The Legion of Silly Dinosaurs: Spinosaur lineup!

 

I'm back with another dino post, and I just realized I had almost gone a whole month without one of these. I had really been working on something else, but that was going long, and in the meantime I made a new acquisition that fit in with a larger  group. Fittingly, it's from Walmart, where I also got the Marx dino clones, the Jurassic World hadrosaur,  and the Primal Clash megafauna. The retail giant has truly been turning out the best and the worst in modern dino toys/ models, and we're going to be covering both. First, however, I want to talk about the subject, a now-famous dino called Spinosaurus.

While I could easily do a whole post about Spinosaurus, what fascinates me most isn't what we know now but what I remember of how it was portrayed back when. In hindsight, the shape of Spinosaurus was nearly unknown until several related species were found and described in the late 1980s, though pieces of its very unique skull had been among the long-lost material used to describe the species in 1915. Even so, I can remember frequent depictions through the 1980s in books and the occasional toy. With very few exceptions, these early efforts portrayed it as a very conventional theropod with a sail on its back. I can further recall seeing it portrayed the same way well into the 1990s if not longer, egregiously in the Jurassic Park/ Lost World toy line, long after paleontologists had arrived at a reasonably accurate picture of spinosaurids. I never bout one of these increasingly outdated dinos, but I still wouldn't be surprised to run across one, because as I've been saying all along, outdated dinosaurs (or whatever the Hell the patchisaurs are) never die.

To kick off the line-up, here's one of the honest mistakes from the old days, which has already turned up when I introduced generic Godzilla. It's from the Definitely Dinosaurs line, and probably the second tallest after the Tyrannosaurus. This was given to me a few years back, but I remember it well from the advertising and box art for the line. Like the vast majority of the line (including the fast food tie-in), it's of very good overall quality with the durability and simple design appropriate to a play-worthy toy. Unfortunately, like almost depictions from back when, the lower jaw is all wrong even from what was known at the time. Still, it's a solid dino worth having. Here's a pic, with Sidekick Carl.

This is why you wear a helmet.

Fortunately, things changed with the release of Jurassic Park 3, which made a Spinosaurus the main villain/ monster rather than a background creature. The frequently-scene dino incorporated all the major discoveries made about spinosaurids, and also portrayed it in the water. Inevitably, several different spinosaur toys were released in the movie's merchandise. For some reason, I didn't pick up any at the time, but I found one at a comic shop a few years later. It seems to have been the smallest produced, but if anything, the design and detail are better than others I can find images of. It remains a bit conventional in proportions and posture, notably with a fully symmetrical sail, yet largely unobjectionable.  Here's a few pics with the Truckstop Queen, and the next dino in the lineup.

Go ahead and pout, no trick, no treat.

You were made after me??!!

After Jurassic Park 3, the old-fashioned  spinosaurs at least retreated to arcade prizes and discount bagged toys. I was all the more interested to see a semi-realistic spinosaur at the Walmart a few years back, under an "Adventure Force" line/ brand that seems to get slapped randomly on generic/ knockoff toys of diverse origin. It had something close to the long, crocodilian head we know it had. However, something about it was... off. Or to put it succinctly, it's one of the silliest silly dinosaurs I've ever seen. In the spirit that led me to create this feature and the blog, I picked it up, along with an equally inoffensive tyrannosaur from what has to be the same manufacturer. It's the opposite of epic, like if Alien and Predator had a tea party. Here's the pair together.

"Have you the time?"

"No, but could you tell me the way to the British Museum?"

Fast forward, and I made a new discovery right before the end of 2020. I was looking through a group of relatively good dinos that have appeared on and off under the Adventure Force line, and I was startled to see something new. It was quite possibly the most modern and realistic spinosaur I had ever seen. On top of that, it was big, detailed and flat-out good. There was just one problem...

After this sighting, my best hope was to wait and see if any more came in. Since I haven't been shopping nearly as often as I used to, it ended up being about six weeks before I took another look. Sure enough, there was an intact specimen among a group of newly arrived dinos. I picked it up, brought it home, and then spent a few days looking it over. It has no shortage of problems. The quality is subtly chintzy, notably in how the paint was applied, and it was already obvious that the durability is nothing to right home about. The anatomy isn't great, either. They went a bit overboard on the spikes, the tail isn't as hydrodynamic as some researchers now think, and on top of that, the legs are of visibly different lengths. Nonetheless, it's as good a spinosaur as we're likely to get outside of the museum gift shops (and better than plenty in those venues). Here's a couple more pics, still on the plastic packaging/ support because of the issue with the legs.

On further reflection, I'm glad that this dino has finally come far enough for the "generic" treatment. It was intriguing even when people assumed it was hardly different from any other carnosaur. Now we know it as one of the largest and strangest dinos that ever existed, and lots of people are familiar with it through both fact and fiction. On the other side, it should be a disconcerting reminder of the limitations of prior expectations. There was just enough evidence that we could have deduced that it was a crocodile-headed, fish-eating, potentially quadrupedal dinosaur, but nobody put it all together until we already had proof such things existed. In any case, there's no way I'm wrapping this up without a group pic.

