Still on the lookout for one of these mint on the card. Always wanted one, even as a kid.
Sad thing is I used to see them in dozens on the wall at Toys R Us…
toys
Sometimes I wish I was a kid in the 70’s. All this awesome playset needs is miniatures of Gregory Peck, Anthony Quinn, and David Niven. Apparently Marx was the king of mini-playsets back in the 70’s.
In my youth my collection of army guys — based on sheer numbers, plus all the vehicles, plus the wide variety of uniforms — was large enough to stage World War II in my house. I had soldiers for the Allied Forces, Wermacht, Imperial Japan, and a few armies I couldn’t identify. I remember I even had a single German officer in black plastic, who was my Gestapo villain dude; and a single Japanese soldier waving a sword in the air, who always got to be the Japanese general. I even had a ninja brigade — recruited from local arcades with skee ball tickets — to do the Imperial Army’s dirty work. Topping it off was this small set of extra detailed army guys who had distinctly unique facial features and equipment: they were pretty much always the heroes, that crack team of misfits sent on a suicide mission against all odds, or some cliched crap like that.
Years later I grew up, and I found out one of my mom’s first grade students LOVED army guys, but couldn’t find them for sale anywhere anymore, so I gave my massive armada a new home. Apparently he lit up like a Christmas tree when he opened the box.
I started googling my old castle playsets from childhood and only managed to find one out of two: King Arthur’s Castle from 1991, which used recycled molds from the 1967 Fighting Knights playset by Marx. Both came with tons of crap: figures, catapults, furniture…It was pretty neat for a generic-looking “army guys” style toy.
Yeah, it’s considered sacrilege to make this statement, but I stand by it. In the 1980’s, I hated Transformers. Nowadays, outside of Beast Wars, I still hate Transformers. Even as a kid I always felt Gobots did a number of things better with a similar premise — all which Beast Wars eventually did as well, more or less.
1) Each Gobot had a unique appearance.
Every review of the Transformers movies brings up the problem with the robots being virtually indistinguishable from one another. It always makes me laugh because I had the same problem in the 80’s: many Transformers were palette-swaps of one another. Most of them weren’t, but even the “unique” ones were so similar-looking, that even now I could count the Autobots and Decepticons that’re recognizable to me on one hand. Gobots never had this problem: every character had a distinct look that made them memorable for a kid, something Transformers never tried until the 3D era. There were two spiders in Beast Wars, but you couldn’t possibly mix them up. Star Scream was one of what, nine identical asshole jets?
2) Gobots transformations were true to the toys.
In the cartoon, Transformers more-or-less magically morphed between robot mode and vehicle mode. In the Gobots cartoon, the robots were modeled after the toys so closely that they transformed just like their toy counterparts — very cool in an era when the toys often only vaguely resembled their animated incarnations. It made the show feel more authentic, as if the same people were behind both products.
3) The origin story of Gobots is more twisted and badass.
Transformers are sentient machines from a mechanical planet, who disguise themselves as vehicles so they can blend in on earth (y’know, where they’re constantly fighting out in the open). Gobots were flesh and blood once, but were so bent on ensuring their enemy’s destruction, that both sides had their brains implanted in immortal robot bodies so they could continue to fight, from planet to planet if necessary. Holy shit, man.
4) Gobots support equal rights better.
Can anyone other than hardcore unhealthily-obsessed fans name a female Transformer other than Arcee and Black Arachnia? At a glance it seems like there weren’t any female Transformers who were worth a shit until Beast Wars. Maybe there have been more since Black Arachnia, but let’s focus on the cartoons from the 80’s, since the focus here is what I grew up with. Watch 3 random episodes of the original Transformers cartoon and you might see Arcee, either in the background or maybe-possibly doing something proactive. Do the same with Gobots, and 3 out of 3 episodes will prominently feature Crasher, Cy-kill’s female lieutenant, as she commands the troops or ruins somebody’s shit while laughing like a maniac. You’re likely to see some heroic female ‘bots from time to time as well (and they looked just as clunky as the male ‘bots, which a commenter kindly reminded me of).
Skids and Mudflap would never appear in a modern Gobots movie, I’ll say that much. Which reminds me…
5) Gobots has no overrated movies.
