Retrobots Revisited: Rogun knockoff spinoff not-Gobots robots

While I have been meaning to get to this post for a very long time, its immediate genesis was a matter of chance. In the vast world of cheap, cheesy and/ or weird 1980s-vintage toys, there is one name so notorious, prolific and unrepentant you can run across them at random: Arco Toys, one of the most prolific producers of vintage low-budget toys. They turned up previously as the only company to admit to making or distributing the notorious "patchisaurs", and I immediately knew them. Yet, I was still being reminded of their creations in the course of researching this piece. The company was best known for generic toys, knockoffs and equally sketchy licensed "rack toys", which they continued to produce even as other prolific offenders were folding or fading away. They also had a somewhat uncanny ability to release knockoffs at the same time or even ahead of the properties that were theoretically being ripped off, notably releasing The Other World the same year as He Man and Space War before Kenner's first Star Wars figures. I can think of no better summary of their work than a quote from Toy Galaxy: "There are good toys, there are bad toys, and there are Arco toys!"

To pick up the trail from the other end, my original encounter with the items under consideration would have happened in the late-ish 1980s, perhaps as early as 1987 or as late as 1989. Somewhere in the midst of other acquisitions, I picked up two robot figures sculpted in "army man" scale, probably as a reward in school. They obviously didn't make a strong impression immediately, but they stood out in my collection for their unusual level of detail and overall quality, which compared favorably to plenty of larger and more sophisticated robot toys. I was particularly impressed with the sculpt shown at the top of this post, which I thought of as "H" for the symbol on its/ his faceplate. I also recognized that the design of both bots seemed intended for peaceful tasks, without a hint of the weaponry that bristled from more typical robot toys then and now. Over time, they became a go-to for a space expedition, typically led by a Timmee Galaxy Laser Team astronaut I also had lying around. Here's a pic of my original pair with a couple Timmee figures:

As usual with these things, I only picked up on what the figures were in the era of the internet. In the course of learning about other toys (mainly GLT and "patchis"), I discovered that my bots had been part of a larger set called RoGun Robots, originally released in 1984 around the same time as a series of Gobots with a similar name. Of those who knew of the set, many were unimpressed or entirely critical, frequently further criticizing them as a knockoff of the Gobots line. I further concluded that the ones I had were by a wide margin the best. Still, I searched intermittently for examples on sale, and eventually found a set on sale. Here's a pic of a full selection:

It will already be evident that the critics had a point. The entirety of the set is six sculpts in three undistinguished colors, and since they were typically sold in bags of 48, the whole would have been far less impressive than the individual bots. There were also plenty of flaws with the design of the sculpts. My original pair were reasonably functional, particularly H, but not especially dynamic. I also never could think of a reason for H to have a letter on his face, no matter how much I wanted to. The next best is the short robot with the raised arms. Its design generally matches the aesthetics of the other two, while the pose adds enough flair to hint at actual motion. Here's more pics.

Things quickly go downhill with the remaining three. I consider the next runner up to be the one with the hemispherical head. It still another looks functional, but to me the design hints at a militaristic purpose out of character with the others. The last and least both looked as if they are supposed to fly, with one I think of as "Whirler" even having what look like tiny engines on the end of each arm. Here's more pics of these lesser bots, including what seems to be a variant of the Whirler sculpt.

Now, we can circle back to the bigger questions. Were these bots merely knockoffs? Are they any better or worse than other offerings from Arco? At the end of the day, did Arco toys really deserve the notoriety they have received? The honest answer is that Arco was no more guilty than the larger players they took their cues from. When Hasbro's Transformers and Tonka's Gobots arrived simultaneously in US stores, both lines were little if anything more than amalgamations of toys originally sold separately in Japan. While Transformers would focus on unifying existing and new designs under a common mythology and aesthetic, the Gobots line made an equally defensible and certainly more economical decision to continue accepting new items from available suppliers and worry about continuity later, if at all. Of course, one of the companies they turned to was Arco. 

Unfortunately, there is little room for argument about the results that followed. Arco delivered a whopping four Ro-Gun bots that resembled bootleg Megatrons from the Bizarro continuum, and several more of the worst and most ridiculed toys to be sold under the Gobots' already tarnished name. I might normally say something in defense at this point, but I must say that the actual Gobots were clearly inferior to the 2-inch toys.  (However, my pick for worst Gobot would have to be the mind-boggling ScooterBot, which I was mildly surprised to find had nothing to do with Arco.) For some reason, Arco decided to reuse the same name for their bagged army man bots, and the rest is history.

Unfortunately, the postscript is that Arco was soon to follow its products into history. While thee is no evidence that the Arco Gobots lost money, they seem to mark the end of the line for the company as a creative force.  The toys that they produced afterward were just as cheap, but with hardly a trace of the streak of psychedelic, near-psychotic imagination that had made seemingly routine products either beloved or notorious. The end of the line surely came when the company was bought out by Mattel in 1986. The toys that came after are like the tributes of a conquered and humiliated vassal, Captain Power dart gun sets, second-tier Disney merchandise and loads of Barbie accessories. It was an ignominious and for and infamous company, but while they lasted, they left a legacy that will linger on in the minds of anyone who lived through it. Because it turns out nostalgia and PTSD are pretty close to the same thing.

