Rogues' Roundup: 1980s super tank toys

 

I'm aiming for a full lineup this week, and I decided it was time to cover another of my minor collections. We've already seen how the action figure boom pushed army men and other smaller toys to the edges of the market. But it wasn't all gloom and doom for small-scale toys, as Micro Machines hit the market in the late 1980s, and at least a few other manufacturers looked at competing products. The present lineup is perhaps the pinnacle of the minor trend, a line that used the small scale for very big ideas. Here's a pic of the first specimen I acquired of Mega Force.

This all started in perhaps 2015 when I found this at collectibles shop that's long since closed (also where I found the Imperial rubber dragon). It's a plastic tank a bit bigger than a tow car, with a spring-loaded missile and a smaller vehicle that fits in a sort of bay in the front. I quickly figured out that it was from a line called Mega Force (see Super Toy Archive). This particular entry is called Brimstone, further described as a "Tactical Missile Carrier". A schematic card describes its payload as "900 shaped charges each with effective radius of 1000 m". (Surely I don't need to point out that shaped charges are built to bore holes in things rather than area effect.) It's also stated that the little tank, apparently smaller than certain others, is an antiaircraft vehicle, with the ability to stand on its tail to no practical benefit. It belongs to a faction called the V-Rocs, one of two that are posited apparently without any accompanying mythology to settle who would be the "good guys". Here's a few more pics.

What stood out about this was that, behind the gimmicks and the bright colors of the missile, this is a pretty sensible vehicle. It looks to come out at maybe 50 feet long, about twice as long as most tanks. The secondary tank is clearly styled as a light vehicle (borne out by others from the line that I've seen but don't have), probably more suited to reconnaissance than actual defense. What's debatable is the lack of any secondary armament. If you're carrying a primary weapon like that missile, staying 10 kilometers or even 50 behind the front lines won't matter. (The stats give the range as 100 km, which is very conservative.) On the other hand, you certainly have the room for enough armament to repel or slow down an enemy advance. A lot would depend on whether that launcher could fire any smaller munitions. What it really looks like is a greatly magnified version of the infamous Davy Crockett, which turned a relatively conventional recoilless artillery piece into a nuclear spigot mortar. For further perspective, here it is with a model of a Karl self-propelled mortar (actual length 36 feet), almost certainly the largest and heaviest vehicle ever used in real-world combat.

Next up is my recent acquisition, called the Crossbolt, representing the opposing force known as Triax. In a common denominator for this line, it doesn't exactly "look" like anything. Still, it's built on reasonably functional lines, at least from the outside... and as we'll see momentarily, the inside is another matter entirely. Here's some pics.

The posited purpose of this contraption is to launch aircraft, a concept that just about reaches the benchmark of remotely sane. Per my research, it would have originally come with a helicopter; this one has a jump-jet that would serve equally well. The trouble is the launch method, which is exactly the kind of play gimmick that would make no real sense even if the thing didn't weigh 1,000 tons minimum.

Yeah, the tank would be crushed, but it makes more sense than anything else.

And here's a lineup of the vehicles viewed from below.

That brings us to the last of the lineup, which I picked up after the first one but still a while ago, a combination sort of thing where the parts work, but don't quite add up to a whole. It's called Strikemaster, and also belongs to Triax, which seems to be winning the super-vehicle arms race. It's a launch platform for a shuttle with berths for two vehicles. As it turns out, the shuttle holds the tank better that the missile platform ever did (the square socket in the bottom matches the clamps in the shuttle bay), but I just couldn't make it work with the jump jet. Here's the lineup of pics I took.

Awesome!

Wait, what???

...Huh?...

Nope, not getting in there.

And rather than labor the point, how about a little mixing and matching? I'm embarrassed how much more sense this makes.

And now it's time to wrap this up. It will suffice to say that Mega Force didn't last past 1989. Despite the short lifespan, they still don't command high prices.  In further hindsight, it was a product for a market that didn't yet exist, one that would aim at adult collectors as much as kids. It was at least a worthy effort from a great company, which just might have done better at a later date. That's all for now, more to come!