Unidentified Found Objects: The Immortal Arcade Prize Spaceships

I have already said plenty on this blog about "generic" toys, and the common theme has been how durable they are. On reflection, it is really a paradox. Some such toys appear and quickly fade away, while others go on literally for generations, With this post, I have finally reached an example I have literally spent most of my life tracking. This is a line of spaceships usually found as arcade prizes, capsule toys, and other rewards for kids, which has been added to and subtracted from but seemingly never allowed to die out. I have found examples in arcades, pizza joints and on the ground, in elementary school, in middle school, in college and beyond. Here are shots of what I consider the "core" group:

The first of the lot that I acquired is one on the far left of the top photo above, and different enough that I think it originated separately. I believe I picked up this one sometime in the late 1980s, though I have no specific recollection of getting it. It may have been a reward in school, or I might have gotten it in an arcade. It's most noteworthy for having a fairly definite scale, thanks to a visible seat, though that didn't stop me from assuming it was larger if the adventure involved a relatively large crew (typically a Galaxy Laser Team astronaut and a couple Rogun Robots). It is also fairly crude, to the point that most of the bottom is without detail. Here's a photo of it with some latter-day copies.

For the rest of the group, I began acquiring them in the early to mid 1990s, and I have no doubt they were around well before that. Their common origin is proven by a mark or logo that says "Rigo", presumably the name of a company which I personally have had no luck finding further information on. Here are closeups of three I picked up around 1994.

After acquiring these, I quickly gave them designations. I thought of the purple one simply as a cruiser, and assumed a similar role for the saucer. I thought of the triangular one as a bomber, which it really resembles more than a spacecraft, but made it serve as an exploration ship. From much later research, the saucer and bomber were based on another odd little line called Diener Space Raiders, which will get their own installment sooner or later. The group got mixed in with Star Wars Micro Machines, and I didn't give them a lot of further thought. Then, while I was finishing my undergrad degree in 2005, I ran across more in the prize bins of a pizza place, all made from a quite flexible transparent rubber material, and quickly won enough tickets to get the ones I knew I didn't have. Here's another view of the ones I acquired then.

I already introduced two of these three in my review of Message From Space, which I now know they were copied from directly enough to qualify as knockoffs. I immediately thought of them as a fighter, a troop transport, and either a bomber or another cruiser-scale ship. At the time, I suspected the middle ship was based on the drop ship from Aliens, while the horseshoe-shaped ship bore a fair resemblance to the Reliant from Wrath of Kahn. (Curiously, it also resembles a Lenticular Reentry Vehicle concept fielded in the 1960s.) Unfortunately, I did not consider picking up duplicates of the ones I had before, and can no longer remember for sure which ones were available. Here's more views of the horseshoe ship.

Fast forward further, and the ships were still with me. I made one more addition when I found the triangular bomber lying on the ground. However, I chose to carry it with me instead of stowing it with my collections, and soon found it broken. Then, around 2013, I started giving some thought to the possibilities of a "retro" science fiction project, and in the process learned a lot more about the toys I had lying around. Soon, I made a double score: I bought a reissue of Galaxy Laser Team, and I found that the prize ships could be bought in 144-count bags online from Rhode Island Novelty Co. The latter was, of course, the source of every ship I have not otherwise marked as vintage.

I have to say that finally having a set of ships that weren't won piecemeal was underwhelming. To begin with, the cruiser and the bomber were simply gone, while the ships that filled out the lot were ones I recognized as copies of other ships (including some more I will be getting to later). I also found the plastic different and in some ways inferior, though not in ways that easily show in photos. But this was more than made up for by having a large sample of consistent age and origin. I have spent plenty of time since then experimenting with ways to display the ships, and I still have ideas for working a few into  fiction. And the punchline is, anyone at all interested can still buy your own bag!

Having come this far, I can see this is all a bit meandering, and it still may feel like I'm leaving it incomplete. But it's the story of a phenomenon that has literally spanned decades, and I will certainly be telling more later. For now, I will post this as a series of snapshots, the same as any memory.

