Retro Week: Fraggle Rock Doozer Wind-Up Toys

I noticed the existence of Fraggle Rock Funko Pop figures while watching one of YouTuber Lawn Gnome's Funko review videos.  My first thought was that I should try and pick one (or two, or more) up. But then I remembered that as children, my sister and I had several of the plush Fraggles and the plastic Doozers that were released in the early '80s during the tv series' original run. And because of that I realized that there were probably old Fraggle toys still living in my mother's basement.  And indeed I found some!

In 1983 Tomy released a series of four wind-up Doozer figures, of which I had two.  Each one had slight variations in their hair and features (and helmet colours), and each came with a removable tool belt. Apparently most of the figures that show up on the second hand market are missing those belts. Luckily enough both seem to be complete with their accessories and in complete working condition.  So let's take a closer look!

Retro Week: Happy Valentine's Day from Tenderheart Bear

Since I've done the traditional collage of action figure couples and doll couples in years past, I thought that this year I would mix it up by sharing a 1980's Care Bear (in both his plush and figure forms) who is covered in hearts!

Retro Week: Random Toys of the 80s

I just got back from a weekend in Toronto, so it's time for another retro week post!

Does anyone remember what these toys were called?
They have articulated arms that move up and down
when a button on their base is pressed.
Thanks to an anonymous commenter we have an answer: He's a Hub-Bub! 

Out of the Box: Brenton Rudy and his Barnyard (Cabbage Patch Kids Pin-Ups)

Normally when I post dolls of this vintage it's either a childhood toy or some second-hand discovery that my mother has made, but not this time.  While browsing for something completely unrelated I came across a vintage Cabbage Patch mini doll - in his original early-80s packaging and being sold at virtually his original price!  Having always wanted one of the Cabbage Patch boy dolls, I couldn't pass it up.

The somewhat strangely named Cabbage Patch Pin-ups (surely I'm not the only person making the '40s-style pin-up association?), were a line of miniature versions of the full size CPK, with vinyl heads, yarn hair, and cloth bodies. They were packaged with a plastic shelf/play area which could be hung on a wall and which had a strip of Velcro attached to the back wall, allowing the doll and their associated accessory (in this set a chicken) to be fastened to the backdrop when not being played with.

Retro Week: Mini Figures of the 80s

I'm down to my final batch of retro week shots: up these time are a variety of mini figures.  There's never much to say about these guys, so let's get on with the photos!

A pair of ETs.

Retro Week: A Tale of Ice Storms and Vintage Figures

Bingo Beaver, Optimus Prime, and ET are cold and wet.

As happened a couple of years ago in December, last week I got to "enjoy" a Toronto ice-storm.  While that made it hard to go anywhere, it did give me a great excuse to grab some toys from the basement and take them outside for some photos.

For this round, I brought out a larger ET figure (this one with 5 points of articulation, unlike the solid mini-figure we saw the other day), a return visit from Transformer Optimus Prime (who was one of the stars of our first Retro Week two years ago), Bingo "Bet it All" Beaver, from the Get-Along-Gang, and finally a smaller figure in the form of the Care Bears' Tenderheart Bear.

Retro Week: Cabbage Patch Kids Mini Figures

Four of the Cabbage Patch mini figures

Before I get back to my regular posting schedule, how about one more treasure from my mother's basement?  Up this time is a random bag of vintage Cabbage Patch Kids mini figures.  They're fairly standard for mini figures of the era: nice sculpted detail, decent painting, but no articulation.  This particular collection is about evenly split between the traditional girl dolls, the "Koosas" (anthropomorphic cat dolls), and one of the "preemies" (the bald infant dolls).

Retro Week: Mini Figures of the '80s & Fast Food toys of the '90s

A random assortment of Retro mini figures

I've just come back from another week in Toronto (happily, this visit was for a wedding rather than a funeral), so I was able to snap a few more photos of my mother's basement toy trove.

In the Box: Wicket the Ewok and Princess Leia (Kenner's Return of the Jedi)

Princess Leia & Wicket the Ewok

A sort post today, but something I still wanted to share.  As it turns out, those die-cast vehicles were not the only still-carded Star Wars toys that my mother somehow managed to find.  She also gave me this pair of figures from  Return of the Jedi: Princess Leia and Wicket (or as the boxes say, "Princess Leia Organa in Combat Poncho" and "Wicket W. Warrick").