That's all for now, more to come!

Space 1979: The one where dinosaurs evolve from a Coke bottle to Bolero

 

Title: Allegro Non Troppo

What Year?: 1976 (Italian release)/ 1977 (US release)

Classification: Irreproducible Oddity/ Parody/ Mashup

Rating: Downright Decent! (4/5)

 

In the course of this feature, the one thing that has given me the most trouble has been animation. Back when I wrote out my Introduction, I set down the ground rule that I would be dealing with live action films, though even then I was considering a few exceptions. In practice, the real problem was where to draw the line. If I let in animated films, as I finally did with The Phantom Tollbooth, there were always going to be many more than I could cover without going (back!) to dedicated animation reviews. But the true counterpoint is that there are animated films out there, especially from the 1970s, that I really did not want to cover, either because they do not fit the intended theme and mood of this feature or because they do not fit my own tastes. For the present review, the third animation review after (dear Logos) Transformers, I am getting to a movie that’s in the middle ground, not offensive or incomprehensible but definitely not standard fare. It’s only fitting that it would come from the Italians. Here is Allegro Non Troppo, the European answer to Fantasia.

Our story begins with a studio producer type referred to as the Presenter, filmed in black and white, announcing that we are about to see an animated movie set to classical music, notwithstanding a threatening phone call from “Grisney, Pisney- some crazy American”. We are also introduced to an audience who have to be released from a giant holding pen, an orchestra of old women, an occasionally rebellious Animator who starts out in a dungeon, a pretty cleaning lady who catches his eye and a bombastic and bullying Conductor. Once the animation gets in gear, we meet an old faun still trying to chase beautiful nymphs, a trendsetter who despises the people who follow him to build a city, and a planet where life evolves from the germs in an astronaut’s discarded soda bottle. Meanwhile, the intervening segments grow more madcap and sometimes ominous as the Conductor tries to maintain his idea of order and the Animator grows more distracted by the lady. Things continue to unravel as we move on to the remaining segments, featuring a lonely cat in the ruins of a building, an angry bee interrupted by a pair of clumsy lovers, and the Serpent of Eden, who this time around gets a vision of the future after trying the Apple for himself. But we still have the ending, which turns out to be a choice from a lineup of improbable visions, and whether it makes the slightest bit of sense is up to you to decide.

Allegro Non Troppo was the fourth feature film by Italian cartoonist and animator Bruno Bozzetto, and possibly the first to be released in the U.S. The title was based on the musical term allegro ma non troppo, roughly translating “Not so fast!” It was undisputedly conceived as both an imitation and parody of Disney’s Fantasia, which was finding new popularity in the 1970s counterculture. The longest sequence set to Ravell’s “Bolero” was modelled on the Rite of Spring, while the final sequence set in the Garden of Eden used Stravinsky’s “Firebird”, a piece considered for Fantasia and eventually used in Fantasia 2000. The movie was released with a PG rating in the US, despite significant nudity in the first and final sequences. A shortened version was reportedly circulated with 10 minutes of the Italian live-action framing sequences cut. The movie has not been generally available on disc in the US.

For my experiences, I first heard of this one a few years back in an amazing book called The Dinosaur Scrapbook, which I had spent many an afternoon reading in my college days before that. It was mentioned there because of the Bolero sequence, and then for its imitation of the dinosaur scenes in Fantasia. I had no trouble looking up online videos of that genuinely famous segment, as well as a few more, but I wasn’t satisfied watching it in pieces posted by other people. Not long after I started this feature, I finally went looking for a copy at a decent price, which I had no doubt meant foreign, bootleg or both. What I ended up with was a “Region 0” disc (I confirmed typical of bootlegs) in Italian-language packaging that only plays on an allegedly portable Blu Ray player with a huge and absolutely terrible screen. For an extra disconcerting factor, I went through my first viewing of the whole damn thing before I figured out how to turn the subtitles on. I must say, in some ways, not knowing what anyone was saying made it more interesting. (You win this one, Brandon’s Cult Movies.) When I finally got a handle on the framing material, I quickly recognized that the movie as a whole is even more warped than it appears, if not entirely ugly.

What one should have no trouble gathering even without the live-action parts is that this movie is both critical and willfully dysfunctional. It doesn’t simply send up Disney, but the whole mythology of “progress”, ultimately the main reason it’s of interest here. In these terms, the first sequence is a red herring, if vividly awkward in its own right, following the descent of the lovelorn old satyr from pitiful attempts at courting to less certain visions that are as absurd as they are lewd. The real narrative takes hold in the second part, set to Dvorak’s Slavonic Dance, as we follow a tribe of cliff dwellers into urban life and finally the rise of militarism. Together, the two give a picture of human flaws and the timeless problem of the has-beens and the misfits.

