The Monster Squad

October 13, 2008 | Poe

“Years ago, a group of monsters was chased by torch-bearing villagers for crimes they, admittedly, committed. These monsters promptly escaped to the Los Angeles underground. Today, still wanted by angry mobs, they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire…the Monster Squad.”

Review > Universal Monsters (Toy Island)

October 13, 2008 | Poe

(Click any picture for a larger version)

Some have called them the Marvel Legends of Universal Monsters. Others have called them crappy.

Michael Crawford wrote a comprehensive review of these figures way back in April ’07, and he sure didn’t like them. Here’s his summary of the review:

With poor sculpts and weak paint, it’s not too likely that you’ll be thrilled with any of these in person. The only thing saving them from an even lower score in the overall is the relatively decent articulation and the inclusion of the BAF. […] While some of the photos might not appear too bad, the cheap feel of the plastic ends up hurting these once you get them in hand. I’m disappointed with them, and it’s unlikely that any other than the Creature or the Frank BAF will end up on the display shelf.

Despite what was definitely a negative review–and I usually agree with MC’s opinions–I really, really wanted these. (more…)

Supe-thulhu

October 10, 2008 | Poe

A couple days ago on his blog, Ethan Kaye highlighted a Super-meme. Well, in honor of my favorite horror writer, here’s my entry.

Imperial Universal Monsters

October 10, 2008 | Poe

If you were a young boy in the late 1970s and early 1980s, chances are you were quite familiar with the crown logo of Imperial Toys.

From the admittedly limited perspective as a six-year-old boy, Imperial was known for one thing: rubber dinosaurs.

Imperial specialized in those solid rubber dinosaurs you’d find in convenience stores, pharmacies, and the metal floor bins of toy stores like Child World. They usually sold for about a buck. Those dinosaurs were tough bastards; you could throw them against the wall all day long and they wouldn’t get a scratch.

The sculpts and paint applications were crude even by contemporary standards and there was nary a point of articulation to be found on them, but when I was a kid that hardly mattered. The rubbery feel of the dinosaurs skin, coupled with their Godzilla-like indestructibility, made them the preeminent dinosaur toys of my youth.

A lot of the Imperial dinosaurs were of questionable paleontological validity. Tyrannosaurs with stegosaur-like plates and apatosaurs (which we called brontosaurs in my day) with pointy teeth were common. My particular favorites were a small yellow tyrannosaur (now residing in my Toy Shrine), a duck-billed dinosaur thing, and a black creature that was sort of a cross between a frog and an allosaur that I called “Bumpy.”

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Things I Want Toys of > The Monster Squad

October 8, 2008 | Poe

I can’t recall whether I saw The Monster Squad (1987) in the theater, but something makes me think I did. Even as a kid I thought of it then as a sort of store-brand Goonies, albeit a very fun, entertaining, and surprisingly violent one. Except for the infamous “Wolf Man’s got nards” line, I more or less forgot about the film until I saw it in 2004 while visiting a friend (thanks, Rustin—always the classy host!).

The Monster Squad is a kids’ horror film featuring what are traditionally thought of as the Universal Monsters: Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster, the Wolfman, the Mummy, and the Gillman (a.k.a. the Creature from the Black Lagoon). However, unlike other monster mashes like the recent Van Helsing, The Monster Squad wasn’t a Universal film; Universal only owns the trademarks to the character names (meaning you can’t call your movie just “Dracula”). In the case of Dracula and the Monster, the novels are long out of copyright; while the Mummy, the Wolfman and the Gillman are just generic monsters (though I do think they’re on shaky ground with the Gillman, given how much he resembles the Black Lagoon creature).
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Odds ‘n Ends > Jason Goes to Hell

October 7, 2008 | Poe

ODD: We’re swinging into high here at PGPoA with the Halloween fun. I realize the whole zombie motif may be a bit 2006, but it was the first idea I thought of. The good thing is we get it out of the way now and I’ll have to come up with something else next year. (more…)

Attack of the Living Dead

October 6, 2008 | Poe

Note: A slightly different version of this article was originally published on Biggerboat in October 2006.

A couple years ago, during the huge zombie fad of the mid-’00s, Mezco Toyz produced a short-lived figure line called Attack of the Living Dead. The figures are a combination of today’s advanced action figure design and those old gross-out toys of the 1980s (times ten).

Attack of the Living Dead isn’t based on any particular film, despite the “Living Dead” moniker (a quick check at the U.S. trademark office shows that Mezco was able to trademark the title, so it looks like George Romero and John Russo lose yet again, courtesy of the Walter Reade Organization). The line was originally going to be titled “After Life” (and Mezco had trademarked that as well), but at some point they must have figured out that the “Living Dead” phrase wasn’t trademarked and changed to the new title to capitalize on the name recognition.

That said, these zombies look more Return of the Living Dead than Dawn of the Dead. Romero’s zombies tended to look like pale-skinned humans (though they got a bit gorier in the last two films), whereas the Return of the Living Dead series offered a variety of zombie shapes and sizes.

While the days of long action figure biography text and power ratings seem sadly long gone, Mezco makes a passing effort at providing some context for the line. (more…)