Again, I have saved the bulk of the links for last, and this time there are plenty!
Little Weirdos Rogun Robots and The Other World, because this site has everything.
Toy Galaxy Ro-Gun Cap Rifle review, source of the quote in the opening paragraph.
Little Rubber Guys forum discussion of Rogun 2 inch bots
That Junkman overview of Space War
CollectionDX reviews of Arco Destroyer and Aircraft Carrier Gobots

Miniature Giants Part 4: The Good, the Marx and the Ugly

In this series on large-size Marx toys, this post brings things full circle. When I was a kid in the early to mid 1980s, sci fi/ fantasy toys were the rage, and my choices in toys certainly reflected it. But there were a fair number of usually ill-fated attempts to revive Western-themed toys, presumably fueled by parents and grandparents.who were nostalgic for the cowboys-and-Indians crazes of their own childhoods, and these too came into my toybox in enough numbers to make an impression. There were playsets from the larger Little People and Playmobil lines, which tended to blend in with farm-themed sets from the same manufacturers. There were old-style "army man" figures, including a "swoppet" set I'm still fishing out pieces of. I even had a few figures including a horse from the merchandise line for The Legend of the Lone Ranger, which I must have received years after the movie had come and gone. But the one that really made an impression was a giant Marx Indian, featured on the far right, which I now know was originally released in 1964. Here's another pic of the figure with one of the Japanese soldiers.

This is one where I have a particularly clear recollection of how I obtained the figure. In 1987, I played with the toy in a doctor's office and convinced the doctor to let me take it home, which I now hope means it wasn't an uncommon item. As I figured out what it was (around the time I acquired and then identified the Japanese soldiers), I took it as a given that it was a reissue or copy; I even thought it might have been even bigger than 6 inches, based on recollections of holding it in much smaller hands. However, it was only in the course of preparing this series that I fished it out for closer inspection,  and was a little unnerved to see the authentic Marx stamp on the base. I ordered the two other featured figures in hopes of comparison, and am now satisfied that it most likely was manufactured during Marx's later days, perhaps the mid-70s or later, I have further noted a little bit of translucent "flash" around the base, similar to that on the Soviet officer. Here's some closeup pics of this and a second Indian I obtained.

Yeah, I'm putting my money on the guy with the gun.

Along with the second Indian, I acquired a cowboy/ gunslinger, clearly sculpted as one of Marx's particularly notorious "casualty" figures (covered in a previously referenced article here), which I will be getting to in more detail. What both figures have in common is that they are posed on one foot with an unusually small base that I found noticeably springy. Despite this, the figures are quite stable. I further determined that both figures were missing parts, specifically two feathers on the Indian's head band and a revolver that would have been dangling from the gunslinger's open hand. On closer inspection, I could not find unequivocal signs of breakage, particularly on the Indian, suggesting that the molds may have been streamlined at an early date. With a little further research I found pictures of specimens of the gunslinger missing the gun without other apparent damage, including one still in packaging, which I will also get to below.

As for the gunslinger itself, there is really very little that can be said. The pose in itself is stereotyped and almost tame, clearly based on the movie convention of a defeated villain dramatically clutching his chest before dropping tidily to the ground. The expression, however, is truly horrid, almost but not quite to the point of being comically grotesque. There is also even more detail than usual, including separately sculpted fingers. Here are few more pics.

Now, we can get to the usual postscript, with a little bredth and depth than usual. By the late 1980s,the Western genre had been dragged down by a series of high profile failures, including the above-mentioned Lone Ranger film and the even bigger bomb Heaven's Gate. Some of the last noteworthy Western productions were science-fictional crossovers, and even then the results were uneven. The most notable and ambitious was surely the 1987-1988 cartoon Bravestar, produced by Filmation with possibly more weirdness than usual. That experiment lasted long enough for a modest toy line, but ultimately left more of an impression on those (admittedly including myself) who saw ads and clips years later than on anyone who watched it at the time.  The one inarguable success was Back to the Future 3, released in 1990, which on top of being a critical and commercial success managed to provide at least a fair compromise between movie/ TV conventions and comparatively realistic depictions of Old West life.

Meanwhile, Marx continued production of Western toys to the very end and ultimately beyond. Wild West playsets continued well into the 1970s, while others reused parts from earlier Wester sets, egregiously the surreal 1960s Guerilla Warfare set. The company even released the "Ready Gang" line of Wild West action figures in 1977-1978, among the first of a boomlet of Western figures that the Lone Ranger tie-in line marked the end of. Then, even Marx slipped away, its Mexican affiliate Plastimarx ground on with Western products including large-size figures. I am sure that this is the source of the most significant artifact of the line,  the above-mentioned bagged sets, which are sighted easily enough in online auctions. Typical specimens consist of easily recognized Marx figures identified as made in Mexico and sold under the generic label "Cowboys And Indians". Unfortunately, I was unable to find any further information about them, the chief reason I am not including links to any image of the set, but I have no doubt these sets were made well after 1980, and might even be in production today.

Finally, let's take one more look at the ill-fated gunslinger from a different angle. Not much more to see, just more Marx detail… Wait a minute...

Truly, the past was more messed up than we can imagine.

Here's links for the earlier installments

Enemy Marx

Marx Marxists!

Marx on the Moon!

