I don’t know who these people are.  Random family photos like this turn up in my possession all the time.  Clearly this is an important meal, and judging by the gigantic turkey on the table, I’m going to assume it’s Thanksgiving sometime in the late 1930’s or early 1940’s.  I wonder why Norman Rockwell didn’t paint this family scene; it’s Americana at its finest.  Please note as well the stacks of plain white bread prominently displayed on the table.  Where are the Pillsbury Crescent Rolls?  You may laugh, but a buttered piece of white bread was usually an accompaniment to my holiday feasts as a child in the 1950’s, too.  We can only imagine the scintillating conversation going on here based on on the lone man at the table who is about to doze off.  That’s the great fun of collecting old photos.  You try to imagine who these people were and the kind of lives they led.  One thing I can’t figure out, though.  Why was this photo blown up to a gigantic 11 by 14 size?

HAPPY THANKSGIVING FROM ALL OF US AT COLLECTORGENE!

Collecting enriches our lives, and we are very thankful for that.

The post We Gather Together…A Vintage Thanksgiving Feast Photo appeared first on The Collector Gene.

It seems as though every Happy Meal toy is a promotional tool used to get children to beg their parents to see the latest computer animated theatrical release or buy them the latest Mattel ™ toys. However, it wasn’t always like this. McDonald’s use to come up with their own ideas all the time so that kids would be sold on their love for Ronald McDonald and his friends at an early age.

The best promotion by far had nothing to do with Ronald and the gang. Instead, it had to do with transforming things, which was an inevitable recipe for success for toys in the 1980s. McDonald’s released Changeables, a series of robots disguised as your favorite McDonald’s meals. Sure, like all Happy Meal toys, they weren’t QUITE as good as their expensive, branded counterparts, but for FREE toys, they were amazing. We hadn’t seen anything quite like them. A hot cakes box and a French fry container transforming into robots?

Courtesy of neogaf.com

Who would have thought that you could have food containers transforming into awesome robots?

The Japanese. That’s who.

Yes, if you grew up in Japan in the mid-1980s, you had us Americans beat by a couple of years when it came to the transforming food objects market. That’s because if you grew up in Japan, you might have owned Telecoma toys!

This amazing artwork let's you know about the eternal food war going on in Japanese supermarkets.

These toys, affectionately known by American collectors as “Canned Food Fighters,” take containers of popular branded foods and meals in Japan and turn them into an army of food fightin’ warriors! Unlike Food Fighters, which definitely took their inspiration from the American military, Telecoma figures were more akin to Kinnikuman or M.U.S.C.L.E., where a wide variety of characters settled their differences in a stadium for mealtime dominance!

What I love about the toys is that they actually use real food products on their labels. When McDonald’s made Changeables, they didn’t have to worry about licensing their own food. With Telecoma, this was more like Computer Warriors using a Pepsi can in their toy line or Monster in my Pocket featuring Tony the Tiger, except on a much grander scale. The Pepsi can is certainly the most recognizable design for us Americans.

While most of what I write about it something that I know quite a bit about and feel the need to get the info out on the Internet, I can’t say that I know a whole lot about Telecoma other than they exist. My collection is rather small, and all of it has come courtesy of a series of Japanese online auctions. I learned about the line through the Little Rubber Guys message board and decided I would see what was out there.

These characters all resemble cans...

...and these are more bowl-based characters.

Two of the sets that I have fall into the “keshi” or little rubber guy category. I’m guessing one boxed set is one faction and the other contains the guys they fight with or something. They are packaged very similarly to most kinkeshi lines of the era. I don’t know if these two boxed sets represent a complete set of figures or not, but it must put me pretty darned close.

The third boxed set I own is a deluxe set of sorts. In addition to containing a handful of the kinkeshi figures, it also contains two of the transforming figures that are very similar to the way McDonald’s constructed its Changeables line.

These figures came in the above boxed set.

There is a whole line of these figures numbering almost as many as the keshi line, and I have seen a transforming shopping cart vehicle, which as you can imagine is amazing. This deluxe set comes with a wrestling ring, which is not quite as amazing as a transforming shopping cart.

Now, some of you might say, “Wait a second, Ben, I’m pretty sure I had these figures as a kid, and I never lived in Japan!” And you know what? You’re absolutely right.

Though I own one of these, this image comes from dinosaurdracula.com!

This is a card that would have been placed in a grocery store vending machine. As you can plainly see, the designs of these characters come right from Telecoma. Several collectors have documented finding these figures in a wide variety of colors, and a few of them have found examples with the stickers still attached, which feature more recognizable American food brands on them. Sadly, I have not stumbled upon any examples of Telecoma knock-offs at any flea markets in the couple of years that I’ve been on the lookout for them, but they are definitely out there.

