepares for a visit from his icon with Krusty (non-toxic) Kologne!

This is an animation cel featuring Bart Simpson. Specifically, it’s a cel from the classic Season 3 episode, “Like Father, Like Clown,” where Krusty the Clown is reunited with his estranged father, Rabbi Hyman Krustofski. In this very specific moment, Bart is using Krusty (non-toxic) Kologne in preparation of the dinner Krusty the Clown owed him for proving his innocence in an earlier episode.

The cel is hand-painted, but the background is laser-printed. However, the cel does have an official 20th Century Fox stamp, so while the background isn’t original, it was laser printed specifically to match this cel. Despite the fact that The Simpsons still looks the same today in 2013, traditional cel animation was replaced by digital ink and paint animation beginning with Season 14, which began in the fall of 2002. In other words, this form of animation has not been used in over a decade on The Simpsons, so you can’t buy this sort of thing for any episodes newer than 2002.

I’ve written about The Simpsons before, so it should come as no shock that I was ecstatic to find this in a local thrift store. Now, it wasn’t as though they were giving it away, but it was priced at a mere $25 and labeled “as is” because some of the white paint along the border of the frame was missing. I can replace the frame. I couldn’t replace this cel, but thankfully, it’s fine, and examples from seasons this early appear to be quite valuable and desirable if completed listings on eBay are to be believed.

This just goes to show that even when you go to a place where you know you’ll find amazing things, you really do have to keep your eyes constantly open and be prepared that something amazing could show up literally anywhere and when you’re least expecting it!

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