Things get into high gear with the totally surreal Bolero sequence, a joyous exercise of absurdity haunted by a dark and more familiar figure that keeps drifting in and out of view. It is by almost any standard the high point of the film, but in many ways, it distracts more than it helps. We then get a darker vision in the next segment, set to “Valse Triste”, so bleak it seems literally post-apocalyptic up to the very end. Things get more disjointed in the frivolous Vivaldi number, but get back in line as we follow the terrified snake through the march of progress. Then there’s the ending, which builds up to a nuclear war accompanied by a few notes of the 2001 theme, only to come back to the bickering of the producer/ Presenter and the Conductor. It’s charming, irreverent and intermittently insightful, but at a certain point the critique starts to rebound on itself.

With all that, I still haven’t got the “one scene”, and I’ve spent much of the time trying to figure out if it can apply to this one. I very seriously considered the entirety of the Valse Triste sequence, so you can count that as honorable mention. But what I have kept going back to, as often happens, is a literal throwaway gag. In the midst of one of the earlier live-action sequences, the Animator draws a little man who comes to life in full color; in fact, it’s Bozzetto’s most famous creation in his homeland, a character named Mr. Rossi. The character happily explores the paper, even after the sheet is accidentally cast aside. But then the paper lands beside the chair of the Conductor as he lights a cigarette. With his usual indifference, he carelessly lowers his hand almost to the floor, still holding the match. Of course, the paper catches fire. The little man’s mannerisms become desperate as he tries to escape the flame, but even the living drawing cannot leave the paper. He finally puts on a happy face as the last of the paper burns into ash. It’s a perfect combination of comedy and existential horror, far from the only one in the movie’s length, but easily the best.

Now, I come to the rating, which I’ve been complaining have been low lately. I would be happy to give this one the highest rating, and it’s certainly as good as more than a few I have given that distinction. However, I can’t quite justify it to myself. In part, I have the same problems with this movie that I have already commented on with Italian movies; even where I like it, I don’t feel like I get it. On another level, however, I can’t avoid the feeling that this is a movie that doesn’t quite reach its potential. It is an especially literal case of the parts being greater than the whole. The individual segments, especially the third and fourth, are among the best animation of this or any other era. Yet there is simply not enough here to sustain a feature-length movie, particularly for audiences across cultural lines. One can further discern a reason for its limited availability, especially by comparison with Fantasia. The Disney film was still relevant in the 1970’s and long after because it has continued to appeal to new generations. Its imitator, now older than Fantasia was then, has only dated itself more and more. It remains by all means worth watching, but the one thing it is not is something worth imitating.

Bigger Than Godzilla! Giant Tonka dump truck

 

After covering Tonka (and Sidekick Carl) on Mystery Monday, I knew there was way too much material not to do another post. After further thought, I decided there was only one feature that would work, so I dusted this one off for yet another round. It's Tonka vs. (generic) Godzilla, but first, here's a little more on Carl and the oddly mysterious Play People.

As covered previously, the Play People was a line released by Tonka in the late 1970s and early '80s to go with their larger metal vehicles. I previously tried out just how well Sidekick Carl, my only specimen, really worked with a vehicle that I was sure had come with at least one other figure now lost. In the process, I also tried out another truck that I was sure was one of the last Tonka trucks I got, a medium-sized dump truck that I think I got around 1988. I was a little thrown off when I saw identical trucks listed as from 1983, but I had no trouble confirming it was still being made in the late 1980s. In any event, I confirmed that Carl would fit in the cab, if anything a little better than in the van that was released with the Play People. However, the proportions proved a bit wonky. Here's Carl and the Truckstop Queen with the vehicle.

Proof the lady belongs with a truck!

As seen above, Carl is if anything a little smaller than the proper scale of the truck, which we've already seen Tonka was usually happy to ignore. On the other hand, it certainly isn't that close to the Queen's scale. (If you're asking why my reference model is bigger than almost everything else, you're clearly new here.) I'm pretty sure I did sometimes play with the truck with figures in it, though the only ones I remember specifically are Playmobil figures I used for cannon-fodder goons and a few of my major villains. What's of most interest is that the 1983 date puts the design a year after the 1982 date reported for the retirement of the Play People. This means Tonka was still trying to make their biggest vehicles compatible with action figures, even if they weren't making their own.

Having gone through this experiment, I inevitably thought of something else I had tucked away, one of the true giants from Tonka. I seriously debated whether to get it out, because the place I left it was so out of the way and sketchy I genuinely didn't want to touch the thing. Still, I finally and reluctantly broke it out, and with a fair amount of work, I cleaned off enough of the filth to see the filth underneath. Here's a pic with the other dump truck.

This particular toy is possibly the earliest I have any recollection of getting. I'm sure I got it for Christmas from a grandparent, I think in 1983. (I also remember my brother got a blue TIE fighter, which puts it at 1985 the latest.) I consulted Mighty Tonka, and easily matched it to a model introduced in 1983 and continued well after. Per the site, this and other vehicles in the Mighty Tonka line were actually slightly smaller than those from earlier years. The new design included a new cab, which I discovered has an opening at the back; sure enough, there was room for Carl. Here's some more pics with Carl and the Queen.

Trust me, you do not want to see the inside of the bed.

I literally got this shot turning on the camera at random. Damn, she looks good.

