The Big Picture: The Other Guys - Lesser Known Toys from the 80's

MovieBob

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Dec 31, 2008
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The Other Guys - Lesser Known Toys from the 80's

MovieBob fires up the time machine to take a look at some of the lesser-known cartoon/toy tie-ins from the 80's.

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Evonisia

Your sinner, in secret
Jun 24, 2013
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Those bugs do look creepy, I can't imagine I'd have wanted them as a kid.
 
Jan 12, 2012
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In this episode, Bob discovers that his mother was going to throw out everything from his old room, and vowed to save as much as he could under the pretense of "It's my job, Ma!"

Still, really neat to see all that old stuff. That Sectaur base with the spider hand puppet looked like something young me would have killed to have.
 

shrekfan246

Not actually a Japanese pop star
May 26, 2011
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You know, the 80's and 90's knew how to make fun commercials. I don't want to be that "Everything was better back in the day" guy, but toys these days just... aren't the same. Even in actual stores, not only do the toys somehow look cheaper than they were fifteen years ago, but it's just impossible to find a good toy store anymore. Maybe that's just because of the state I live in, though. I always like to point out how we don't even have a Target. :D
 

jdarksun

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Nov 3, 2003
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Awesome trip down memory lane. I still remember D-COMPOSE pretty vividly, as well as one of the bug/puppets from the Sectaurs.

I knew somebody with one of the RoboForce toys. It squirted water from that snout looking thing on its head. Weird.
 

shrekfan246

Not actually a Japanese pop star
May 26, 2011
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Kumagawa Misogi said:
shrekfan246 said:
You know, the 80's and 90's knew how to make fun commercials. I don't want to be that "Everything was better back in the day" guy, but toys these days just... aren't the same. Even in actual stores, not only do the toys somehow look cheaper than they were fifteen years ago, but it's just impossible to find a good toy store anymore. Maybe that's just because of the state I live in, though. I always like to point out how we don't even have a Target. :D


Are the cheap action figure's even still made? the only action figures I see are more like possible models and they aren't cheap.

I can only go by my cousins but over the last 5+ years they haven't had or asked for those type of toys it's lego, remote controlled cars/helicopters, sports stuff and gadgets/games/films.

Even the skylanders and Disney infinity figures are more like models than what I would call an action figure.
I've seen a few of them buried in really weird places you wouldn't expect to find them, usually just licensed movie toys or something, but yeah, they're incredibly scarce these days.

It's a shame, really. When I was growing up, I had something like twelve different versions of Batman, and the best part was that half of them were based off of Animated Series Batman and the other half were based off of the live action films.
 

Ne1butme

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Nov 16, 2009
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I remember other shows like Sky Commanders and Dino Riders. I remember the commericals and the toys more than the cartoons themselves.
 

varmintx

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Oct 6, 2011
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Robotix are the only ones I remembered. I don't know if it's because I'm in that "too old to remember" category, or I just have a really terrible memory.
 

JPArbiter

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Oct 14, 2010
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Next time he needs to cover the second tier stuff, like the Centurions or the Silver Hawks
 

Starke

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Ne1butme said:
I remember other shows like Sky Commanders and Dino Riders. I remember the commericals and the toys more than the cartoons themselves.
I actually kind of expected Dino Riders to get a nod here. Also, MASK comes to mind as one of those weird ass b-list tie in series. Made weirder by the fact that the TV series has actually gotten a DVD release.
 

TiberiusEsuriens

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Jun 24, 2010
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Kumagawa Misogi said:
shrekfan246 said:
You know, the 80's and 90's knew how to make fun commercials. I don't want to be that "Everything was better back in the day" guy, but toys these days just... aren't the same. Even in actual stores, not only do the toys somehow look cheaper than they were fifteen years ago, but it's just impossible to find a good toy store anymore. Maybe that's just because of the state I live in, though. I always like to point out how we don't even have a Target. :D


Are the cheap action figure's even still made? the only action figures I see are more like possible models and they aren't cheap.

I can only go by my cousins but over the last 5+ years they haven't had or asked for those type of toys it's lego, remote controlled cars/helicopters, sports stuff and gadgets/games/films.

Even the skylanders and Disney infinity figures are more like models than what I would call an action figure.
I still see Star Wars action figures in pretty much every major retailer I go into. While they have changed a bit, the change from mid 90s to now is no greater than the 80s to mid 90s (Legos are another thing entirely - it makes me sad to see models having fewer pieces while costing more).

It's definitely true though. While existing action figure lines remain more or less in tact, all of the new ones are following this ridiculous fad of chunky one-piece vinyl figures. Plastic army men are even more fun to play with than these things, and army men are so cheap that you blow half of them up with firecrackers and not even care. (is there any other reason people buy them!?)
 

Vault Citizen

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May 8, 2008
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I had a video of one of the episodes of Blackstar as a child. For years it was one of their cartoons where I remembered just enough to know that I had watched it but very little of the plot or any of the names.
 

Sir Shockwave

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Jul 4, 2011
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JPArbiter said:
Next time he needs to cover the second tier stuff, like the Centurions or the Silver Hawks
I'd argue this is definately prone to a follow up episode later down the line.

OT: Oh Bob, you got me with the Max Steel reference. Then I'm reminded of the new version that's about to go into a second season, and I die a little inside X3
 

bdcjacko

Gone Fonzy
Jun 9, 2010
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Love how robotix even has the same narrator has transformers. And that is the only one of these I remeber. But transformers or gtfo.
 

Realitycrash

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Dec 12, 2010
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No DinoRiders? Or were DinoRiders part of the "popular" clique? I have no idea. I knew that I liked them as a kid anyway.
 

Epic_Bubble

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Oct 19, 2013
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I just got back into lego and I am 24 :/

To be fair I kinda want to do a sort of table top warhammer style game with the Lego Castle set.

Awesome to see some really weird toys. Weirdly enough living in South Africa. I actually saw a few of those shows aired. Due to the whole apartheid over now back to American TV.
 

eBusiness

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Sep 19, 2012
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4:08 John Blackstar is rescued by the tiny Trobbit people, in turn he joins their fight for freedom against (dramatic pause) The Cruel Overlord.
So the name of the cruel overlord is "The Cruel Overlord"? That doesn't seem very inventive, even for an 80's cartoon.