Another short link list, here's a page for Space Raiders at 2 Warps to Neptune, and a video on these and other "generic" ships from Space Trucks/ Steve Nyland.

Space 1979: The one where a starship crew is wiped out by a pregnant lady

Title: Inseminoid/ Horror Planet

What Year?: 1979 (pre production/ 1981 (release)

Classification: Runnerup/ Evil Twin

Rating: Dear God WHY??!!

Last time, I introduced this feature as an overview of "ripoffs" and runnerups of 1970s-1980s science fiction, and I'm following up with the movie that did more than any other to give me the idea. If one movie drew more knockoffs, ripoffs and less classifiable runnerups than Star Wars, it was Alien. The present selection is easily the most egregious example of them all, and in a further hallmark of the "runnerup", it was less like a direct imitation than an evil twin. Its title (not withstanding the poster) is Inseminoid, and the first clue we're in for a rough ride is that the title is... You know what, I'm not repeating it if I don't have to, even for a joke.

The story opens with a crew of space explorers landing on a planet to investigate the mysterious ruins of a vanished alien civilization. After a madness-inducing crystal triggers the deaths of two crew members in an impressively grisly opening sequence, a man and a woman named Sandy go back to the ruins without supervision. A mysterious figure suddenly attacks (and then disappears for the rest of the movie), leaving the man dead and Sandy traumatized by visions of a gruesome alien and a giant glass pipette of unpleasant fluids and solids. A doctor's examination reveals that she is pregnant with an unknown organism, and she soon becomes protective of her unborn offspring and homicidal toward the surviving crew. After the captain gives an offensively sensible order for everyone to remain locked in their quarters, the expedition members venture out to engage and contain the hostile and increasingly ravenous expectant mother before she can give birth. It will not be a spoiler to say things go downhill from there.

There are really just two things that make this movie of interest. First, the film makers credibly maintained the script was created months before Alien reached theatres, though various developments delayed its release until 1981. Second, for all the notoriety and debate, the two films really have very little in common outside of a shared pool of Freudian subtexts, which Inseminoid (funghh) turns into a giant neon sign.  It is worth further note that the level of gore is remarkably tame, even allowing for significant censorship, to the point that the movie might conceivably have been rated PG if not for certain scenes of nudity. Several of most bizarre and brutal moments are advertised by little more than the image of Sandy getting ready to chow down.

Something else I will mention is that this movie has been like a black hole in my memory. Usually, my ability to remember movies is like the world's worst super power, but this one has (probably mercifully) eluded me. I watched it, not for the first time, no more than a few months before I went through it again for this review, but still went in with fewer recollections than for movies I had seen on TV in the 1990s (ironically including The Black Hole). It has also escaped my usual preference for physical media. Purists will say that movies can only be appreciated in theatres, but I maintain Inseminoid was made to be viewed as a sketchy video streamed on an outdated laptop

With all that out of the way, there isn't much left to be said of the actual movie. Its individual parts are generally unremarkable and still in many ways better than the whole. Early exposition about the alien culture is particularly tone deaf, with a quite common mythological theme being mentioned dramatically just to foreshadow it as a plot point. Once Sandy's rampage starts, most of the characters quickly prove cowardly as well as incompetent. The one well-executed sequence has her facing off with a male crewmate in a spacesuit, who trying to evade her by retreating out an air lock. Naturally, she adapts to the alien atmosphere, and the following rout is the most violent (and explicitly sexualized) of her assaults. The inevitable birth scene follows shortly after, and it is effective enough to be painful to watch and hear. Unfortunately, the plot becomes even more predictable with the alien progeny in play, down to the arrival of a rescue party to clean up the scene.

Then there is one more thing that has really kept this particular movie in my mind. Fast forward to 2013, Ripley Scott makes Prometheus. In itself, it was an unremarkable if especially convoluted prequel, which I personally didn't even bother to watch when I bought it as part of a DVD multipack. But when I did get to it, my first and foremost thought was that it had more story points in common with Inseminoid than either ever did with Alien. Here, we see ruins of a civilization instead of a derelict ship, a scientific expedition rather than passing space truckers, and an explicit impregnation of a woman as opposed to a man. Then it all builds to my foremost piece of evidence, the "birth" of the trilobite-creature by a frantic C-section. This is the full circle of pop culture, when a prequel to a good movie comes closer to remaking a bad one.