One more thing I ran across is the actual name of the truck. I first saw it in a "vintage" ad, where I assumed it was a slipup by some anonymous advertiser. But I kept seeing it, and I started developing a suspicion that I still only believed when I got to samples of original packaging. They couldn't just call it Mighty Dump Truck? On their own box???

With that unpleasantness out of the way, it's finally time for the inevitable comparison: Is the dump truck bigger than generic Godzilla? On close examination, it depends on what you mean. It's not as tall as Godzilla/ Genericzilla, but it's not far off either. However, it's length was clearly greater, and it was only fair to consider its total dimensions. That proved tricky enough that I finally turned to the other truck, which is a bit shorter though it may not look like it in the reference pic above. Here's some pics of how it turned out.

Okay, let's call it a draw.

I really don't have much to add to the pictures. That damn truck is easily the most colossal toy I have ever owned. What surprised me most handling it is that it's really not even that heavy, surely a testament to just how well Tonka had mastered the engineering of their products. The problem will continue to be finding room for it. On a lighter note, here's an extra pic of the Queen.

Beep beep, big boy.

And one more with the Gas Station Duchess/ Connie. King Kong never gets a break; he kid of deserves it.

Well, you weren't exactly truth in advertising yourself.

That's all for now, more to come!

Space 1979: The one with a killer asteroid and Sean Connery

 

Title: Meteor

What Year?: 1979

Classification: Runnerup/ Mashup

Rating: What The Hell??? (3/5)

 

After Repeat Offender week, I’ve been taking a little time to decide what I wanted to do with some leftover material. In a fairly typical bout of irony, I decided to take a break with a movie I had in mind at the very beginning, another one I saw long ago and never looked up again. Only then did I realize that I had the perfect storm of repeat offenders. This was a movie from the studio that made (or bough/ stole) The Incredible MeltingMan, Squirm, The People That Time Forgot and Futureworld, with the stars of Brainstorm and Zardoz. On top of that, it intersected with The Green Slime, which I previously introduced as the first appearance of a now-familiar sci fi theme that to my knowledge didn’t surface again until the present movie 11 years later. With that, I present Meteor.

Our story begins (after a very ‘70s futuristic credits sequences) in space, with a view of a comet and tumbling asteroids, accompanied by ominous narration that ends with a closeup of an asteroid referred to as Orpheus. We then go to a distinguished gentleman on a sailboat, whose voyage is interrupted by a government vessel announcing that his presence is needed. We learn that the gentleman is a former NASA scientist named Paul Bradley, who quit over a project called Hercules. A briefing from his former boss reveals that a comet has knocked the 5-mile-wide asteroid Orpheus (referred to very persistently as a “meteor”) into a course towards Earth, destroying a manned exploration vessel in the process. Dr. Bradley quickly comes up with a decent plan: Rather than try to blow up the asteroid, detonate a volley of nuclear weapons in its path to deflect it into a stable orbit. To do it, however, they need to launch the weapons from space, and a round of conspiratorial intrigues establishes that the USA and the Soviets have already parked nukes in orbit to blow up each other. At Bradley’s urging, the two nations join forces, which brings him in contact with a very pretty Russian scientist. Meanwhile, several smaller asteroids are incoming, generating plenty of disaster footage. Then, as the time to launch approaches, the team learns that a “big one” is headed for their position, forcing them to choose between escaping or completing the mission.

Meteor was a production of B-movie mill AIP and the equally notorious Hong Kong studio Shaw Brothers. The film was clearly intended to capitalize on disaster films from earlier in the decade (also a common denominator in The Black Hole), to the point that The Poseidon Adventure veteran Robert Neame was brought in to direct. Where both studios had previously specialized in low-budget films, the production received a budget estimated at about $16 million. Much of the money clearly went into a high-profile cast, including Sean Connery as Dr. Bradley, Natalie Wood as the not-quite romantic interest Tatiana, and the likes of Martin Landau, Henry Fonda and Karl Malden as various supporting officials. The movie was filmed mainly in 1978,  but a planned mid-1979 release was delayed until the end of the year for additional work on its special effects. The finished film reportedly included footage from the film Avalanche, produced by Roger Corman. On release, the film received negative reviews from critics and failed to appeal to audiences, resulting in an estimated box office of $8.4M.

For my personal experiences, this is yet another movie I first encountered on 1990s TV, probably early in the decade. Once again, I didn’t give it another try until I watched it for this review. With a recent viewing as a frame of reference, I must conclude this movie didn’t leave much of a mark even in my usually uncanny memory. What I mainly remembered was the plan to deflect the asteroid, which I only noticed being explained quite late in the movie. (Unfortunately, the filmmakers don’t seem to have recognized that nuclear weapons are still limited by a vacuum.) On further reflection, I have been wondering if I might have missed the first part of the movie, though outside of a few brief scenes in space, the first part of the movie is exactly the kind of clunky character development kid me would have tuned out. I do very vaguely remember some of the disaster sequences, which really feel like 2 or 3 disaster movies for the price of one, as well as some tension in the finale, which I genuinely thought was going to have some kind of double cross until I got through to the actual ending.

