Rogues' Roundup: The giant Tonka lady and the Toxo Warriors

 

It's the first post of the month, on the first day of the month, and to shake things up, I'm not doing a movie review (possibly because I didn't have time to make one). Instead, I'm bringing one more chapter in the saga of Sidekick Carl and the Tonka Play People. Last week, we looked at a camper playset made for Tonka's semi-obscure action figure line, and tested how well  Sidekick Carl worker with the manufacturer's much larger dump trucks. This time around, I'm back with another  new acquisition, one of the truly mysterious 5-inch Tonka figures that I thought I might have had growing up, and it happens to be one of the women in the line. Here's a few pics of the new arrival with Carl and Connie, the Gas Station Duchess.

"Well, nobody would judge a woman for being with a 7-and-1/2-foot-tall man..."

In the course of further investigations, I've bee focused on trying to learn more about the history of the Play People, which others have estimated to begin in 1978 and end in 1982. Along the way, I hoped to clarify why they were made in 2 different scales. My search finally brought me to the Tonka catalogs, notably at Parry Game Preserve and Neat Old Toys. The main thing I learned is that Sidekick Carl was almost certainly the most common Play People figure, something I already suspected. What I discovered was that the catalog at the first link showed by my count seven vehicles and playsets that included the figure, including at least two color variants. I also found at least one 5-inch figure, a blond guy usually in a blue jumpsuit that was frequently included with a "cherrypicker" utility truck I may have encountered in the wild, often with the soon-to-be-extinct Bell logo. Here's a closeup from an online listing of the guy in an intact box

The lady proved trickier. I suspected that she was used with a Winnebago vehicle, which had previously come with earlier, doll-like figures. However, I never found a packaged specimen that might confirm this. I found a better lead with a set called the Backcountry Explorer, a large-size vehicle sometimes shown with only the guy and in others with both him and the lady. I took the most interest in this page from a 1983 UK catalog, which I have zoomed in on about as much as possible. Here, the Play People are shown still available in 1983, though the 1982 retirement date is not ruled out for the U.S. More surprisingly, the 5-inch figures are still in the mix, possibly available for individual sale, with two color versions of both the guy and the lady.

Meanwhile, I decided it was time to tell a little more about Carl's story. While he looks like an ordinary motorcyclist/ race car driver, he came into my playtime as cyborg slave that the hero Husky freed from the undersea lair of a mad scientist (a backstory I developed after I technically killed him). I think he was supposed to have been human originally, but it never played a role in any of my storylines. At any rate, his cyborg parts included a sort of regenerating nanotech that could repair him whenever he got shot, slashed or chewed on by generic Godzilla. (For the life of me, I can't remember how he actually died, though taking his head off might do the trick.) Needless to say, the company he usually ran into was not friendly or pleasant. With a little digging, I fished out a pair of old acquaintances, which I tricked out enough to qualify as original characters. Here are the Toxo Warriors, quite possibly the most deadly and flat-out evil villains I've ever created.

These particular rogues were never really on track to be "major" villains, but I know they appeared in at least two of my "plays" which routinely went on for days and often weeks. Obviously, they started out as Playmobil figures, the only two all-yellow figures that were fully usable, and I built them up with extra parts from one or more firefighter playsets. (The only piece of their old gear I couldn't find was the right-sized hose.) What stands out as I try to piece this together is that they were never in it for world domination or any other objective I can recall. They just carried out various experiments in their lab, stole assorted materials they didn't have already, and gassed anyone who got in the way or just crossed their path when they were bored. Again, these guys were absolutely evil, because they wanted to be. What's all the more striking is that the defeats that I can recall happened not because Husky and Carl bested them but because a trap backfired or one of their experiments simply blew up at random. One more thing, a big part of what brought them to mind, is that they uses one (maybe both!) of the Tonka dump trucks on at least one escapade.  Here they are actually in the medium-sized truck.

With adventures like that under his belt, Carl is definitely overdue for a romantic interest. The lady might not be ideal, but I don't plan on getting more Play People in the foreseeable future. On top of that, I actually got the lady for quite a bit less than many "standard" figures. In the course of my inquiries, I finally confirmed that Carl is indeed exactly 3.75 inches tall, which further suggests that Tonka was more exact about consistent size than the Star Wars figures they were imitating to some extent. Taking his height at either 5 foot 6" or 6 feet, that would puts Lady Tonka somewhere between 7 and 8 feet, obviously very tall, especially for a woman, but marginally believable anatomically. Needless to say, I tried out how they might look as a pair, so here's a few story pics to round things out.

"Actually, getting picked up and mauled by a giant is kind of my kink."

If you do this once, it will take twice as long to do it twice. Then you will never, ever do it again.

With that, I'm wrapping this up for now, though I still have a bit more material to work with. As always, more to come!