Legion of Silly Dinosaurs! The Patchisaurs And Friends, or Knockoffs Are Forever

For this installment, I'm bringing you what this blog was always meant to cover, the world of dinosaur toys. I have loved dinos (for which this blog is named) and prehistoric creatures for all my life, and I have been indulged by family and friends with all manner of related toys and collectibles. In the course of time, I have had some of the very best, from high-quality toys to museum grade models. But as with many things, the ones that have always stayed in my memory are the small, cheap and obscure. This fascination has led me to discover genre which I call the "generic dino": The seemingly untraceable yet oddly specific designs and sculpts, often dated or wholly fanciful even for much earlier days, handed down like oft-told tales from one anonymous manufacturer to another, to appear and reappear years and decades apart. And in this already vast and tangled category, none are more notorious and seemingly unkillable than a group of Asian sculpts known as the patchisaurs, which look less like dinosaurs than alien monsters from another dimension as portrayed in a Godzilla movie seen during an acid trip. Here are pics of what I am convinced to be the "main" group:

The tale of these creatures has been told often enough that I will recap it quite briefly. In the early to mid 1970s, sets of strange toys believed to originate from Hong Kong began appearing in American discount stores. It was clear that the sculpts were influenced heavily by Japanese "kaiju" movies and related TV shows, to the extent that sleuths have directly tied several to specific movies. They soon gained notoriety among adults as well as children, particularly when several were incorporated into the original "Dungeons and Dragons" games. Despite this attention, their origin remained mysterious both then and now. In the course of my own research, I found pictures of at least one preserved bag bearing the legendary Arco name, which will certainly be appearing here. However, it is possible (particularly given the company's known reputation) that they either copied another manufacturer's designs or simply packaged and distributed figures produced elsewhere.

My own experience starts a decade later. In the late 1980s, I picked up at least two and possibly a good part of the set as prizes at school and perhaps arcades. I particularly recall one I named Clubtail, and now find suspiciously similar to Gorgo. I also remember the one now sometimes called umberhulk based on certain red copies but which I only ever saw in white as shown above. I took that one as a sort of a dragon-like alien, and as far as I recall I considered the bits around the mouth to be insectoid mandibles. I think I also had at least one more of the "upright" creatures, which I have dubbed the Armadillo Guy and Flattop. I'm almost certain I had or at least saw the one I have always thought of simply of as "Leaper", an absolutely evil-looking creature that resemble nothing so much as a chubacabra. Here's a few more closeups, including a recent copy/ clone of Clubtail.

"I vant to suck your goat. My friend vill curl into a ball and roll away."

"I feel pretty..."

Then around 1990, I spent a chunk of allowance money to buy a bagged set at a local grocery store. By this time, I think I had lost at least some of the figures I had acquired before, and I believe the ones I have now are all from the set except for one (the "bulette") I bought quite recently. I recall it was at this time that I found the insect-like creature immortalized by D&D as the rust monster, which I tend to associate vaguely with the landstriders in The Dark Crystal. It also included some comparatively realistic dinos that may have been made along with the original "patchis", particularly a pterosaur/ Pteranodon that I have encountered many times since. Other "normal" dinos that can commonly be seen in patchi bags and lots are clearly copies/ bootlegs of dinos from Marx and other companies in the 1950s and '60s, and I am satisfied that several good Marx copies I still have were from the "patchi" bag. Here are pics of some "Marx clone" sculpts, and my larger collection of the Pteranodon creature. The stegosaurus looks a little too happy, while the rex looks like he's begging for extinction.

It was ultimately the Pteranodon that did the most to keep the line in my mind, in large part because it lacked the near-hallucinogenic weirdness of more notorious patchisaurs. The sculpt details are realistic and downright good enough that it could easily be taken as another clone of a more orthodox dino, and with no conclusive answers on when or how the patchis were first produced, I cannot rule out that it is just that. The one detail that is quite strangely "off" is that feathers are sculpted in place of the wing membrane. Even more strangely, as shown in an extra close up below, the neck and underside of the wing appear to have some kind of hair, an idea suggested in some 19th-century reconstructions but not widely revived until the "warm-blooded" controversies of the 1970s and later.  I also find myself hard-pressed to emphasize just how often I have seen this creature. I have found it in everything from mixed bags at second-hand stores to sets sold at Walmart. Even then, I have usually only bought the damn things if they were include with something else that caught my interest, and I may still have missed one or two that might be lying around in one place or another.

This will be as good a segue as any to their legacy in the age of the internet. By the early 2010s, collectors, D&D fans and other enthusiasts were comparing notes and recognizing the phenomenon. Various nicknames were revived or assigned for various creatures, while the term "patchisaurs" caught on for the line as a whole. Further intrigue quickly swirled around the "owlbear", a sculpt included in the D&D lore but rarely if ever seen since. Today, specimens for sale have about the same status as a Holy Grail used by Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster at Area 51. And yet, new production continues! Here are pics of a boxed set I acquired around 2017, source of the bulette and one of the mutant-rexes as well as yet another Pteranodon. As can be seen, this is more openly fantasy-themed, though it also includes reasonably good representations of the mammals Macrauchenia and Uintatherium.

What I think keeps the patchisaurs in people's minds is that they capture a way of looking at dinosaurs that can stay vivid and relevant long after earnestly "scientific" representations have gone as petrified as fossils. The only artifacts that can rival them in my mind are the very Victorian sculptures of the Crystal Palace exhibitions or the crude and wildly weird roadside dinosaurs of Holbrook, which I used as a stand in for the Apocalypse Now temple in my Terminator fan/ parody novel The Rookie. The greatest impact for me is that I have found myself thinking unbidden of the patchisaurs in connection with far more capable works: The aforementioned Gorgo and The Dark Crystal; the offbrand-kaiju Gamera series; the landscapes of Filmation's sci fi/ fantasy mashups, especially the short-lived Star Trek toon; and even Stephen King's bonkers novella "The Mist". This is surely where the patchisaurs were always meant to be, misfits in a mixed toybox with only the imagination to decide where they should go.