What I can say first and foremost is that this movie has some of the best production values I have encountered, especially for a film made before ca 1980. Of course, it’s obvious that the filmmakers paid more than enough to ensure it, but it’s still impressive. For the most part, this is further reflected in good dialogue and a solid, linear story, with the only downside being that much of it feels like it belongs in a documentary rather than big-budget “entertainment”. Even the effects are quite good for the time, and in many ways more realistic than many films of the following years. The flashes and streaks of light are actually just about what one would really see from explosions and impacts in space. For that matter, the only real scientific misfires are an impact in New York City that looks more like Godzilla plowed through it and a single overdone pyrotechnics sequence when the missiles start slagging the asteroid.

The problems that keep cropping up all lie in the finer details, and it is very much a cumulative “uncanny valley” effect. To begin with, the film could easily have kept down to 90 minutes, and certainly didn’t need to be over 100, making the actual 1 hour 47 minutes run time far more taxing than I can easily explain. A good part of that is the Cold War political intrigue, which amounts to some clever barbs dragged out into a good part of the movie. Another thing that stood out to me was the heavy use of “translated” Russian, which anyone in science and academia would recognize as unnecessary given how widespread the use of English really is. (Understanding a foreign speaker’s idea of English is another matter…) Then there are Connery and Wood, who both deliver very good performances but never quite feel like they belong in their roles. This is most obvious with Wood, who is no more convincing as Russian than Connery would be as a Minnesotan. But there are also plenty of problems with Connery, who was more at home on the sailboat than he ever is talking to the scientists, politicians and military brass. It may be just as well that the script never really says what his backstory is, or they might have tried to tell us that he really is supposed to be om Minnesota.

At this point, it’s really already time for the “one scene”, and it has to be a sequence when a lesser meteor lands off  Hong Kong. The impact triggers a tsunami, narrated by one of Bradley’s colleagues. The effects are by far the most effective of the movie, fully matched by shots of panicking crowds who really don’t seem that disorganized. The cameras take time from the bigger picture to follow a man and his wife as they meet at their apartment before fleeing the city. There’s a standard but well-realized heartwarming moment as the woman readies their child to travel, and the guy grabs their dog. The pair remain recognizable as they rejoin the crowd, just in time to discover that the tsunami has already surged ahead of them. There’s a last poignant cutaway to the scientific colleague, who matter-of-factly dismisses the possibility of leaving the city. It ends with the wave literally crashing through the windows of his observation room. It’s a scene that would probably be as cliched as it sounds from a western studio, then or now, but with the Shaw Brothers crew onboard, it has the same unaccountable authenticity as a Toho kaiju movie.

In full hindsight, the real problem with Meteor is simply that it’s a realistic science fiction movie which tried to play by its own rules. For as much well-deserved hate as Armageddon and The Green Slime receive, they did the dramatically “right” thing by putting the heroes in space. This movie shows just how poorly the alternative fares in the motion picture medium, no matter how what the much star power and effects are put behind it. Despite all the efforts to add drama, the whole story amounts to people on the ground pointing automated orbital equipment at a threat and pushing the button to fire, and that is as exciting on film as watching someone else play a video game without seeing the screen. The fact that this is indeed how space exploration and research was increasingly carried out just shows why Star Wars-style “science fantasy” was handily outperforming 2001-style realism in theaters. Add in this film’s already considerable flaws, and we’re left with one more reasonably competent film that never manages to get from good to great.

Image credit Prince Planet Movies, which has a fair review of the movie.

Mystery Monday: Sidekick Carl and the Tonka camper van

 

After taking it slow for a while, I decided it was time to get back to this feature. In the course of that decision, I thought of several perfectly obscure items in my collections, but I decided the one I wanted to cover was something that outwardly barely qualifies as a mystery. My underlying reasoning was that there are different levels of mystery. The obvious ones, which this feature has been dedicated to so far, are the strange yet nondescript, haphazardly marked toys that a kid would pick up without knowing or necessarily caring what they were and where they came from. But there are also more subtle puzzles and problems that only an adult hashing things out long after the fact would think of, the questions of when, why and how long. On more careful consideration, there is one seemingly familiar brand that poses more of this kind of question than any other: the Tonka trucks, and the accessories and figures that sometimes accompanied them.

The first part of our mystery lies in the nature of the toys. Tonka trucks have been made for well over half a century, invariably in varying or entirely hazy sizes and scales. By the 1980s in particular, this was contributing to a crisis of branding, as most of the vehicles didn't work well with action figures and other related toys. That, in turn, left the brand at a competitive disadvantage, too big for the Hot Wheels/ Matchbox niche and usually (though as we shall see not always) too small to hold Star Wars and GI Joe figures. Judging from my own recollections, there was a further disconnect between adults and kids about how the brand was perceived. For ungrateful Eighties kids like me, Tonka trucks quickly faded into background noise. I certainly got them, for a very long time, but very few made enough of an impression for me to remember how I received them. When I played with them, it was usually because I needed something, and it didn't really matter if it "fit" with anything else. Here's a few pics of the Tonka toys I encountered more often than any other, the pickup truck and/ or trailer.