For links, here's an Introduction to this series.

Unidentified Found Objects: The Spiff Ship!

It's time for another feature, and this is another one I've had backlogged for a very long time. This time I will be covering another breed of space toy, the "generic" space ship. They might be too small for action figures or even army men, but they could still get the heroic space explorer to his destination, and whatever mysteries the hero discovered would never be as great as that of where they came from. These are the toys that I personally held onto longest, and this is the tale of the one that got away.

My first sighting of this item probably happened sometime in 1988. The real backstory is that I was an utterly devoted and obsessive fan of Calvin And Hobbes. I especially loved the brief (and usually grim) adventures of Spaceman Spiff, which I now know to be older than Calvin himself. I got to thinking that I wanted a toy like Spaceman Spiff's ship. Then, one day at school, on a prize table my teachers set up, I saw a toy that looked exactly like the ship. It turned out to be a friction toy, the kind with a little motor that made it zip along if you pulled it back. I had to save up for it, but they set it aside for me, allowing me to get fixated on it well before I could play with it. I finally took it home, and I'm sure I played with it plenty, in part because I recall a time when I wanted to take it to the pool. My solution was to take out the motor, which didn't seem difficult at the time. Of course, some time after that, the toy disappeared, but I remembered.

Fast forward to the age of the internet, and I spent well over a decade searching here and there, now and then, for something like my ship. I found plenty of toys like it, mainly much older "tin toys" that I am now sure must have inspired the comic strip spaceship. I picked up a reissue model kit that I discovered was used in Plan 9 From Outer Space. I even found a model kit for the Calvin And Hobbes ship, but that wasn't my style. But then, in one of my recent online auction binges, I found the two items shown above, one from the US and one from a seller in the UK, and ended up getting both of them. Here's pics of the first one to arrive. 

On receiving this item, I very quickly decided to remove it from its package and remove the oversized, peeling sticker, because I certainly wasn't going to sell the toy and they literally disgusted me. On examination, I discovered it had a sparking mechanism, something I have no recollection of on my old toy. That proved to work, though the motor won't move it an inch. I had no trouble believing a kid could remove the motor with bare hands, in part because a piece of a wheel housing was rattling around inside the toy when I took it out of the package. There were enough things I didn't remember that, especially the patterning on the top surface, I might still convince myself that the toy I had was a copy or imitation. However, the only things I remember being different were that the missiles and engines were white instead of clear orange and that the sticker was much smaller with some kind of number, and the second one (received just a few days before this writing) had both.

Meanwhile, I found out enough about the toy for it to feel anticlimactic. It was made by a company named Blue Box, whose products appear to have been sold mainly in the UK and/or Europe, as part of a series that also included alleged tie ins to the show Blake's Seven. All known copyright dates are from 1978, though it is suggested at least some were made earlier and they were made and sold well into the 1980s. The one I opened was sold in the US with the name and logo Zee Toys, but the only markings on the toy itself are from Blue Box. The US card had a printed back that showed more toys, also identical to Blue Box offerings. Here's a pic of the other side:

As for availability today, anyone who doesn't remember playing with one of these things probably isn't going to pay what it takes to get one. In my own searching, I found exactly one other one on sale loose, which ironically would have cost more than either of those I bought on card, especially after shipping.  Given how flimsy they have already proven, this might easily reflect the realities of preservation. If you're a Calvin and Hobbes fan, you can better honor the strip by getting one of the vintage tin toys.

As for me, this has been my holy grail, and I still don't know how I feel about finally finding it. The one I just received is certainly staying as it is, as the card is far to charming for even me to damage, though it might or might not stay with me. The other will be staying on my desk, as another reminder of where I've been and where I've come.