As with the vehicles, these still have their original clearance prices ($2.00, reduced from $3.88, which was reduced from $4.69).  Adding to the vintage fun, they're also from a now-closed chain, although it's K-mart this time (K-Mart still exists in the US, but they went out of business in Canada 20 years ago).

The back of the box.

Wicket up-close and personal

As with the vehicles, I'm going to try to find a way to keep these protected but also on display - maybe in a shadow box?  I'm still working on that part...

In the Box: Vehicles from Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back Series II

As regular readers will know, I'm not much of an in-box collector, but every now and then an exception pops up, and I think this set of old die-cast Star Wars vehicles from Kenner may be one of them.  I didn't buy them (they're one of my mum's random finds - she brought them along when she visited at Christmas), but I definitely think they're a fun thing to have.

These two vehicles (the Slave I and Twin-Por Cloud Car) are roughly the same length as the height of the action figures of the same vintage, so they're clearly not in scale with those figures even though they're packaged in nearly an identical way to the action figures (although being metal rather than plastic, they are noticeably heavier than any on-card figure is).

The Cloud Car.

Hilariously, they still have their original price tags: $2.47, reduced from $2.80 (at Woolco, which went out of business in Canada in 1994, although I understand that that the chain had disappeared from the US and the UK a decade earlier).

The back of the box.

I'm not 100% certain what I'm going to do with these, although if I can find a way to display them, they may end up on the wall of my guest room/nerd cave.  I've heard there are display boxes for carded toys, maybe I should look into that?  We'll see!

Random Toy of the Day: Surprise (My Little Pony)

Surprise, SoSoft Surprise, and Baby Surprise

Is there anything that screams 1980s like this particular shade of neon yellow?  I'd be hard pressed to think of anything that even comes close!

The new resurgence in popularity for the My Little Pony line isn't something I've really understood, but having met huge numbers of fans, I found myself curious about the line.

As a result, basket of ponies came home with me during one of my recent visits to my mother's, and while I was never a huge My Little Pony fan as a child (most of them were my sister's), I've had great fun identifying them all.

I'm especially fond of the clearly retro ones like this trio with their delightfully neon manes and tails.

A slightly different angle

Random Toy of the Day: Windcharger (Transformers)

Robot form.

Since I'd been spending so much time in Toronto lately, I'd originally planned to attend Dollism in Buffalo (only an hour-and-half across the border!) over this past weekend, but fate intervened, and I ended up back at home in VA/DC instead.  So while that means I don't have any interesting stories to share (or new dolls to show off), at least I was able to take a few toy photos!

First up is Windcharger - a 1980s transformer who is about the same size as a matchbox car when he's in his vehicle form.  Being compact means that I frequently misplace him, but that's also the reason he's at my house rather than in my mother's basement with the larger transformers - he was an accidental stowaway when I first moved out, and he's moved around with me ever since!

In terms of display value, there's not much to him, but compared to the larger transformers of his era, he's proved to be nearly indestructible.  The big ones are all missing pieces now, while this guy still looks almost exactly as he did when he was new.

Vehicle form.

Random Toy of the Day: Grumpy Bear (Kenner's Posable Care Bears)

Grumpy Bear.

It's raining, so what better day to introduce Grumpy Bear, the Care Bear with the thundercloud  belly?

As with all of these figures he has five points of articulation and a forelock of rooted hair.  I tend to class them as action figures, but suppose they could just as easily be called anthro dolls.

Even though this blue bear here has joined me for all of my relocation adventures, I don't have any particular nostalgia for the Care Bears line as a whole, I'm just a general fan for the negative characters in the perky lines, I suppose.

While I might not have been a huge fan of the line as a child, my sister was, and I found evidence that my mother went a little overboard at a few neighbourhood yard sales and the Samco sale (a warehouse toy sale that was held in Toronto every November - it closed down in the mid-1990s, I believe), because I just discovered a bin of Care Bears and playsets in my mother's basement.  I haven't had the opportunity to go through them yet, but I'm hoping to go identify and photograph them soon.

