Empire Toys Helicopters
I get a lot of confused emails about the Empire Toys brand of Helicopter, for those not in the know Empire made licensed helicopters and vans for properties like CHiPs and Spiderman. It was all kind “wink, wink put your Mego dolls in here” or in the case of the Six Million Dollar man, they didn’t even get the licensing but the guy on one of the boxs looked a lot like Lee Majors.
I’ve got the 1979 Empire Catalog on the site, where you can see the silly Hulk Helicopter and Megolike has a great gallery of Empire’s vehicles.
I didn't know about these when I was a kid, but apparently tons of others did. And the confusion over this being a Mego product continues to this day. It rally shows the influence of Mego over the boys' toy aisle at that time.
Empire's CHiP's van reminds me a bit of Cooper Halloween costumes with Erik Estrada's mug plastered on the door. I would have hated that as a kid as much as I thought it was silly to have your name or the character's face on the chest of my vinyl one-sie.
Ha ha. I had the plain "Emergency" van. It came with these weird Paramedic figures. One looked like John Waters.