For the links, most the ones I can offer are going to a blog called Moonbase Central, particularly posts covering the Blake's Seven tie in and an HP friction toy of similar design. I have chosen not to link to certain pages for models based directly on Calvin and Hobbes/ Spaceman Spiff, which are certainly out there. You can check out this video from Space Trucks/ Steve Nyland about what I believe to be a version of the Blake's Seven ship design, by his report released somewhat earlier.

See also my last post reviewing Message From Space, which includes a preview of material to come in this feature.

Space 1979: The one where Star Wars got ripped off by the culture Star Wars ripped off

Title: Message From Space

What Year?: 1978

Classification: Ripoff

Rating: What the Hell???

It's time for something different on this blog, enough so that I shelved another post in progress to make room for it. This time, we'll be looking at movies, and not just any movies, but what I will term the "runner up", the films so similar to a higher-budget and more profitable one that most rightly or wrongly accused it of being a ripoff. More specifically, we will be looking at the bumper crop of such entries that plagued the science fiction/ fantasy genre in the late 1970s and 1980s, when the landscape was reshaped not only by Star Wars but the likes of Logan's Run, Alien, E.T and Conan the Barbarian. The most definitive feature of these nominal "ripoffs" is that they are as self-dating as their betters are timeless, to the point that an entirely disinterested observer might assume that they were the older of the two. No offender is more egregious in this and any other respect than the present offering, Message From Space.

For the purposes of this feature, I plan to keep commentary on actual plot and story to a minimum, and for this one, that approach is in all likelihood the only way to keep a review manageable, comprehensible or remotely sand. Very briefly, the opening finds a race conquered by an evil interstellar empire, with their very planet turned into a giant war machine. They use their arts to send eight seeds into space to summon heroes to avenge them, while the mobile planet hurtles toward Earth. The space seeds find their way to an impressive assortment of misfits, including an unbelievably irritating pair of rocket drag racers, an even dumber but mildly entertaining young heiress trying to become a daredevil, and a general who has resigned his commission after giving a military funeral to a robot. After more hijinks, quarrels, betrayals and space chase/ battle sequences than anyone could keep track of, the surviving heroes go on a daring mission to rescue the remaining natives and fly inside the empire's base to destroy it from within.

The most interesting thing about this film is that it was made in 1978, among the very earliest Star Wars ripoffs/ knockoffs, close enough that the film makers could have gotten a benefit of a doubt if they had laid claim to an earlier origin of the project. It also copies other Japanese films as egregiously as it does Star Wars, which from what is now known about Lucas's influences makes it feel less like a ripoff than a rebuttal. On this vein, the movie allows a grim tone that was largely suppressed from the original trilogy, complete with several kamikaze-style attacks. The dark overtones are heaviest with the character arc of the general, played by Vic Morrow, who manages to get convincing weariness out of a performance that could just as well be that of an actor wishing he could have gotten any other role. His high point is surely a completely surreal duel with a minion of the emperor, played out with a disconcerting combination of pathos, tension and possibly intentional humor.

But the one thing no discussion can avoid is the spaceship effect sequences, and the strangest part is how anachronistic they are. On one hand, the concepts and execution repeatedly prove more ambitious than the original Star Wars, to the point that they seem instead to anticipate the sequels then unmade, particularly the asteroid-belt chase in Empire and the flight into the Death Star core in Return of the Jedi. On the other, the feel and grain of the effects footage is so strangely dated that it literally looks like it could have been shot in the 1960s.

The high point by any standard is the aforementioned finale, in which the hot rodders race a trio of enemy fighters through a maze of tunnels leading to the main reactor (er, "furnace") of the empire's battle planet. The enclosed spaces are convincingly claustrophobic, while the opposition is reasonably competent. As a bonus, the villains prove to have had the foresight to put in several doors to block the tunnel, leading to a quite clever three-way showdown between the heroes, a final fighter and a lowering door. Of course, it all ends with a series of explosions that destroy the enemy base, with a final touch of melodrama as the last of its original inhabitants race to escape.