Rather than try to put links in the article, I have assembled a list of the most useful articles I can easily find; unfortunately, there are plenty more I have read at one time or another but either could not be relocated, having missing links and images, or may simply be gone. As often as possible, I have tried to reference material that introduced me to specific subjects.

Little Weirdos "Chinasaurs", a less fortunate name for the patchis. This blog was one of my earliest sources and many other obscure small-scale toys.

An account by Tony DiTerlizzi, including pics of several vintage bags and the recent boxed set I purchased.

A discussion on Little Rubber Guys.

A DumpStat post on the owlbear, a bit heavy on the D&D lore for my personal tastes.

Miniature Giants Part 3: Marx on the Moon!

We're now in part 3 of a series on giant Marx figures, and finally up to what started this: The Marx astronaut line, possibly the most iconic and influential of their creations, and all the more so because casual collectors frequently identify items from completely different manufacturers as part of it. To summarize very briefly, Marx produced "army man" scale astronaut figures throughout the 1950s and 1960s, many of which were a bit fanciful or "retro" even for the time. As the moon landing became a likely reality, Marx conceived something quite different that would be remembered much longer: In place of space men with fishbowl helmets and ray guns, they designed detailed astronauts in modern-looking suits with plausible scientific gear and instruments. In 1970, the world saw the new realistic astronauts in the full glory of 6 inch scale, of which I have acquired five in three different sculpts. Here's a few more sample pics, with the Truckstop Queen and her companion Ken R. Wampa:

Of these figures, the first one I acquired is one I have dubbed Scooper, followed by one I think of as the Commander, aka Briefcase Guy, and last the Cameraman. The first two have been of most interest, to the extent that I chose to buy extra copies of them over buying up a more complete set. It is perhaps most noteworthy that they have reasonably discrete facial features, contrary to the assessment of many critical collectors who consider the sculpts copies of a single individual. There is also some difference in the plastic, with both of the copies of Scooper appearing glossier than the Commander. I am still not satisfied whether this is from the use of different plastics at potentially different dates or some variable of manufacturing and subsequent preservation. On the latter vein, I have noticed that more weathered or simply grimy figures can show detail more sharply. This can be seen with the photo of the two Scoopers above, with the one on the left (and first I obtained) definitely being the more discolored of the two (though not as much as the Wampa I have included for further comparison!) The difference proved most pronounced between the two Commander figures, which an be seen below.

I did discover some more quantifiable variations, which proved easiest to discern in the "backpacks". The most striking is that the "duplicate" Scooper has a quite distinct bulging pack that I suspect represents an earlier version of the mold despite the figure's less aged appearance; unfortunately, it proved quite difficult to capture in photos. I include the following picture as the best I could make, with the bulging pack on the right.

Meanwhile, I had already recognized even more dramatic differences in the cameraman, which apart from anything else measured about 1/4 of an inch shorter. The feel and appearance of the plastic was also far more different than for the other figures, with an almost gray or translucent appearance. I absolutely believe this is a later production with cheaper plastic, though it bears the same production mark as the other figures. This was further born out by far more condition issues including the obliteration of detail on the lens clearly visible I photos of other specimens I used for reference. Despite such flaws, the detail is particularly sharp, and I hoped to further confirm a variant by inspection of the pack. At first, I found this inconclusive, but on further inspection, I concluded that the pack appeared straighter and less "deep", probably to (further?) reduce the amount of plastic. Here's more pics that should also give a better view of this and other figures' details.

On final evaluation, the 6 inch astronauts are among the very best of the large size Marx figures, but also give an all too clear picture of the company's troubles through the following decade. By the best available research, production of the figures probably stopped by the mid-1970s, and it is not difficult to guess why. Though they are shorter than many other nominal 6" figures, they are considerably more heavy and robust, which would have been an increasing liability as Marx's profits declined. They also were placed squarely in the path of the evolving action figure format and the coinciding explosion of science fiction-themed toys. On a deeper level, they embodied the ideals of a moment in time which was already passing. By the 1980s, children were no longer satisfied with the idea of space travel as exploration for its own sake, and Marx would not survive long enough to provide other toys or tales.

If there is a happy postscript, it is that the smaller counterparts went on to a better fate. Though some debate when they were first produced, I see no reason to doubt that they were introduced with the large figures in 1970, and they were certainly still in production at the end of the decade, when they surfaced in several of the very last Marx playsets to be produced, including the Galaxy Command set released in 1979 when the company was already in bankruptcy. More importantly, they set a new standard for detail and realism in science fiction toys, and not just for those on the "army man" scale. I am absolutely sure these little guys were the direct basis of any number of toys that will be featured here sooner or later, particularly the infamous Galaxy Laser Team line that has loomed large both in my childhood and adulthood. If imitation is flattery, the Marx astronauts would have their own pyramid, and you could probably build it entirely with plastic from toys that ripped them off.

For my earlier installments, see here and here. 

Miniature Giants Part 2: Marx Marxists!

