I'm just off my Halloween run, which I went through at one-a-weekday output while readership was crashing. Now I'm back to start my first "off week" lineup since summer, and I decided it was time to deal with some backlogged material. As it happens, I went to a showing of Ghostbusters over Halloween weekend, and while I was at the theater, I picked up something to add to a little collection I've been building up. Here's a profile pic of the guy that started this.
Apparently, this is a character called Muncher from the upcoming sequel/ reboot Ghostbusters Afterlife, which I'm not even going to get started on. I sighted him on sale along with a decent Slimer and so-so Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man. What got me interested was that the look was as much in line with the Ghostbusters cartoon as any incarnation of the movie franchise. I noticed a further resemblance to a tardigrade, which I knew about long before I caught wind of their current "meme" status. As a toy, it's well-made with a pleasant feel. There's some sense of articulation in the body, and he will kind of wiggle his arms if you squeeze him. The one thing I find off is that there are two pleats in the body that will almost implode. Whether this puts any strain on the toy remains to be seen. Here's one more pic from behind.
What this brought me back to is the Kenner Real Ghostbusters line. What I remember first and foremost is that as a kid, I was more impressed by the cartoon than the movie, though I only watched it occasionally. In further hindsight, I would still say that the show was better than the movie to whatever extent they can be compared. At the very least, it exceeded the standards of competing media vastly more than the movie ever could have, if only because it was the tail end of the animation "Dark Age", and unlike the movie, it was taken seriously enough for others to follow its example. By comparison, the toys were just strange, silly and random, yet they certainly looked fun, appealing, and exactly the kind of thing I was never going to get from anyone in my family. I watched them come and go, for a while naively trying to match them to the relatively few episodes I had seen. Eventually, I traded for exactly one, a particularly odd creature I undoubtedly still have but couldn't find on short notice. Meanwhile, the one that really stayed on my mind was this...
In a line with 10 increasingly gimmick-heavy waves, this was easily the most bizarre and the most inconceivable at any other time. It was called Fearsome Flush and originally released in 1989, not even that far into the run. I took notice when reissues of the Kenner line started appearing about a year ago. Even so, I would never have thought this would be among them until I saw it on the shelves a few months back. I promptly bought it, just to have an example. Here's a few more pics.
What I quickly determined when I examined this was that this worked by a sort of friction mechanism. If you push it, a set of wheels in the base will make the mouth open and shut. I quickly assessed this as a limitation on the play value, if any. Most action-gimmick toys, including others in this line, have a simple switch or trigger, for good reason. And in any event, how would a chase scene even work? If this thing didn't catch a victim by the backside in the first strike, then it's going to have to go through the door or the wall to pursue for any distance. What really stood out almost immediately is that this is yet another transforming toy where the "alt mode" is more useful than the "gimmick" (see the Rock Lords, and the Gobots movie). Action figure lines were always light on civilian equipment, and you certainly weren't going to see realistic plumbing fixtures in a GI Joe set. Alas, it quickly became clear that this was nowhere near the right scale for 3.75-4 in "standard:" figures. Here's some pics to show what I mean, and yes, I'm getting ahead of myself...
As seen above, the tank on this thing is higher than
Sidekick Carl (though it might fit
his girlfriend), and not a lot smaller than the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. It might work better with one of the larger figure lines, which were generally more suitable for a domestic scene anyway. As usual, I tried the
Truckstop Queen, but even then, this doesn't look quite right.
Of course, her hips already have the range of motion of an arachnoid battle mech...
That brings us to the centerpiece, the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. Per the lore, this was one of the first two toys released for the Kenner line, the other being Slimer. This was one I really wanted back then, though I'm pretty sure I didn't really understand what he was supposed to be. Of course, the actual character was kaiju-sized, and was really just the form of the proto-Semitic entity Gozer which the Ghostbusters either killed or blew back into the interdimensional realm. Of course, this was ignored by the show and the toys, and the kids never cared. In any event, I got this one online last Halloween, in reissue packaging that seemed to be from Canada. Here's some unboxing pics I saved.
This guy is simply awesome. The articulation is very limited, just two simple joints in the arm plus the head. The material is soft rubber stuff of exactly the kind that ages horribly. And, it's everything a kid or collector could want. Here's some pics of him in full 3-points-of-articulation glory.
Hey, this was Plan B in the movie!
And that's enough to wrap this up. This was a fun trip down memory lane, and a chance to put down my thoughts on why my experiences with this franchise weren't the same as other people's. I definitely will be doing more, but haven't quite decided what. For now, I have one more of the kind of toy blog I haven't been doing as much of. That's all for now, more to come!
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