Ironically, the one thing where this movie inarguably matched Star Wars was in selling toys. A number of toys and models were released in Japan, which now sell for preposterous amounts when they turn up in US markets. The most elaborate found its way to the west as an especially incongruous entry in the Shogun Warriors line, consisting of the Millennium Falcon Liabe and two detachable hotrod ships. In a final twist, versions of the Liabe and one of the hotrods found their way into an immortal line of arcade-prize toys currently sold by Rhode Island Novelty Co. I had an assortment of these ships for ages before I realized what they were based on a chance sighting of a pic of one of the Japanese originals, ultimately a major reason I looked up the movie. Here's a pic of the pair, which should be covered in far more detail sooner or later.

If all of this sounds like an attempt to put the film in the most favorable light possible, it's because the final verdict remains unavoidable: Even with the most generous allowances for a movie made in another time and a very different culture, this movie is simply and absolutely terrible, and the nails in its coffin are not the inferior effects but the convoluted story, mostly unlikable characters and especially the unspeakable leading actors (apart from Morrow, who can barely be counted based on screen time). Yet, it has enough energy to be entertaining at first viewing, and creative enough to remain intriguing on further review. There are by all means better "runner ups" to Star Wars, including several I will certainly get to, but no this is the one that is essential for any overview. Not that you have to look forward to it.

For links, here's my own most direct introduction to the film, a review video by Cinemassacre's Mike Matei. And here's a link for an Introduction to this series.

Giant Robot Review: Bird Knight Griffin Thingie Non-Transforming Transformer

This time, I'm coming back with a feature I had debated whether continue at all after introducing Retrobots Review. I decided to bring it back because the "giant robot" is a concept that goes beyond time. The toys that established the genre (especially in the 1980s) might be "retro" now, but they are still in the same tradition as much later items. And few examples are more egregious than the specimen under consideration here. Here's more pics with the Truckstop Queen, her boyfriend Ken and the Lido army guy.

I picked up this guy very early this year, and this time around I had no trouble at all finding a provenance. He had very bad wear on his various points of articulation, a problem that would loom very large in subsequent investigations, but evidently intact and clearly robust in overall construction. The toy was made in 1984 by a company called Zima (no apparent relation), and by some accounts sold through Sears. It was given the name Transposer, and evidently sold in enough numbers that specimens still in the box can be found in the $20-50 range. Photos show that it was sold two different color schemes, with further evidence of one other bot sold in Japan.

Now, so far this may seem an unremarkable 1980s bot, with a Shogun Warriors influence that would have been a bit retro even then. But this was sold as a transforming toy, at the same time Transformers and Gobots were hitting US markets, and that is where things get weird and ugly. To start with, there is a strange trapdoor in the back to move the head, along with a pair of wings that get in the way even more than might be expected. (These were the parts where the joints were completely shot.) If you fiddle just right, the knight's head drops out of sight and the figure becomes a kind of bird-headed hunchback.

I have no idea what this bit is for.

"Him belong dead."

But this is clearly just preparation for a greater transformation, and that is where even pics of the original box won't help. The knees are double-jointed, while the feet fold, so the figure can drop into a pose that could pass as a griffin.

But, you are surely saying, this can't really be it? Surely, there is something more? Well, even the box doesn't show an intended final "alt mode", let alone how to get there. However, if you finagle some more, you can get the thing to rest on its feet instead of dragging its knuckles. This is what I have to show for it.

Is that... doing a Catwoman dance???

And this is where I gave up when I got this thing and am giving up now. If I can't figure out how to turn it into something that looks like anything, it's because the people who made it didn't know either.  People made fun of the "G1" Transformers then and now, they ridiculed the Gobots even worse, but this makes the lousiest knockoffs of the 1990s look downright functional. The only good that can come out of this is that it shows just how much creativity and thought went into the transforming bots that we remember. But it's still going back on my shelves, because a robot space knight with wings is still pretty cool.

For the source/ links, here's a web forum with as much information and images as I could find.

As a bonus, here's an excellent Shogun Warriors page at Toys You Had.