As outlined in the previous installment, this series is dedicated to 6" scale figures produced by Marx as a spinoff to their "army men" and other non-articulated figures produced for playsets. So far, my plans have remained in flux as I continue to wait for certain items either not yet delivered or subject to open online auctions. I have also already to make some decisions about what figures should receive their own installments. The ones to be featured here are the ones that have taken longest to decide, a pair of figures representing the Soviet forces of World War 2. Here they are, in full glory:

The background on these is in many ways more inscrutable than the "enemy" Japanese and German figures coming last time. Of course, the Soviets were allies to the US in the Second World War, before becoming perceived adversaries in the Cold War. It is by now generally known that the Soviets were in fact responsible for the most significant ground battles of the war and the heaviest losses both to the Nazis and to the Allies. In the 1960s, when the large size Marx figures were produced, the image of the Soviet Union was more equivocal than might be expected. Diplomatic relations with the western powers had at least marginally improved over the preceding decades, despite the chaotic events of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Of more immediate interest, western media were becoming more honest about their role in World War 2, leading to popular books on battles such as Stalingrad and Kursk and the movies such as Cross of Iron (which I might have the stomach to review sooner or later). Finally, a toy maker would not have ignored that representations of Soviet troops could be used as adversaries both to German and American-proxie figures. Here's another pic:

At face value, these figures don't offer a lot of room for further comment. The rifle-wielding "sniper" is in a purposefully static pose, and would be entirely uninteresting if not for the particularly grim expression. In this respect, it undoubtedly personifies stereotypes of Russians, as well as the stoic masculinity already deeply ingrained in "army men" and other military toys. Then there is the other figure, usually identified simply as "grenade thrower", on more careful consideration clearly intended to represent an officer complete with a Tokarev pistol. The designers clearly intended maximum overemoting, with a fearsome expression and a bizarre pose that defies conventional anatomy. I have literally struggled to capture how strange the figure really is. I finally resorted to posing with my own hand; note especially the right ankle.

One more detail that may be apparent is that the base of the officer figure has extra translucent "flash" around the edges, which may indicate a later "wave" with cheaper plastic and manufacturing methods. However, both bear the Marx imprint, and while the officer has a distinct texture and overall lighter feel, the differences are not nearly as dramatic as what I observed in the "hard plastic" Japanese figures. Surveys of online auctions included many marked as made in Mexico, either with a Plastimarx imprint of Marx's subsidiary there or simply with a sticker that may have been used after the parent company's bankruptcy in 1979-1980. Often, weapons and other parts broken off, particularly a sculpt showing a helmeted infantryman carrying the famous PPSh-41 submachine gun, consistent with lower quality reissues and copies.

As for the overall success of the group, the anecdotal evidence indicates that they are relatively uncommon but not enough to be sought after, in line with a release that made a limited impression then and later. I acquired both of these items for under $10, though the officer was offered as "rare". One more tantalizing lead to come to my attention was a lot comprised of the infantryman and several other Marx sculpts reportedly made in the Ukrainean SSR prior to 1980. Whether this was in any way authorized by Marx, and whether it was in fact made before the company's or for that matter the USSR's demise, is a matter I can find no further data to address.

To close, here's another pose with the Truckstop Queen. If the Cold War had been a limbo contest, this guy would have won it!

See my first installment here.

Miniature Giants Part 1: Enemy Marx

It's been a long time, again, but I'm back with something that should keep me busy for a while. While I had and still have plenty of action figures from vintage and recent lines, my longest running collection has been what I think of as "arcade prize" toys: army men, little dinos, rubber robots, semi generic spaceships, and so forth, typically encountered in prize bins and vending machine capsules with little or no further information on their origin. In the course of my randomized acquisitions, I occasionally ran across a different breed of toy that I've come to appreciate as a category in its own right. These are items clearly based on the tiny non-articulated figure but blown up to much larger size, with an extra level of detail that adds to the most intriguing and/or dysfunctional qualities of their smaller counterparts: humorous, bizarre, self dating, and in hindsight frequently horrifying and occasionally poignant. Few examples could be more egregious than the group under consideration here.

This group was part of a semi official line made in the 1960s by Marx, as a spin off to their popular if notorious toy soldiers, sold up to that point in boxed playsets. The new figures enlarged their familiar figures to a nominal 6 inch size (usually closer to 5 1/2") that could be sold individually. At about the same time, they shifted from making somewhat generic figures clearly modeled on WW2-era US troops to a more diverse range that included "enemy" German and Japanese figures in both regular and large size. The present specimens are, of course, the large-size Japanese figures.

This sat has a further history for me. The dark-colored soldier is an original I purchased recently online. I had picked up the other three as a set years ago at a legendary local used book store. Over time, I figured out what they were, and further concluded that they were a re issue, probably made in Mexico in the 1970s of later. It was also apparent from descriptions and eventual inspections of vintage figures that the reissued figures were made of a harder plastic, evidenced by a clacking sound when handled that I quickly became familiar with. The reissues were also probably more prone to damage, which can be seen on the officer, which is missing not only a finger on the right hand but also a strap for the pair of binoculars. It may appear that there is also a broken bayonet on the soldier with the rifle, but I long since concluded that it was a deliberate alteration to the mold. Here's a couple more shots for comparison:

The altered bayonet particularly intrigued me, and ultimately inspired me to acquire an original. The obvious explanation for the change is that later manufacturers were paranoid about eye injuries, particularly with the harder plastic. In my own investigation, the bayonet on the original proved so flexible that it bent 90 degrees with sufficient force. By further comparison, a katana at the reissue officer's side (only about twice as long as the bayonet) simply twanged like a tooth pick. However, the reissue bayonet is in every other way a worse choice in terms of safety, with a quite strange shape that resembles nothing so much as a convict's shiv. It could certainly do significant damage if jabbed in anger or mere boredom, with the latter being a quite foreseeable reaction from kids who had wanted one of the more expensive action figures that were gradually emerging.

