action figures and other toys

I wonder why this stuff costs so much nowadays. Low projected sales?

Because, in the 90’s, stuff like the Mighty Ducks cartoon figures (somewhat similar in style to these) looked very good. and were not $50 for two figures.

much smaller, since kids only like looking at mobile phones instead of playing with toys now

Also toys in the 90s were mass produced so costs were lower due to simple economies of scale. I don’t really know why people stopped buying toys though.

Maybe blame Todd McFarlane? He pushed for the higher standards of greater and greater detail which was great but it always came with reduced playability. But now we’re at least back to fine detail with lots of articulation but it’s more expensive to produce and it’s being sold to a smaller market. Maybe video games and the internet are to blame for kids not being as interested in physical toys anymore?

I don’t know. I wish I could have saved some of my old toys. Just to have tokens from a bygone era. I am thankful I was able to hang on to a few gi joes and what not.

?

1 Like

satire is extinct

2 Likes

Taking gross toy themes to a new level.

I guess this is the year gross toys come back with a vengeance.

1 Like

I mean this is definitely a UCB sketch right

1 Like

so in the 60s when mouse trap came out, there were imitators?!
image
image

7 Likes

I’ve played the fish bait game! My Aunt had it at her house.

2 Likes

Arguably, these are all installments of the over elaborate plastic crap school of board game design also seen in stuff like Grape Escape.

Or forbidden bridge:

image

5 Likes

i knew a kid that had forbidden bridge, and i don’t think we ever once played the actual game. it was just used as a cool location for action figures

2 Likes

One of my favorite toys when I was very young was Big Loader. It resembled a Mouse Trap-style game but was not a game. It was kind of a simulated mining operation in which a single motorized unit assumed the role of different vehicles as it went around a track.

There appears to also be a later version with garish colors.

1 Like

I guess the Qbitz Kiryu and Majima figures ship this week. I’ve never heard of the company, but they look a little nicer than the Yakuza Figmas, so.

The king of action board games with figures and moving parts

pressman-weapons-and-warriors-castle-combat-set-1994-box-9703-vintage-97d91284cc070ac796d513b2a639c18a

My dad lived in a place for a few years, with a really long hallway which connected all of the bedrooms. It was perfect for this game. As it would contain stray plastic marbles (the projectiles).

3 Likes

i was actually thinking about this the other day. i never had one, but i remmeber the adverts, and i was actually wondering about its actual play value as a toy. like, there’s no interactive element, is there? you just turn it on and it acts as a gigantic physical screensaver thing acting in a loop?

Right. After assembling it, you basically just watched. Though of course you would also mess with it, adding other elements and maybe rearranging to the tracks. The appeal was similar to Stompers, I suppose, which I remember also finding pretty entertaining at that age.

2 Likes

Mattel (I think?) is doing a throwback Batman line based on the 1989/1990 Toy Biz Batman toys.

Toy Fair 2019

1989

It looks like the original figure but with more articulation.

image

That’s my favorite Robin outfit. People hated the Tim Drake Robin but I always liked his Robin suit best.

3 Likes

Sadly that joker figure doesn’t look like it has the squirting flower like the one I had from that movie.

4 Likes

That’s pretty wild! I loved that Toy Biz Batman, but I always thought the general consensus was that it was pretty widely hated thanks to all the re-sculpts to get the face right, and the pre-release promo materials that used a repainted Kenner Superpowers Batman?

Where’s Bob the Goon?

1 Like