These left a minor mystery in themselves because I absolutely remembered that the black truck came with a boat that I could find no trace of. I'm also sure that somewhere there was a bit of text that read "Miami Nice", a terrible pun/ reference I barely recognized. What got disconcerting was that it turned out Tonka had released a number of boats, none of which matched the boat as I remembered it. I did finally find some pics of boats I was satisfied came from the same molds, but still no exact matches. I may cover that little side quest in more detail in another post, but for now, I'm ready to move on to the next part of the mystery, the Tonka action figures, which I last covered in the Dropped Pilots post. Here's some pics of my only available specimen from that line, Sidekick Carl, in a line up with Bossk, the Adventure People diver, and the very first to appear in this feature, the Voltron red guy.

Since I first mentioned this now-obscure line, I have done quite a bit more research, which mostly served to convince me that this was a mystery worth coming back to. What's clear is that by the early to mid-1970s, Tonka started including posable figures with their largest vehicles, particularly the Mighty Ambulance and Mighty Winnebago. (Yes, you read that right.) The first of these were more like dolls than action figures, notably having actual fabric clothing that may have been removable. In 1978, Tonka started including all-plastic action figures referred to as Play People, confusingly in both nominal 3.75" (maybe closer to 3.5" judging from these pics) and 5" size. I haven't quite unraveled the mystery of why or how extensively the larger scale figures were used, though the depressingly obvious explanation is that they were made for the Winnebago and certain older vehicles that hadn't yet been retired or retooled. The smaller size was the one that saw further production, including sale on card. The line has been dated 1979-1981, as per Figure Realm, which may be accurate for figures sold separately from Tonka vehicles. According to Mighty Tonka, a site strikingly critical of the Play People line and concept, the Play People were retired entirely by 1982.

To get a full sense of the line's pros and cons, I finally broke out yet another item I had lying around, a Tonka van/ camper trailer set that may have been one of the first to include the figures. (See the Battlegrip page on the line, already linked to when I first introduced Carl.) I have just enough memories of this thing to recall that I found it different from the trucks, and I just barely remember an already weathered figure that I believed came with it. That figure ended up consuming a lot of my attention, because I thought of it at the time as a woman; however, the only female figure I can find record of with the orange/ peach-colored jumpsuit I remember was in 5-inch scale. From further research, the set normally had a man and a woman, with the former sometimes in orange and the latter typically being blonde with a white or blue outfit. It also came with a dog and some other accessories I certainly have no memory of. I did finally fish out the van and trailer about a week before starting this post. Here's a few pics, with Carl and the Truckstop Queen for reference.

After preliminary inspection, it was clear that the set was a semi-realistic van and an accurate approximation of a "popup" trailer, something I don't think I ever fully understood as a kid. This brought me to one more "minor" mystery: In almost all pictures I have found, there are stickers for detail on the table and the foldout bunk. As a kid, I hated this practice so much that I routinely peeled or scraped the stickers off, to the point that I can usually find my own handiwork and reconstruct a toy accordingly. Here, however, the absence of evidence is much more complete than my usual efforts can account for. What that suggests to me is that this is variant that cut corners even on the stickers, which I personally find mindboggling.

In any event, what interested me most was whether Carl could really fit in here. On this point, I had up until recently assumed Tonka vehicles weren't meant to be accessible enough to put an action figure inside, regardless of whether there was enough apace inside, and I don't believe I ever tested anything bigger than a Playmobil figure. However, I quickly confirmed that Carl would fit well enough in both the trailer and the van. Here's a few more pics.

This experiment gave me a different perspective on the cancellation of the Play People line. It would seem "obvious" that once Tonka had both figures and vehicles designed and sized to take them, they would have either continued the Play People line or retired the vehicles has well. On careful consideration, however, this was not an either/ or choice. There were certainly kids who would use Tonka trucks with other toys, if only because they had both. As long as Tonka had vehicles that were roughly compatible with standardized action figures, they could always use that as an explicit or implied selling point, a route that was already being taken by many lower profile manufacturers (egregiously Arco!). Just how many trucks continued to accommodate action figures, and how long, is something I'm already investigating, but for now I'm holding off for another day.

One more mystery continues to be how I ended up with Carl in my possession. I long believed that he would have come with a race car, known in full as the AJ Foyt racing set, but I am now satisfied that figures from that set would have had different markings, particularly on the back.  I concluded in the process that Carl must have originally been marked Team Tonka; I also confirmed he's marked with the year 1979. I am now leaning toward the possibility that Carl was one of the figures sold on card, perhaps as a 2-pack shown on Figure Realm, almost certainly well before I would have been old enough to play with him. What has been of more interest is that I've found pictures of many variations of the figure, indicating that it probably came with any number of vehicles and sets over a significant period of time. I'm not yet satisfied whether 1982 was the end of the line, but again, that will take further investigation.

