A Continuing obsession with 80's toys

When I was a kid, I had a large toy collection. I was very lucky. I don't have any of the toys any more. Despite all warnings that I might regret it, I insisted that I sell them all at one or possibly more tag sales. I stupidly and childishly thought I would rather get rid of them to get the money for something else, which, somewhat ironically, is long forgotten. I honestly don't remember what it was that I so desperately needed the money for, but, looking back, it certainly wasn't worth it to get rid of all my toys. At the beginning of the last post, I mentioned some of the heavy-hitters of the 80's toy world:

Transformers:



G.I. Joe, He-Man (see top of blog), and a constant obsession, NES. But what about some of the other contenders for your parents' hard-earned money?

First I will mention Madballs.


Madballs came in two forms that I can remember. First was ball form, obviously. Those were just little balls you could, I guess, throw, but fashioned in the grotesque manner as was somewhat popular at the time, lead in this area by the immortal Garbage Pail Kids. (Even though GPK was a reaction to the trend of Cabbage Patch Kids and their omnipresent cuteness, they spawned their own rip-offs, such as, if you can believe it, "Trash Can Tots.")
Madballs offered the luxury of not just having a Garbage Pail Kid in 3-D that you could touch and hold, and, of course, THROW, but...they were BALLS! They are spherical objects! How great!
After the romance wore off with "Fist Face" and "Aargh" in their Ball form, Madballs were retooled into a more sensical action figure form. They were short, squat plastic action figures, with good detail as I recall, and as an added bonus, you could pop the heads off the figure. At least you could with the Oculus Orbus figure, which was the coolest in my opinion. Why don't the toys of today have detailed veins that that toy did? It must be the PC takeover that was a reaction to things like Madballs and GPK. First came the watering down: My Pet Monster - then the total eradication of gross toys. Sad, sad, sad.

That brings us to another aberration: Food Fighters. I love the creativity that went into the manufacturing of toys for children back then. How did anyone come up with this? Apparently the higher-ups at Mattel agreed that giving food items Military stature was the surefire blockbuster they've been waiting for. Because that is the concept in full:



I don't know about you, but I have always dreamed of seeing a chicken leg fight a highly decorated hot dog.
Now you can. Genius. I'm NOT being sarcastic. That is pure genius I tell you. I would also like to add that it was really ahead of its time: it predates the band "Foo Fighters". In fact, when that band came on the scene, I thought it took its name from the toys, but for some inexplicable reason (perhaps legal), they left off the "D".

Another toy (?) (at least they were made of plastic) that was ahead of its time, was M.U.S.C.L.E. (Millions of Unusual Small Creatures Lurking Everywhere).



They were little, 2 inch pink men, ostensibly wrestlers that you could pit against each other. They did eventually come in other colors, such as blue or red, but these tiny little figures only ever came in one color at a time. They couldn't really DO anything, meaning their little arms and legs couldn't move, and they weren't amenable to accessories, but they predated Pokemon in the "gotta catch 'em all" category. (The origins of the toy are, unsurprisingly, Japanese.) The idea was to collect 'em all. Not a new concept by any stretch, but with Muscle, they really hammered it home with posters, checklists and many pictures of all the wrestlers, which inevitably led the kid to dwell on the ones he didn't have. One of the ways they were packaged was stuffed into a little plastic garbage can. Once again, the theme of grossness and garbage rears its ugly head. I wonder how Julia Kristeva could apply her theory of Abjection on 80's children's toys?
Muscle men were charming despite (or perhaps because of?) their limitations, and, inevitably, they were made into an NES game in October 1986.



We'll end today with another tiny toy. But these li'l guys could do much more than Muscle and were a lot cooler in their design, painting and overall execution. These guys you WANTED to collect and didn't need to be cajoled into it. They even had tiny weapons. I'm talking about Battle Beasts. They had little holograms on their chests that you had to rub with your thumb to see if they had a logo of fire, wood, or water. Sure, it was just a dressed-up version of rock, paper, scissors, but so what? The dressing was cool.
Again, further showing evidence of the Japanese obsession with tiny things, this toy also has its origins in the land of the rising sun.



If you made it through this whole post, thank you very much. If you have any suggestions for further obscure toys that warrant highlighting, feel free to contact me. Thanks again for reading.