Mystery Monday: Minor mysteries

 

It's another Monday toy blog, and I decided it was time for a few more mysteries. This time around, I have a lineup of toys, mostly in the "midsized" range, that took me a long time and a fair amount of effort to identify. To start thing off, here's T Bob, one of many bots I picked up without knowing what he was. Then years later, I found out he's T Bob!

 Next up is the Construx pilot guy, shown here with Sidekick Carl and the Dino Riders Hammerhead pilot. I introduced all three in my original Dropped Pilots post (see also the Play People Rogues' Roundup for more on Carl), but I found I had lost track of my Construx guy, which I discovered stuffed in the accessory compartment of a Star Wars carrying case. (Or, now that I think about it, it might have been a tin of crayons.) Alas, my own figure remains missing, but I finally picked up a duplicate.

Here's another shot of the Construx guy with the midsize/ 3 inch Marx space guys including The Space Guy Who Doesn't Care, who was AWOL for a while. The Construx guy's height has been estimated as 3 inches, while the space guys are sized at 70mm. In fact, the space guys are indeed just a little shorter, so the official figures for both of them make sense.

Along with the Construx guy, I picked up another Construx pilot that was apparently made for military-themed playsets late in the line. (I can just remember seeing some of them on the shelves.) He looks like a recolor with a new mold for the head, but in fact, there are a number of points where the the two figures differ in detailing and overall proportions. The most significant difference is that the military guy has a really long and wonky neck, and considering how beautiful the original looked, I cannot fathom why they ever messed with it. Here's some more shots with the space guys.

Next up is the centerpiece of the exhibit, the divers, which I have no memory of getting. For a very long time, all I knew was that they were two of the very best "army man" figures I ever had. They're also big, not quite a match for the space guys but well above the 2 inch army man scale. I finally looked them up before I was sure I could still find them both. With a few searches for basic terms, I discovered they were part of a line called GUTS from Mattel. They were sold in boxed sets, similar to what I remember for MUSCLES and Battle Beasts (definitely due for their own post), with themes according to their armament and specialties. Here's a few shots for detail.

"I don't know how I can fire a bazooka under water, but I look awesome doing it."

Next up is the odd one, which I think I picked from a prize bin at school. He looks like an army man, but bigger with a lot more detail and what could pass for a point of articulation at the waist. Unfortunately, he isn't nearly as well-done as the diver, plus somebody apparently decided he didn't need a neck. He's incredibly lame, but I can remember not only playing with him but making him a lead villain in one of my "plays" with Husky and Sidekick Carl. When I was taking pics for this post, I finally took a closer look. I found a mark literally right on his backside, with the year '87 and the name "Panosh". It meant nothing in itself, but it sounded way too familiar. Sure enough, I discovered there was a line of little guys called Combat Commandos from Panosh Place, the same company that made the Voltron mystery red guy featured in the first Mystery Monday. Here's a couple pics with some more of the lineup, including the Starcom guy.

Something's off, but still not as messed up as that guy's neck.

Finally, here's two more figures, closer to the army man scale. The first is one I got as an arcade prize in early to middling 1990s, I'm sure based on the Zoids line, narrowly left out of the Legion of Silly Awesome Dinosaurs Dinobots post. I once found pics from someone who had this and one other bot I remember seeing with him, but have yet to find any explanation where they came from. Also present is a guy who previously popped up with the 35mm aliens, whom I have dubbed the Nuclear Samurai. What's somewhat uncanny is that I've confirmed the presence of a quite lengthy mark on the base, but anything that might be useful has remained unreadable no matter how closely I look. I would swear that somebody tried to wipe out the text, as if "they" didn't want the manufacturer known. Here's some pics of the pair together.

Robot dinosaur? Radiation suit samurai? Someone did not think this through.

Finally, here's one more lineup pic.

That's all for now, more mysteries, more to come!