While Telecoma has a much richer universe than the McDonald’s Changeables, it’s funny to see how East and West developed what is essentially the same idea. Throw in Food Fighters to the mix, and there’s no question that kids will never get tired of playing with their food.

The post Telecoma Canned Food Fighters by Takara (Yet More Mealtime Combat) 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.

I think virtually every other review on the internet describes these toys as “somewhat obscure.” To that I say: really?!? Every kid in my class at school knew what Food Fighters were! Sure, they lacked the obligatory TV show or comic book to tie-in with the toy line that most 1980s action figure lines had, but they had an incredible commercial showing claymation versions of these anthropomorphic snacks duking it out in the kitchen.

How do I know that commercial resonated with kids in my age bracket? When I was in sixth grade in about 1996, a few years after Food Fighters had disappeared from store shelves, one of my teachers showed us a video of tricks that commercials used to get you to buy things, and they spent a lot of time talking about how awful the Food Fighters commercial was because they showed the characters flying around the kitchen and talking and walking around despite the fact that the toys didn’t actually do any of those things…except when a kid had them and used his or her IMAGINATION which is the basic premise behind all toys throughout all of human existence. Even though that video/time-waster gave us kids a “behind the scenes” look at how the commercial was trying to deceive us all, when those Food Fighters came on screen, every boy in the class collectively yelled, “I remember those! They were awesome!”

I feel like the “obscure” part comes from the fact that it’s a toy line that only lasted one year and it was released in the LATE 1980s as opposed to what many consider to be the golden era of action figures in the early and mid-1980s, so collectors who think Food Fighters are awesome today may have been too old for these toys in 1988. However, there is one part to the toy line that is definitely obscure, and that’s a set of four variation figures, which is what’s for dinner in today’s Collector Gene entry.

These variants are newer versions of existing figures. What’s great about these color variants is that they actually make perfect sense for the toy line. Instead of maple syrup, Short Stack was covered in blueberry syrup.

(L to R) Maple Syrup Short Stack, Blueberry Short Stack

Instead of chocolate ice cream, Sergeant Scoop was made of orange sherbet.

(L to R) Chocolate Sergeant Scoop, Sherbet Sergeant Scoop

Chip the Ripper went from a chocolate chip cookie to a chocolate cookie with macadamia nuts.

(L to R) Chocolate Chip Chip the Ripper, Chocolate and Macadamia Nut Chip the Ripper

Finally, you could get your Major Munch with either a chocolate glaze or a cherry glaze.

(L to R) Chocolate Glaze Major Munch, Cherry Glaze Major Munch

It would have been tough to make similar variants for the rest of the line, especially considering the fact that these repaints worked with the original sculpts, but I think for these four characters in particular, the variations make sense. However, when it comes to tracking them down today, if you want blueberry Short Stack, sherbet Sergeant Scoop, chocolate and macadamia Chip the Ripper, or cherry Major Munch, you have quite the mission ahead of you, as those four variants are much harder to find than their original counterparts.

When I was a kid, I never remember seeing these variations, and like most people, I only discovered them through eBay. However, whenever I would see one of these variations, the variant figures would almost always be listed in an auction coming from somewhere in Europe. Now, of course, with online auctions having been in existence for years now, quite a few examples of these figures can be found in the states, but it seemed like if I wanted a better chance at finding the four aforementioned figures, I would check European auctions. This French version of the Food Fighters commercial, which shows the variations at the end, helps back up my theory that they were primarily released in Europe.

Behold! A French Food Fighters commercial!

However, you can see on my carded versions of these toys that they all came from a department store called Hills, which used to have locations spread throughout the mid-Atlantic and the mid-west, as well as a few other states. All of these examples were discounted. It’s possible that these figures could have been a closeout deal where a large order had to be filled, and so the store ended up receiving the rarer second assortment that contained the four variations. It’s proof that these particular examples were indeed sold in the United States. While price tags do affect the value of toys, I always enjoy seeing them because they provide us with a history of where the toy came from and how much was paid for it at retail.

Food Fighters as a whole are not too rare, but it’s nearly impossible to find loose examples with the tiny generic backpacks and guns that came with them. Their popularity has also swelled in recent years by collectors who appreciate some of the more non-traditional action figures that are available. These variants do show up with some regularity, but they are quite desirable by collectors today, especially since I still firmly believe these four particular figures did not see wide distribution in the United States. This is one case where picking the right flavor could be a very important decision for your collection!

The post Mattel’s Food Fighters Variations – Now in Four Exciting New Flavors! appeared first on The Collector Gene.