Cylon Day!
Yay, it’s Cylon day, not the sexy Cylons of recent times but the old school kind (which if you find them sexy, I guess that’s ok). First off is the new Cylon Trading card, (#21 for anybody counting) I never had these 12″ electronic figures but they make for a more interesting card then the 3″ figures, so there you go.
Even as a kid I found this figure kind of off model, it’s because it’s a recycled “Captain Lazer” from the 1960s “Major Matt Mason” line of toys. The Colonial Warrior from this line even has the Captain’s head (and white hair presumably to make him look like Lorne Green?)
Here is the Original Commercial for these guys which is, of course, from our DVD 70s Toy Explosion Volume 2 [/plug]
Sadly, this was a piece of crap.
Those gun attachments and scanners did not last because the Cylon itself was not balanced, so when it would fall over, they easily would break off. And try to get the eye to scan without popping off the chest plate at the same time…
…Maskatron – without his limbs or head – still kicked butt on this TV tie-in travesty.
It used to bug me that these were off model as well, glad I wasn’t the only picky kid around… I still wanted one though, crap or not.
oops, forgot…That card is SWEET!
Iused to love playing with those guys. The weapons were long-gone and the battery-operated action features didn’t work, but that never stopped me. :p
…A little back history on this line of toys:
1) Mattel had to come up with the line on very short notice, and at the time only had a few promotional stills to work with, with none of the actors cast for the role in costume. They knew Lorne Greene had been cast as "Adama", but that was about it.
2) Due to the short time to market, they decided to recycle1e the "Captain Lazer" doll into the generic "Cylon" and "Colonial Warrior" figures. There were two "Lazer" molds that were retooled, which means that if Mattel finally listened to all the bitching and decided to do a "retro" Major Matt Mason set for the collector's market, they'd have to tool up new molds from an old "Lazer" figure, much in the same way Polar Lights and Moebius had to rejig a bunch of the old Aurora kits whose molds were destroyed in the infamous train wreck.
3) Note that the 3.5" inaction figures didn't hit the shelves until after the show was well on the air. Again, this was due to Mattel having AbZero lead time and reference materials. By the time they got the product on the shelves, the first season was almost into reruns, and the expectations that the figures would sell well when the 2nd season started were, of course, trounced when ABC got cold feet and cancelled the series despite still being in the top 25 for the entire year.
4) There were no "Athena" or "Cassiopea" figures because someone at Mattel marketing claimed that "Boys will never buy action figures of girls!" Guess nobody talked to Hasbro about the "Scarlett" GI-Joe figure, eh?
5) And as quite a few people reading this site alreaedy know, Mattel *did* prototype an almost 3" long "Galactica" toy, complete with rubber-band launched Vipers. However, despite marketing assurance the toy would sell like hotcakes that Christnukkah despite the $80.00 USD circa 1978 price tag, the entire toy line was cancelled the day ABC pulled the plug on the show.
Yeah the network really dropped the ball on that one, apparently they hastily tried to bring the show back, but none of the actors where available, thus we got Galactica:1980.