Plus, my original Giant Robot Review and Retrobots Revisited parts 1 and 2.

The Legion of Silly Dinosaurs! Generic Zilla

Of all the things that have come and gone, I think the most irreversible loss is the comic book shop. When I was growing up, there was one particular shop my brother and I haunted, and it sold and traded not just comic books but every kind of  toy and collectible imaginable. Sure, it's now normal for comic shops to sell toys as much as comics, but I would wager none are as eclectic as this and presumably any number of shops like it. I have any number of memories centered on this shop, but my strongest is from when I visited the store on my birthday, and my brother told me he had found something. I followed him to one of the store's more secluded corners, and saw something that is with me to this day. Here's a pic of the big guy with my stalwarts Husky and Carl.

Don't worry, it's Carl. Seriously, his superpower is being unkillable.

Only a flesh wound.

Up to that day, I had been obsessed with Godzilla, though I had never seen any of the movies and still didn't have a TV. I had seen licensed Godzilla toys, but their size and quality never impressed me. I had better luck with the Definitely Dinosaurs Tyrannosaurs, which had served as the big G in many playtimes, but it still wasn't the same. When I did find my Godzilla, it was obvious that it was no authorized likeness, but it represented my idea of Godzilla better than any of the tawdry, rubbery guys I had seen before. Of course, a big part of that was simply being absolutely gigantic. I never doubted that this would be THE Godzilla, and I never questioned or cared where he really came from. And that is where the trail begins.

While I was growing up with my Godzilla, I saw identical items on sale at least once, after enough time that it was clear someone was still making them. There were epic battles, including showdowns with army men I had bought just to fight Godzilla, and sometimes the army won. In the course of these battles, I figured out Godzilla's head, arms and tail could pop off relatively easily, and improvised further gruesome effects. Eventually, I took to hiding undelivered note and other random treasures inside, many of which I only cleaned out in the course of preparing for this piece. Then, sometime in the age of the internet, I did a little digging. What I found was story after story of people who had owned and sometimes still had my same Godzilla, and the name that came up again and again was the one I found on my old Godzilla's foot: Dormei.

It turned out that "the" Godzilla was one of many products by a clearly prolific company that specialized in turning out rubber dinosaurs and sci fi/ fantasy creatures. Many of these seem to have been intended to fill niche markets created by other toys, notably that of "mounts" for He Man figures and others of similar size and themes. The larger offerings, up to and including Godzilla, might have aimed to be villains and monsters for higher budget kaiju/ giant robot lines like Shogun Warriors and Voltron. I further discovered that the Dormei Godzilla was issued with several different heads, one of which had a much closer resemblance to the "real" thing. Here are two prize finds, an actual Dormei advertisement (originally posted at skullbrain.org), and a specimen sold with a tag sometime after 1990 (apparently removed from the original source):

Of course, with this lead, I was going to do something foolish. Immediately before starting this piece, I bought another Dormei generic-zilla online. It came in a box that was too big for the postal box but still outlandishly small for one of these guys. Here's pics of my unboxing and the new guy with my old friend.

After seeing the outside of this box, I was genuinely afraid to open it.

Never mind nuclear testing, they made ME fly COACH!

Needless to say, the new arrival looks far less threatening. His overall look is in line with the 1970s Godzilla movies, usually considered the weakest of the series (albeit with psychedelic interludes like Godzilla flying). What caught my interest is that the spinal ridge line extends to the head. This convinced me that this was the "original" head the toy was designed for, though the mention of "interchangeable" heads in the ad suggests that alternate heads were available from the beginning. Here's a closeup of both:

Unfortunately, this photo also shows that the "original" specimen has serious issues with quality. The tail is loose enough I would have suspected it had been replaced if the colors didn't match. (And there really is no way that a repainting could be made convincing to anyone who has handled one of these.) There is flash and frills of plastic all over, including an unbroken line on the underside of the tail that is actually sharp. It was bad enough for me to give a much harsher inspection to my beloved old battler, and I did find similar problems when I looked for them, but nowhere near as bad. It would be tempting to assume this was a late and inferior copy, but it does have the Dormei name, and I think it just as likely the manufacturer cleaned up their production methods when mine was produced.