The alternative explanation is that the toy makers were concerned about how parents would react to an already clearly problematic toy. On this vein, I took particular notice of a German/ Nazi soldier that was actually discontinued. Per a quite detailed online catalog that I expect to reference throughout this series, a stormtrooper with a downward-pointed bayonet was deemed graphic and disturbing enough that Marx withdrew the design and replaced it with another mold. The fact that Marx had already issued "casualty" figures of visibly wounded or dying soldiers appears to have escaped further attention.

To wrap up, here's some more pics. I have included a figure I call the Truckstop Queen, otherwise known as Cordelia from the Buffy/ Angel line, whose tale may be told at another time.

Finally, here's the most surreal detail of all, and very possibly a major reason I bought these damn things in the first place.

We've come a long way. possibly mostly downhill.

Silencing Scoville: How I beat a corporate-sponsored cyberbully (and what I learned)

This story starts about 16 years ago, when an individual named Richard Morton Scoville came up with an idea. As a man in his fifth decade of life with no stable address, he depended on overlapping businesses of extorting money through libel and distributing spam on the archaic system known as usenet, and that led to many usenet users criticizing him as a spammer, a libeler and extortionist. He figured out (most likely with the help of one or more far more skilled spammers) that he could manipulate search results for anyone’s name by mentioning them in an excessive number of posts on a network of interconnected usenet archives dominated be Google Groups, directly owned by the search engine giant. He further chose to make sexually explicit and abusive comments about his critics (invariably other men) while pretending to accuse them of committing and being convicted of sex crimes against children. These claims promptly dominated search results for their names, with the clear further threat of being seen by prospective employers. Google magnified the abuse by arbitrarily demanding court orders at his victims’ expense and then ignoring them, allowing Scoville to post much of his content with Google/ Gmail accounts set up in his victims’ own names, and increasingly ignoring Google Groups itself as obsolete and unprofitable.

From all evidence at hand, he did this not in the expectation that police would act on his claims, but only to deprive his victims of employment and income, which even actual sex offenders would have a legal right to. In this regard, he had only one actual success. In 2011, he was actually driven out of one of the forums on Google Groups after a user who had previously posted about disability issues made so many posts exposing him as a fraud and a criminal that the “group” was shut down. He promptly singled out the same individual for abuse over a self-disclosed diagnosis of Asperger’s/ Autism Spectrum Disorder, and By the middle of the year, he escalated to harassing a nationally known organization for the disabled that had given services to the victim, solely over a single comment made using their equipment.  The result was that the victim was released from a nominally paid position that had never come close to providing sustainable income, without being given the opportunity to consult with a lawyer or those who had set up the job. This did not stop Scoville from continuing to make abusive posts against the organization along with the original victim, until Google reversed its policies and began removing his content from Google Groups on demand in 2018.

That victim was me, and as of the time of this writing, I have spent five years working for three employers in an industry once considered unsuitable due to my disability. During that time, I have also removed the vast majority of Scoville’s attacks against me, after personally reporting Scoville and his enablers at Google and other companies to multiple law enforcement agencies but without spending anything on legal action. Many people have encouraged me to tell my story, so I have now assembled my “lessons” from beating a cyberstalker.

1          Nobody will EVER ask (unless you mention it).

The most central reality of cyberstalking is that stalkers depend on stigma and prejudice to do the real harm for them, especially in the work force, and Scoville may well be the most egregious case. But judging from my own experience and the accounts of other victims, this was always a largely empty threat. In particular, there has been literally no instance when I or anyone else who has given an account was questioned about Scoville’s claims in the course of an actual job application. I am inclined to attribute this to two things. First, there is already enough robust anti-discrimination legislation in place, including provisions in sex offender registration laws, that it will almost always be a greater risk for an employer to act on an anonymous accusation than to hire the accused party anyway. Second, those using the internet to make accusations without substance have always been in the role of the boy who cried wolf; the louder and more often they make their claims, the more they will be ignored. If anything, returning to the first point, they have made it harder for an employer to identify and act on a substantiated allegation, a fact that should be prominently raised to anyone who might still defend their actions as “free speech”.

The one advantage stalkers do have is that they can stir up paranoia, especially when they are able to identify a current employer- exactly the circumstance reported by every one of Scoville’s victims who faced questions from an employer. The core reality here, particularly for men, is that even “proactive” measures like a prepared debunking are defensive at best, and the accused will always be at a psychological disadvantage. I may never have been asked about Scoville or even being let go from my old job in an interview, but there were plenty of times I went into one more prepared to disprove his claims than to justify myself as a good fit for that job. With this mentality in place, anyone chosen and trained to pick up subtleties of personality and behavior is very likely to pick up “something” off, and the foreseeable outcomes are worse for a victim than if a stalker’s defamatory claims are openly acknowledged.

I will mention here one more thing I have noticed. Cyberstalkers of all types have a history of singling out people in the broadly “non-profit” sphere, such as schools, government agencies, charities and the performing arts. Based on my own experiences, I have no doubt this is a matter of tactical reasoning. To begin with, organizations outside the “private” sphere are more likely to continue practices that are outmoded or flatly illegal in current conditions. Since they are directly dependent on public money, they are also genuinely vulnerable to public outcry and scandal. Finally, even groups that are “liberal” in aims and ideology tend to have a conservative internal culture, especially when it comes to sexuality. The implication is that stalkers are already focusing on the most vulnerable elements of the workforce, and even then, they are “winning” barely if at all.