League of Extraordinary Bloggers: Cryptozoology, or The Search for Dragonne

It's been a while since I last posted something for The League of Extraordinary Bloggers, but this week's assignment caught my eye.  It was just one word: Cryptozoology. A quick search told me that it refers to the study of "hidden" animals - and that's "hidden" in the Loch Ness monster/Bigfoot sense, not the well-camouflaged sense (other League bloggers have already showed off Mezco's Cryptozoology figure series, discussed Harry & the Hendersons, and shared some personal monster stories). 

My immediate thought was that Dragonne would be perfect for this.  A half-lion, half-dragon from LJN's Dungeons & Dragons line of the 1980s, he would be a perfect example of a "hard to find" or non-existent species.

The D&D toy line-up

There was just one problem:  like the Loch Ness Monster, my own Dragonne figure proved to be elusive.  As with the creatures of urban legend, when it came time to bring out the cameras, he was no where to be found.  Not in my house (I had my husband hunt through my toy shelves), and not in my mother's basement (I did some digging of my own). 

I know he was around before we moved, because I have photographic evidence (much like the famous photos of Nessie, not particularly good photographic evidence, but hey - that seems to go with the territory):

Photographic evidence of Dragonne's existance.

Realistically, that probably means that he's in storage, but for the purposes of this assignment, I think we should imagine that he's having tea with the Sasquatch (which could be true, since my Alpha Flight Sasquatch figure is in storage as well). 

A rare photo of Draggone in the wild.
I imagine he's waving at Sasquatch and saying "Tea time!"

Out of the Basement: Sasha

As I mentioned in my post about the short-lived Moni line, I have a fond nostalgic feeling towards Sasha dolls.  My two (a dark-haired Gregor and a Sasha baby) are in storage, but my sister's old dolls were packed away in my mother's basement, so I was able to dig them out.

Sasha Blonde,and two Sasha Baby dolls

Sasha Baby:  This is the oldest of the three.

Sasha Baby #2: This one is the youngest of the three.

Sasha Blonde

I was pleasantly surprised by how intact they all were - aside from some wild hair and a dress that needs ironing on the big one, they're all in solid shape.  And I know my sister played with them extensively, so that's a real testament to their construction!

Out of the Basement: Transformers (Slag and Topspin)

Digging further into my mother's basement, I came across a couple of old Transformers - the Dinobot Triceratops Slag and the Jumpstarter vehicle Topspin.  Unlike a lot of the older toys I've unearthed, these guys actually have a decent amount of play-related damage.

I only ever had a handful of Transformers (one of my uncles noticed that my childhood self wasn't interested in dolls and sent these guys along instead for a couple of years), so they had to suffer through all sorts of adventures.

Slag: his horns are warped and part of his left hip has come off.

Slag in robot mode.  Yes, he has terribly unevenly placed stickers.

Topspin in vehicle mode

Topspin in robot mode.

Out of the Basement: The Muppets

The Muppets

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I'm in Toronto at the  moment and staying through the end of August.  And as I mentioned in my Retro Week post back in May, that means I have access to my mother's basement which stores both childhood toys and her various warehouse sale finds.  So I thought I'd intersperse my regular posts with some shorter ones of the toys I discover whilst digging through the boxes down there.

First up is this random group of Muppets.  As far as I can tell, these are actually from two different lines - the Kermit and Scooter figure are articulated (Scooter has 5 points of articulation, Kermit 1) and have a slot in their backs, while the others are all simple vinyl figurines.  I don't know where any of them came from, so if you recognize them, I'd love to hear more.  In the meantime, I'll just enjoy the randomness of this collection of characters.

Retro Week

The king of pop

I'm heading back home next week and have some more detailed posts planned once I'm back, but before I leave my mother's house, I thought I'd share some amusing blasts from the past (with apologies for the poorly lit photos).

My mother has been organizing her storage room (also known as the unfinished basement), and putting old toys into labelled bins.  This made it easy for me to find things like my sister's old Michael Jackson doll (with two outfits!), and a variety of other dolls of that era.

Optimus Prime

A variety of mini figures

Other fun finds were my old transformers (I only ever had four, but they were some of my favourites) and a sorting table full of tiny figures (I recognized Muppets, Monchichis, Cabbage Patch Kids and Strawberry Shortcakes amongst them) that are still be organized.