Having gotten more familiar with the line, I have both a better sense of why it failed and a lot more frustration at the lack of information and general interest. Obviously, they don't compare well with Star Wars or even the Adventure People. Their whole look makes them feel even smaller, cheaper and blander than they were in reality, with plenty of unpleasant surprises left for anyone who handles one. But on the other side, they are still well-made, detailed figures (see especially Carl's back), with a startling number of variations that would surely have been minutely documented in a more successful or notorious line. More importantly, their realism and diversity was move valuable than the manufacturer could ever have intended in a landscape that would soon flooded with soldiers, robots and aliens. Unfortunately, this is exactly the kind of nuance kids would only have appreciated when a story required more civilian and/ or female characters than a single Princess Leia figure could portray. If it comes to that, I suppose that's the reason I ended up with the Truckstop Queen as model/ mascot for this blog; at a certain point, you need "normal" as your reference point.

That's all for now, more to come!

Space 1979: The one that's 77 minutes long and has 7 directors

 

Title: The Dungeonmaster aka Ragewar

What Year?: 1984 (copyright and UK release)/ 1985 (US theatrical release)

Classification: Mashup/ Parody/ Improbable Experiment

Rating: Downright Decent! (4/5)

 

At this writing, I’m still in the “repeat offenders” lineup, with a bit more material under consideration than I originally planned, and even by the standards of this feature, what I have left is bad enough to sap my morale. I decided the best option was to throw one more in the mix that’s actually good, so I turned to a movie I had long been considering from a crew that has already turned up repeatedly. So here is The Dungeonmaster, from none other than Charles Band and Empire.

Our story begins with a scene of a woman we never see again being kidnapped by goblin-like creatures, followed for no obvious reason by some very 1980s aerobics/ dance sequences. We then meet Paul, a hotshot computer programmer who apparently dreamed the opening melodrama, and his artistic live-in girlfriend Gwen, plus a computer he calls “Excalibrate”. It turns out Paul is ready to get married, but Gwen isn’t so sure. While she is thinking it over, she is taken captive by Mestema, an evil sorcerer in search of a new challenge. The warlock then presents Paul with a chance to free her by completing seven trials spread through time and space. The adventure drags the hero and his lady from landscapes of myth and fantasy to the dangers of a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Fortunately, Excalibrate is along for the ride as a protective gauntlet whose powers adapt and expand for each new world. However, Gwen adjusts a little too well when they arrive in a very familiar cityscape, accepting a new identity that puts her in the path of a killer. It’s up to Paul to save her, but first, she must remember who they are!

The Dungeonmaster was a production of Empire Pictures International and senior producer Charles Band, originally titled Ragewar: The Challenges of Excalibrate. The film starred Jeffrey Byron as Paul, Richard Moll as Mestema, and Leslie Wing as Gwen. Byron was also credited as cowriter of the script, the only writing credit in a long career in TV and movies. The film was divided into several semi-independent segments with a total of seven directors, including Ted Nicolaou, who went on to direct Terrorvision, stop-motion animator David Allen, and Band himself. A version of the movie was released with a PG-13 rating from the MPAA, very soon after the rating was introduced; this may have been a 73-minute cut of the movie sometimes listed. More recent home video releases feature a 77-minute cut that would almost certainly be rated R in a modern theatrical release. A famous and frequently repeated clip from Mythbusters appears to have been a direct (if possibly unconscious) quote from the movie by Adam Savage.

Going straight to my personal experiences, I had absolutely no knowledge of this movie until I watched it from Netflix streaming, one more thing that disappeared long ago. At the time, it made a favorable impression, and I immediately noticed the Mythbusters connection (which I will get to further on). As usual, I had to buy it on disc to watch it again, a few months before the present review, but fortunately, it proved to be available in a very inexpensive 4-pack. As far as I remember, I went in with no doubt it would be here sooner or later, but the very odd nature of the film put me off enough that I left it as one more for the “maybe” lineup. By the usual procedure, I gave it another go when I decided to review it. Even with a recent viewing under the belt, however, it still wasn’t what I was expecting, and not always in a good way.

The first and foremost thing I can say about this movie is that it has more than enough “good” to stay in the memory long after initial viewing. The effects, sets, and costumes are all up to the usual Band/ Empire standards, especially a stop-motion giant statue in Allen’s segment. The story is willfully disordered, but the pace and tone are just right to keep the movie going. What really shines is the dialogue between Byron and Moll. The villain is the kind of character that should be ludicrously cliched, but instead goes out the other side into archetype territory. The performance from Moll, previously sighted as the ice creature in Caveman, is priceless, delivering the usually boasting and threats with the occasional surprisingly personal revelations. It’s worth further note that the extra touches make it clear that the character was once human or at least mortal (despite certain references elsewhere in the script), while leaving his backstory appropriately mysterious. The hero is more than satisfactory as a foil, speaking out for virtue, enlightenment and the value of human fallibility. The high point of the repartee is surely when Paul gives a quite accurate account of the principles of ahimsa, very possibly the last thing people would expect me to have an interest in.