It blows my mind that the Transformers movie from the 80’s is regarded as some sort of nostalgic Holy Grail. Yeah, it’s better than the terrible G.I. Joe movie from the same era. Yeah, it’s leagues better than the godawful Michael Bay movies. But it’s still shit, even for kids’ entertainment. I won’t say that the Gobots movie is superior…Actually, hell with it, I will say it’s superior: the plot isn’t as convoluted; it doesn’t use annoyingly out-of-place pop music for the soundtrack; and above all, it doesn’t try to be anything more pretentious than a movie for entertaining kids — one which doesn’t carry a supremely undeserved reputation-of-awesomeness like the Transformers movie does. Oh yeah, and did I mention that the Go-Bots movie doesn’t kill all the main characters within the first ten minutes?
In the end, I suppose I’m glad that Gobots didn’t survive the 80’s to be molested by brainless, talentless, immature denizens of Hollywood and reduced to a terrible mockery of what it once was. As much as I diss Transformers, the travesty that franchise has become still makes me a little sad. Then again, kids eat it up like candy, just like my generation did the “infinitely superior” animated movie in the 1980’s, so what does that tell ya?
I moved this item to its own blog post because, as it turns out, its super rare and almost impossible to find on the internet.
Gameraaaaaa! GamerAAAAAAHHH!
My first foreign toy purchase. This is an awesome set for a kaiju-lovin’ kid: a veritable battle royale of giant vinyl monsters!
I’ve seen maybe two places online where you can purchase this: one guy selling a mint condition set (mine has a dirty and beat up box); another person on ebay is selling Zigra all by his lonesome as of this article’s posting. He’s a neat little figure, so snatch him up if you can!
The gang’s all here! Tokyo Tower is a little bent from the constant kaiju attacks since 1954.
Gamera comes with legs, too, so he can do some Tokyo-stomping proper.
Not-so-simulated flight.
Viras, the parrot-squid-man.
Zigra, the god of sharks and douchebags.
Barugon smells tourists at the top of the tower!
Jiger gave us a pretty smile for her photo shoot. She’s model material all right. (Get it? She’s made o’ vinyl! Haw!)
Guiron was always my favorite — a living Ginsu knife!
Super Gyaos is the only solid figure of the bunch. So don’t let your kid throw him!
Shmawwk! Shmawwk!
The biggest downside to this set is it doesn’t include Classic Gaos, which is a real shame. But it was released at the same time as this wicked Gamera Encyclopedia:
I’ve redacted my previous post about Kim-Possible since I revisited the show and declared Shego my Disney Channel waifu.
This doll is beautiful and I adore it.
It’s about to get very pink up in heah. And I’m not talking about punky chicks singing self-absorbed lyrics, neither.
I never understood gender demographics, even as a kid. If it was colorful, I liked it. If it was different…well, sometimes I liked it. Sailor Moon aired when I was in junior high, and like everybody else in my class, I was hooked — Imagine my surprise when I mentioned on the bus (in embarrassment) that I liked the show, only to have my mean-ass peers start talking about how much they liked it, too. Look at the slews of merchandise and you’ll know how big a hit this gaudy cartoon was.
This is what remains of my Sailor Moon collection. Foreign goodies all.
No, I never used this stocking on Christmas. Well, not for myself. I think we used it as the dog’s stocking one year.
Cutest towel holder ever. EVER.
It should be noted Jupiter was my favorite. I used to have more Jupiter stuff — this gallery is really only half of what I used to own. I dunno what happened to the rest of it.
Adorable Sailor Stars ink stamps, each with three different stamps that attach on the base of their respective figures. The one on the far right is the cutest of the bunch.
Oodles o’ keychains. I used to have a chest packed with anime keychains I got from various hobby shops.
These are known as Pachi Pachi figures — you can swap their “hero” uniforms for the tackiest goddamned outfits you ever saw. Jupiter really got the short end of the stick here, dressing like a carnie from Willy Wonka’s failed theme park project.
Tux is my favorite of the lot. They don’t make many toys of him.
Lastly, the ever-popular Petit Soldier figures by Bandai. I have every “inner senshi”, pictured here, and later I managed to get my hands on Uranus and Neptune in separate boxes.