2           All bullying is sexual.

This is as good a point as any to make the usual disclaimer: Women are much more vulnerable to all forms of sexual abuse and harassment. However, many of the same patterns and attitudes can readily be documented between preteen and adolescent boys. Long before encountering Scoville, I saw schoolboys of the 1980s seemingly become obsessed with who was “gay” while it was still a matter of teasing to “like” a girl. While Scoville was by then well into his 40s, what can be known of his thoughts and attitudes are indistinguishable from a ten-year-old of ca 1990. In his puerile repertoire, all women (invariably family of male victims) are diseased “sluts” and “whores” while all men other than himself are ineffectual “fags” first and supposedly threatening “pedophiles” second, because in the pre-adolescent variety of homophobia even orthodox heterosexuality is degraded and dangerous. The only times Scoville rose above preoccupation with other men’s sexuality was singling me out over my disability. However, he did not in any way diminish his de-masculinizing language, always insinuating that my disability proves I am weak and he is strong, because homophobic bullying has never been about sexual orientation but sexualized dominance.

What remains unsaid is that men are vulnerable in ways that women are not, especially in the often male-dominated online world. The bizarre “Pizzagate” rumor cycle (about which I have a vast body of unpublished research) has been a quintessential illustration of this, literally set off by a strangely enthusiastic reference to cheese. The most unfortunate part is that the outwardly liberal will say that being called “gay” does no harm because people like themselves do not see it as an insult, all while ignoring countless strata of stereotypes that outwardly liberal media have canonized. The trap is that victims are made to feel accountable not just for trying to defend themselves but for feeling threatened.  I heard any number of variations of the warning not to respond to Scoville’s abuse because nobody would really ask about his lies, including by representatives of my original employer after they had done just that. There may not be easy answers to how to change perceptions of masculinity and sexual orientation, but acknowledging that a man is not obliged to answer another man’s anonymous and openly biased speculations about his sexual behavior would still be making progress.

3         There is no way to be a “good” victim.

Another issue where men can be at a greater disadvantage than women is the expected response of victim. For all the conflicted and contradictory ideals around female “victimhood”, girls and women are at least taught and expected to follow the minimal guidelines of self-preservation: Avoid a threatening individual, get to a place of safety, and call for help. For men, on the other hand, the expectation remains either to “ignore it” or “fight back”. For Scoville’s victims, this was nothing less than a vicious Catch 22. Scoville never hesitated to continue attacking someone who did nothing to respond, with his most sustained and grotesque campaign being against the family of a man who rarely if ever posted in usenet. At the same time, victims who posted proofs of their innocence and complained about Google’s refusal to act against him were regularly criticized by regular usenet users. And when I actually posted enough content linking to my legitimate material appear ahead of Scoville’s lies, I ended up facing worse repercussions than anyone else.

This is a major reason I have not shared my story much earlier, and I still find it difficult to answer why I took the actions I did. The commonsense answer was always to leave the sites that tolerated Scoville to be discredited and destroyed by his behavior, and come back when I had a job that provided enough money for legal action or at least financial security against his retaliation. What everyone giving this advice ignored was that Scoville had already committed himself to keeping me from that goal with unlimited support from a company with more billions than I had hundreds. Even other victims would not acknowledge the full magnitude of malice in his actions and intent, literally repeating the same lies thousands of times for just a chance to deprive innocent people of the employment, income and physical safety that actual criminals have a legal right to. To me, he was and is like a man who points a gun and pulls the trigger without knowing it is empty. Saying he can be “ignored” because he is supposedly unable to do harm would under any other circumstance be dismissed as wildly irresponsible.

4         Stalkers are lazy.

This is something where a generalization must start with a qualifier: Obviously, stalkers can be terrifyingly persistent and determined, as seen with Scoville. But their behavior is always a matter of “harder, not smarter”, usually exacerbated by a counterintuitive lack of creativity. The conventional stalker is aggressive in outward behavior, but inwardly unwilling or unable to make the step to genuine adaptation. Cyberstalkers take this paradox toward total passivity, posting insults and lies in hopes of tricking or frightening others into penalizing the victim. Search-engine spammers like Scoville are the laziest of all. Rather than try to present his libels directly to an audience, he floods minor forums (where legitimate users are invariably well aware of his identity and intent) just so someone else might happen on them in search results, perhaps years later. In fact, he does the last part so well that I observed posts 7, 8 or even 10 years old on the first page of search results. At that point, anyone who saw them as intended might just as soon wonder if the original target was even still alive, on the whole a backfire rather than a success.

The deeper reality is that it takes a stalker very little effort to do great harm. In Scoville’s case, he has long since descended into a kind of terroristic incompetence, freely mixing the information of victims, their families and unrelated third parties so that the threat of harm extends far beyond the primary “target”. Yet, I have personally seen nearly inexplicable oversights far beyond his usual tactics. Just for example, his most persistent and pointless act of harassment against me has been linking to and reposting a photo of myself placed under copyright by my former publisher that he put on the openly criminal Pirate Bay site with an added abusive and sexual caption. (Of course, he has done the same thing on the same site with images of other victims’ children.) Because of this abuse, I long refused to circulate this or any other image of myself, and I was especially concerned when I was “tagged” in photos on the social media profile of another non-profit group I am involved with. However, years have gone by without the slightest hint that Scoville is aware of any image except the one he had already posted. At this point, of course, his principle motive in using the image he has chosen is undoubtedly that I have long since rightfully and legally prohibited him and Pirate Bay from displaying it in the manner he chose, and he still wants to insinuate that my rights (including the copyright for two books handled by my old publisher) are somehow made invalid by my disability. Even so, his failure to use the opportunity to attack another organization as he did my former employer can only mean that he never cared enough to learn anything  about me.

