Vintage Monster Toy Catalog Pages

These images were most of the content of the Plaid Stallions Blog for the month of October 2006, I thought it would make a fun page grouping these cool 70's Monster knick knacks together.

Here's a king sized depressing fact, we almost got Monster Squad and Kids from C.A.P.E.R action figures! This page from an Ideal Toys catalog (borrowed from the Mego Museum) shows a series of six inch figures based on those Saturday morning series using what appears to be Evel Kneviel body.

I'd have killed for these figures as a kid, Monster Squad was one of my favourite shows. Very little merchandising was released (although I'll be featuring some this week). It's funny that they didn't make a figure of Fred Grandy's character (who seemed to serve the same role as Frank on Electra Woman, sit in the basement) but Mego would give him his due later.

Ok, wanting to punch John Travolta is perfectly understandable, especially if you've seen "Be Cool" but why would you want to punch Frank from the Monster Squad? He's a good guy!

Actually this is a piece of merch from the show I'd never heard about, the only thing I'd ever seen before was the Board Game.

Also, did you know that comedian Marty Allen was on Monster Squad? His site includes some rare pics from the series.

I'd never seen this Monster Bust set but I gotta say it's pretty sweet. I like the fact that replaced Dracula with the Creature from the Black Lagoon.

I wonder if most kids slathered on the testors red paint when putting these together? Most of the vintage kits I see with "little kid paint jobs" go nuts with the blood.......

I have a weird story about the Hasbro moving Monster Gun which projected pictures of Monsters on the wall. A school friend named Richard had one of these tucked in his closet. I was over at his house once and thought it was the coolest toy ever made. Richard seized the opportunity and said if i wanted to play with with it, I'd have to pay him, eventhough it was obvious he didn't care for it.

I contemplated just grabbing the gun and making a run for it but Richard's parents lived in the middle of nowhere. Needless to say, our friendship dissolved.

Concepts like this copycast make your own monster factory really appealed to me as a kid, I was just missing two things to really make them work, skill and patience. I'd have become Homer Simpson working on that thing......

I love this Wards catalog spread, what could be cooler than the Mego Worlds Greatest Superheroes kicking the crap out of the Lincoln Monsters? Look how Shazam just pushes the Lincoln Mummy aside. Despite being kind of Dime store, the Lincoln Monsters were distributed by Galoob for a while so they got some cool catalog representation.

The Mego Mad Monsters are some of the best known Monster toys of the seventies and the story of their inception is kind of interesting.

Mego was scooping up licenses like crazy in the mid seventies but according to Neal Kublan, Universal wanted too much money for the rights to produce monster dolls (Rival AHI scooped up the rights and produced 8" Monsters of their own). So Mego produced generic monsters to keep the retail space.

Despite the limitations, the Mad Monsters have a wonderful charm to them, Frankenstein has bolts in his forehead, the Wolfman looks a lot like he stepped out of a Grimm fairy tale. The figure's eyes and hands glow in the dark, mine still do to this day.

The absolute bomb is the Mad Monster Castle however, a fantastic backdrop for your Mad Monster figures and the lab even has an eyechart because 20/20 vision is important to the undead......

For more information check out the Mego Museum Mad Monsters Gallery

I absolutely love the Remco 3 3/4" Universal Mini Monster figures, they are just so perfectly functional. The campy copywriting in this JC Penney page is also a nice touch.

Remco cleverly recycled the carrying case/playset in their Sgt. Rock line a couple of years later (I just bought one, it rocks!). There was also a really cool Monsterizer playset, that is a must own.

Why don't I own these?

In addition to the mini monsters, Remco did these styling 9 inch Mego like Monster figures. In my personal opinion, these are almost some of the coolest Monster figures ever made, almost.

Two things keep them from greatness, the first thing is the glow in the dark plastic really obscures Ken Sheller's amazing sculpts, all of the monsters (Save for the rather generic Dracula) have beautiful likeness to the original actor.

The second thing are the bodies, Remco included a squeezing action feature that allows the figures to "hug" things, it kind of limited play value

Still, it's a really nice line and the monsterizer is one of the best play sets ever made, look at that thing! Remco also made a Phantom and Creature from the Black Lagoon a year later, they are the best figures in the series and of course, near impossible to find........

Thirsty for More Monster Toys? check out some other galleries here that are bloody good...

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