Toy Fair Archives - PS

GI Joe at Australian Toy Fair

Mantooth — Wed, 12 Jun 2019 13:11:00 +0000

Crude little photos like this one from the Kenbrite booth at the 1974 Australian Toy Fair are gold to me, a little glimpse into how our childhood friends were marketed. I have a few more shots that I’ll share soon.

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ERTL Star Trek 3 Klingon Prototype Found!

Mantooth — Fri, 30 Nov 2018 05:00:00 +0000

I’ve talked about the ERTL Star Trek 3 figures before and I especially love this press photo of the handmade mockups. While the Kirk, Spock and Scottie are obviously repainted Mego The Motion Picture figures, I always wondered what the Klingon figure was.

Well, today I got that answer, more after the jump:

Recently I got an email from a collector named Nick, who bought a large collection, well I’ll let him explain.

“I acquired this via an extremely large carded Star Wars collection and it was randomly in there. I admittingly know very little about Star Trek toys but I could tell it was a Klingon of some sort. The guy I bought the collection from was selling it for a friend of his who has dementia and needed money for hospital bills.

The collection of Star Wars figures I noticed were clearly accumulated during the 80s by this one collector because almost all of them had price stickers from a department store called “Long’s.” So it wasn’t a pieced together collection…he was buying them as they were coming out in the 80s. After some research, I found out that the department store chain was located in Iowa.

So, when I finally got around to figuring out what the Klingon figure was I was perplexed. I couldn’t find anything online about it. Luckily I have some friends who could help. They pointed out that it looked like a mock-up for the ERTL line from the 80s. Then bam, I came across the photo on your site of the vintage ToyFair pic. Ans then read ERTL was based in Iowa. And then when I saw the glue on the feet, it pretty much sealed the deal. I knew it was that exact figure.

I’m trying to gather more information from the person I bought it from but so far it’s a roadblock. But somehow this collector got his hands on it in Iowa in the 1980s (likely). “

There is the glue that is so prominent in the black and white shot in the picture.

You can see a colour shot of the figure in the 1984 ERTL catalog here.

You can totally see the Kenner roots of this mock up, pretty sure those are biker scout legs.

Thanks to Nick for sharing this awesome find.

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Get the expanded digital edition of Rack Toys here.

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Giant Sized Fisher Price Sesame Street Clubhouse

Mantooth — Tue, 08 Sep 2015 13:55:00 +0000

In1977, Fisher Price promoted the Little People Sesame Street Clubhouse by creating a gigantice model of it.

The happy memories I had playing with this toy are only slightly shadowed by the original Sesame Street set by FP. I look at this thing and it cheers me up, always will.

I need to know if this still exists somewhere, come on interwebs do your magic, we tracked down Oscar Goldman’s Briefcase in minutes, let’s do this! Also, I’m less than two hours away, if this is in somebody’s garage or attic, I would kill to come photograph it. Seriously, look at that giant Bert!

More Fisher Price Little People:

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Gordon’s Alive! @ BifBangPow!

Mantooth — Fri, 13 Feb 2015 20:38:00 +0000

For me the most anticipated thing at Toy Fair 2015 was how the 3 3/4″ Flash Gordon line was going to turn out. I was elated to see BifBangPow had released this teaser image of the line a day early.

They’ve really taken that retro feel and ran with it IMO, making some gorgeous figures that really look like the actors yet still feel at home next to my Star Wars and Buck Rogers.

This is going to be a pricey year.

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