5           It will always be about money.

For me, being stalked was simply one part of being disabled and chronically unemployed, but in my experience, the two remain inseparable. After being run out of my first job, I spent just short of three and a half years trying to find other work, with so little success I might have made more money staying at home. Weeks, months and years went by with increasingly perfunctory applications and a bare handful of interviews, while the social services bureaucracy shuffled me between coaches and contractors until rumblings began that I might be cut off entirely.  Meanwhile, anytime it crossed my mind to check, Google search results for my name that anyone looking at my resume could easily find shoved Scoville’s lies right in my face. And if I reached out to Google, or other websites hosting Scoville’s content, or even police, I was always met with the same demeaningly impossible demand that I go to court to make them stop Scoville from breaking the law.

The flip side to this is that getting steady work has vastly improved my ability to counter Scoville’s abuse. To begin with, during my nominal first job, my income after expenses was so upside down that I still had more “net” money from book sales than my paychecks, which made the petty infringement of my photo and some other inconsequential material a more “real” threat than anything Scoville said about me. Once I had a job with substantial income, I paid off literally all of my debts in a ludicrously short time, and soon began saving far more money than I had any idea how to spend. At that point, I finally began reaching out to lawyers, except I quickly found that people were no longer hassling me for “court orders” just to obey the law. Even when I have been on the brink of either hiring a lawyer or demanding the police arrest somebody, someone has backed down. Just in the developments leading up to this essay, I told my story to a lawyer while considering legal action over the inclusion of Scoville’s posts in a supposed “sex offender archive” on a site called The Dirty Phonebook, possibly the most flatly immoral of any I have dealt with including Pirate Bay. The lawyer didn’t take my case, but as of the writing of this essay, the only posted attack not taken down was one which jumbled my name and another person’s information so incompetently that the administrators instead publicly denied that it refers to me at all. A week after posting, I am revising this essay because even that is now gone, leaving nothing left by Scoville but an attack on another victim, and after another week, that too has disappeared. Apparently, even scum of this order have no desire to side with Scoville.

6     Things will never be the same.

All of this brings things back to where I am now, and I still have trouble really answering how I got here and what I have learned. Most of what I could say are anecdotes. I finished a master’s degree a year and a half before I got a job. I and my counselors spent years trying to find a job that wouldn’t require a lot of social interaction because of my autism diagnosis, and now I have spent five years in jobs where I literally talk to people full time. I spent almost two years in my first real job traveling hours each way without trying to apply elsewhere, then left my second job after I was offered another. But if there is a “turning point”’ I could point out then or now, it’s this: In my third year out of work when I finally took full control of writing my own (still pitiful) resume, and as a minor part of that process, I cut out the one and only thing that could lead someone to Scoville’s garbage. The easy moral is that it was all like Dumbo’s feather. Scoville’s attacks were never a threat, but only a worthless trick nobody else would have noticed on their own; taking charge of my own life was all that ever really mattered; and the completely stupid part is, I really did get the job. 

What I still can’t convey is just how terrible it was to go through this. My most coherent memories of the time between when I rewrote my resume and when I got my real first job are watching Pacific Rim, listening to “2 AM”, and knowing that I would very shortly be kicked off social services and out of any running for the workforce. It was also about that time that I stopped writing, not because I didn’t want to but because everything I tried writing ended at a few endlessly revised pages. One of the last things I finished before this personal dark age was a Hunger Games “fan fiction” about one Schuyler Grey that I conceived simply to portray disorganized psychosis. I thought about it often enough in the time that followed to recognize that I have a lot more issues on that vein than I or anyone else had admitted, and there were plenty of times when I expected Schuyler’s parting words to be my tombstone. One other thing that stays in my mind thinking of that time is Reese’s story/ monologue from The Terminator: “We were that close to going out forever…”

I am sure plenty of people reading this will be questioning why I have gone to the trouble of dealing with Scoville at all. The fact is, I have never had any desire to take action against him, in no small part because the only ones who ever said I should were representatives of Google and other entities that hosted and promoted in first place.  It would be easy to say I have continued the fight to change the culture that would let him even pretend to have power over others. I could give all the rational and inspiring high notes about never being threatened by Scoville's lies, which are for the most part verbatim what I heard from the beginning from people who mostly told me not to respond to him at all. The reality is that even with a stable career, I still find Scoville a threat and a source of stress simply because at least one site opposed to silencing him still exists, and he is still trying to make his lies appear under my name. Just in the time I have spent writing this essay and now revising it, a series of attacks (complete with the photo) made over a period of a month have been removed, from a Google-hosted blog that still has not been taken from him, and Google is refusing to remove several. At this point, my strongest reaction is anger that I ever felt a need to do anything about Scoville, while the line I think of is from the (terrible) movie From Dusk Til Dawn: “Are you such a loser you don’t know when you’ve won?” Maybe this will pay for all, maybe someone else will finally back down, maybe Scoville himself will finally realize, at a minimum, just how little of his life he has left to waste.

If anything good comes out of writing this, it will be taking one more area of my life back. I have been trying to write again, more often, and not too long ago finished the first entirely complete adventure of a character I created twenty years ago. As for the present work, I hope to get it where it will be seen by those who need it, and anyone who intends to use it for good purpose is welcome to pass it on. As for those who still are where I started, maybe my story won’t help you get where you want to be, but you can at least take heart in this: If you can make it, things will get easier, and nobody else can stop you.