For the post script, this is one where the trail is long but untraceable. Dormei is reported to have introduced the toy in 1986, and production continued well after 1990 both by Dormei and other manufacturers. Later US sales were by Toysmith, source of the tagged example shown above (and naturally independently familiar to me). I have no doubt the same toys were the subject of a lawsuit by Toho at the mindbogglingly late date of 2008, as well as less humorous complaints about lead paint. From what evidence is at hand, this may have been the end of the line for our not-Godzilla, as no reports are in evidence of further production and sales. Abundant specimens remain on sale online, where they are by no means rare but certainly not cheap. Most such specimens appear to be from Dormei's glory days, but it is certainly possible that somewhere, some obscure manufacturer is churning out copies of copies of the big guy.

If that all seems somber, here's one more pic of the "original" with some friends. Lineup in order of size is Lanard Alien Queen, Definitely Dinosaurs Spinosaurus, Ken R. Wampa, the Truckstop Queen, Marx evil space guy, Bossk, sidekick Carl, Husky, Playmobil astronaut, Galaxy Laser Team commander and Rogun Robots H bot and Red.

Hail to the King, or the next best thing!

Very short link list:

Knockoff Collector article on this and other knockoffs and generic fantasy toys.

Video review of vintage specimen, and the main thing that got me started on this.

While I'm at it, my first/ previous Legion post on the patchisaurs.

Rogues' Roundup! Dropped Pilots

It's time for the start of another feature, and this time the theme is that there is no theme. This will be a line up of the odds and ends of the toybox, and I'm starting with a perfect storm of offenders, what I call "pilot" figures. I use this as a general term for articulated figures that were not sold on their own, but included with vehicles and playsets as pilots, drivers, or general crew, and then very possibly lingered on without identity or purpose after the toy they came with was lost, broken or forgotten. Whatever their origin, these were the most mysterious and least respected of vintage figures. They were the sidekicks, the hostages, the bystanders COBRA and the stormtroopers gunned down. They were the figures you dropped in boxes, bins and carrying cases with your less used figures, then never quite remembered putting there. They were the ones that got thrown in to a trade for something else, the ones the other kids made fun of, the ones the comic book store wouldn't take. But in your heart you still loved them, and when they were gone you would still wonder what it was you had lost.

Of this genre of figures, I count as the best and purest examples are those included with the Robotix sets. Building toys were the source of many pilot figures, but these are the only ones to come to my attention that are on the "standard" 3.75-4 inch scale. Overall, they are of good enough quality and detail that there really isn't a lot to be said about them. Their size and science-fictional style made them easy to integrate with Star Wars and GI Joe figures, and also made it easy to assume they were part of some relatively high profile action figure line. I personally believed for ages that the pair in my possession were Robotech figures. In fairness, before you throw those rocks, I only ever saw or owned one figure actually from the line. Here's a closeup of the pair:

Meanwhile, the most prolific producer of pilot figures was surely Fisher Price, who notably started before action figures had been established as a market in their own right. The Adventure People line featured some of the first fully-articulated plastic action figures, both as add-ons to vehicles and playsets and sold on card. The toys were innovative enough that other manufacturers simply ripped them off; the lore even tells that Kenner tried out Star Wars designs using Adventure People figures as a reference My one encounter with the line was when I received the Deep Sea Diver figure, which was something like a midway point between a playset and a separately sold figure. It came in a box I still vaguely remember, along with a rubber octopus, a buoy that attached to the diver's helmet and a treasure chest I remember filling with coins, plates and goblets from Playmobil sets. Here's a pic of the diver with the octopus, and a bonus pic of the figure without the helmet, which I still can't resist trying to remove.