Unfortunately, the flaws of the movie are equally obvious, if not always easy to define. The episodic format inevitably leads to a few misses, conspicuously the Mad Max-inspired post-apocalyptic segment, and the length of certain segments contributes to the problem. This shows most in the segment set in a modern city (the one credited to Byron), which starts intriguingly but relies on increasingly contrived developments to move ahead. What weighs the film down far more is the disconnected nature of its scenes, an issue already seen with The Day TimeEnded from the same crew. The “random” approach can make for good fun for a while, but past the hour or even half-hour mark, it definitely begins to wear thin. What is perhaps worst of all is that Mestema rarely if ever directly involves himself in the challenges. This helps preserve the “quest” narrative device, but it also postpones the confrontation between the main characters, to the point that the otherwise satisfying dialogue between the pair starts to feel more and more like empty posturing from both sides. It doesn’t help that the final battle we do finally get is more like a pro wrestling match than a duel of the fates.

For the “one scene”, meanwhile, my choice is an early sequence where Mestema sends Paul to what looks like the Greco-Roman underworld, directed by John Buechler, who would go on to rival Allen as the lead effects guy for the Band crew. He is greeted by a horned creature, portrayed with an iffy-looking puppet that resembles a faun more than a demon. (How closely the posited battle of good and evil lines up with Judeo-Christian theology is repeatedly raised but never resolved.) The lord of the underworld promptly summons a squad of zombie-like minions, representing possibly the best effects of the film. Of course, Paul quickly bests the undead, so  the horned creature follows up with a far more sinister vision of the hero’s own undead body, representing his supposedly inevitable defeat. But Paul promptly dispels the apparition, through means that aren’t really explained, leaving the demon-faun apparently impressed. Then Mestema’s voice calls down, warning him that what he has seen is a “future reality”. Paul responds with the line immortalized by Mythbusters: “I reject your reality and substitute my own!”

Rating this movie has been an especially difficult decision. I finally decided the best frame of reference was the other Band films previously featured here. By that standard, it’s certainly an improvement over The Day Time Ended, and vastly so over Laserblast. Comparisons with Terrorvision and Dr. Mordrid are more difficult. This is certainly a more ambitious and sophisticated production than the later films, but we have already seen that the Band crew was usually better off with simplicity. I finally went with 4 out 5, because I genuinely like this one and also because I’ve been getting a little tired of my recent streak of movies that can’t do better or worse than 2 or 3. This is certainly well above the rest of that lot, even if it doesn’t feel as good as it “should” be. If you just want to have a bit of fun, you can do a lot worse. Trust me, I checked.

Rogues' Roundup: Shiny Truckstop Queen variant!

 

I'm already behind a day with posts, so I decided to keep this short, and I also decided it was time to show off one of my latest acquisitions. I've already devoted much of this feature to the Truckstop Queen and her sisters. Recently, I finally shelled out a little extra to get one more for the family. This time, I'm  calling her the Trailer Park Princess, or just Cameron. Here's a closeup of the new girl, more or less in the packaging, with Cassie, the other figure I purchased in box (and the stand).

The backstory for this one is that the manufacturer, Moore Action Collectibles, did a variant of the short-haired version of Cordelia from their Buffy/ Angel line. This time, she came with a bright red top and black pants, as well as the same accessories originally included with the "long hair" version. The figure was released in supposedly limited numbers at comic conventions in 2002. As previously mentioned, prices run higher than for other figures, though the numbers usually top out at about $50. I got this specimen for about $15 before shipping. When I got it, I opened the box for closer examination of the figure and accessories. For the moment, I have kept the figure in the inner plastic packing, in large part because I figured out with Cassie that you can't really put them back. Here's one more pic.

The big surprise with the Princess is that everything is shiny. The top is almost metallic, while the pants are so glossy they shine on their own. The hair also looks just a little lighter, though I can't tell for sure. Finally, the button for the pants is painted a brassy-copper color that just might show up in one or two of these pics. The downside is that something in the paint or plastic didn't age well. I tried a little handling of the figure and found a number of places where the surface felt soft or even sticky; in the process, I added some smudges that won't be visible to anyone but me. That ended up being a major reason I put the figure back in the box, because I definitely don't want to see what happens if dust gets stuck to her. 

Meanwhile, I tried out the accessories, and once again discovered these figures don't hold their own any better. The main items were a rather large purse and an axe. On testing, the purse wouldn't stay on the Queen's shoulder, despite being literally made for the figure, but it worked with the short-haired figures. Then there was the axe, which is very wonky but clearly intended to look cool above all else. Here's pics with the Queen and Cassie holding the accessories.

What is this thing, an armored laptop bag?

For some reason, everyone compliments my outfit when I'm holding an axe.

The figure also came with two small accessories, which I temporarily lost when taking the pics for this post. One is supposed to be a stake, but really looks more like a very fat pencil. The other is a flashlight, which judging from other collectors' photos never seems to have come out quite right. Despite their small size, they proved almost impossible to get in any figure's hands. Here's the Truckstop Queen barely holding the remaining accessories.

Why do you keep asking if I need batteries?

All in all, I certainly don't regret the purchase, but I'm still not sure what to do with this one, which is one more reason the Princess is staying in her box. For any display, the rest of the sisters are more than enough. While I'm at it, here's one more pic. Ooh, the shiny!

That's all for now, more to come!