Fisher Price inevitably did a science fiction subline, which could be considered a Star Wars ripoff but in this case is more like turnabout/ fair play. I'm  somewhat surprised I didn't have any of these, though I saw them in the wild occasionally. Shortly before starting this essay, I finally bought one of the figures from this line, an astronaut that looks more like a robot or deep sea diver. Like the diver, his left hand is shaped to hold an accessory but turned sideways, a pose that may have originally been intended to fit with holding a steering wheel or gear shift. He also shares with the diver a head that clearly has far more detail than can actually be seen. Here's pics of the astronaut with Bossk and another in our line up. the Construx guy.

Construx building sets, also by Fisher Price, was yet another major source of pilot figures. The one shown here can be taken apart and featured interchangeable helmets. I tended to view him as a robot rather than a man, which (for once) didn't make him a lot more interesting. I also have/ had a more conventional figure included with some Construx sets, a generic but well-made man in a blue sort of uniform about 3 inches tall. My first recollection of that little guy was finding him stuffed in the accessory compartment of a Kenner Darth Vader carrying case. For a very long time, I played with him occasionally without any idea what he was. In hindsight, this was more strange than it sounds, as I am now reasonably satisfied he would have come with a boat set I'm sure I received no earlier than my 7th birthday, the time when my memories go from hazy to clear. I had planned to make him the centerpiece of this collection, but unfortunately, I had no luck when I actually went looking for the figure. While I have by no means lost hope, I have let his turn wait for another day.

Meanwhile, pilot figures got a boost from two relatively late lines, Dino Riders and Starcom. These were made at a scale only a little larger than "army men", undoubtedly to keep the vehicles, sets and creatures they came with at an affordable size. In overall quality, they rival even the Robotix figures, with the further edge of 7 points of articulation to those stalwarts' 4. However, the Dino Riders never seemed to reach the mark set by Star Wars, GI Joe, or the emerging TMNT brand, while Starcom would be remembered as a notorious failure. I never got any Dino Riders toys, I suspect because they were more expensive than other dino toys that kept me just as happy, but picked up one of their weird villain/ alien figures many years later. As for Starcom, I traded for a single figure a friend had lying around sometime in later elementary school, and never really cared about getting any more of the line. Here's some pics of this pair with other figures, including the Arco/ Rogun bots and the Truckstop Queen.

"Sorry, but we live on 2 different scales. Also, I already have a boyfriend, and he's a Wampa."

Now for last and to me the best. Soon after the Adventure People hit the scene, Tonka produced a line of "Play People" action figures to go with their larger vehicles. In researching for this piece, I found out they were sold separately or in pairs, but I believe that the ones I played with all came with vehicles, particularly a van/ camper set I still have around. I am sure there were at least two or perhaps three, including what I took for a woman in an orange suit that was already fading to a peach color. Any figure that would match is long gone. What I do still have is a helmeted driver I call "Carl" that I now know was included with a 1979 race car set. Here he is with a pair of Husky Helper figures that probably should have been in this group all along.

Looking at him now, he's better than I remembered. I was particularly impressed to find that the head can turn as well as going up and down, where most figures could only do one or the other. 

I have absolutely no memory of this guy with the race car, which probably would have been given to my older brother if we ever had it at all. What I do remember is that I once tried to trade him at a comic book store, only to be turned down. I then had a further misadventure where I lost him at a restaurant while having lunch after. At that point, I was determined enough to look until I found him, and took him home again.

Some time after that, I was playing with the Husky figure shown here on the right, which is in fact undoubtedly the most heavily used figure I own. At one point, I intended to make the second Husky his sidekick, and started an adventure that would have introduced them to each other. However, the arch villain (played by Bossk) got an overwhelming advantage so early even the other Husky couldn't save the day. Then, by the wonders of retconning, Carl came to the rescue, and got both his name and super powers in the process. Soon enough, it was Carl who went with Husky on most of his adventures, until I practically forgot I had tried to get rid of him. Such is the power of the imagination, and the generic action figure.

Here's the links for this installment:

This Old Toy guide to Construx and Adventure People figures, as well as just about anything else Fisher Price related.

A BattleGrip overview of Play People, short but by far the best I could find on the subject.

Toy Galaxy's videos on Starcom and Dino Riders