Uranus strikes a rather posh pose, while Neptune…isn’t quite sure what she should be doing.
Mars is my favorite from this line because of her sexy swimsuit model posture. I guess she was determined not to look as silly as the other girls post-transformation.
This is how it ends. Not with a bang, but a whimper. This is the last shitty gasp of the Mighty Max toy line.
Shrunken Heads were only an inch long and featured one solitary removable piece — a unique Max figure. As playsets they’re utterly useless.
But to be fair, they do have their good points. Most of them are really nicely detailed despite the limited space therein. The Max figures are actually pretty great: each one is unique, and you could use them as replacements for any of your normal Max figures. There’s a Max here for every conceivable situation, from exploring dark caverns and crypts to shooting it out with alien invaders. Pictured from left to right: Insectoid, Brain Face, Head Case (Meltdown), Wraptile, Vampyre, Mummy, Rat Trap, Rock Monster.
There were two Shrunken Heads series. I didn’t bother with Series 2 because they were based on the cartoon, badly designed, and ugly as hell. Series 1, the original designs, were all pretty damn cool in their own way, if you don’t mind them being glorified carrying cases.
The Heroes and Villains line of figures is a mixed bag. Some of them are pretty badass, especially the Norman, Virgil, and Cyber-Skull figures. Many of them are just drek, including the Max figures which don’t look all that great and are incompatible with the standard “Max sockets” in the playsets, which any other Max figures can stand in. Still, all of them are remarkably well-balanced and can stand up on their own, even the ones that look like they shouldn’t be able to.
Note: this comprises three of the six H&V sets; while these were based on the cartoon, the other three sets were reproductions of Doom Zone figures, usually recolored. I didn’t get those ‘cos I was usually responsible enough not to lose the toys I cared about (in the twenty-odd years I’ve been collecting these toys, I only ever lost 1 piece).
Less nice things can be said about Terror Talons, one of the last giant sets produced. Remember how bare the average Horror Head was as far as detail and interactivity were concerned? Take that, make it twice the size of a Doom Zone, and you get Terror Talons. It has a neat monster face in the side of the playset, with moving jaw and eyes. It has a cool alien leader dude. But nothing justifies the size nor price of this thing — at the very least it should’ve been a Doom Zone, for how little bang you get for your buck. Terror Talons just doesn’t compare to any of the other Super Doom Zones, although I guess I gotta give it credit for not using any tacky decals.
Which brings me to Exhibit C, and the most damning evidence of Bluebird’s lack of interest in Mighty Max: the Monster Heads.
I misplaced one of the Max figures that came with these, and substituted one from a figure collection. It’s only fitting that I put as much effort into the photos as went into the toys themselves.
This is enough plastic for two more Horror Heads, in which the two interesting figures (the purple dragon-panther and the red dude with the cape) could’ve been used.
What a waste of resources. Between these and the Dread Heads — ugly heads with Troll Doll hair and articulated jaws for holding a single Max figure, which I won’t even justify with a photo — you have the final nail in the coffin of Max’s adventures. Which is just as well, as that poor kid is probably resting in an asylum somewhere in Massachusetts.
Read about the knock-off toy line, Sammy Steel!
Wanna read more about Mighty Max? Check out the Retrojunk article and the Mighty Max Archives forum!
Thought I was done with Mighty Max, eh? I’m just gettin’ warmed up!
Okay, not really. I’m half done.
By this point Bluebird had already made one or two giant Mighty Max sets (which I’ll blog about later so as not to end my Mighty Max entries on a sour note): Series 1 gave birth to Skull Mountain, and Series 2 brought us the dreaded Dragon Isle. During Mighty Max’s second series they had a nifty idea: make a giant playset that doubled as an action figure. The result was MAGUS, and soon after, the Battle Max line of smaller figures/playsets that ranged from crap to awesome.
MAGUS is a walking battle-station. It introduced us to the Lava Lord, secondary recurring villain to the Skull Master. Ol’ Magus is literally bursting with goodies: open his arms, legs, and torso, and out spills a battle royale waiting to happen.
BATTLE WARRIORS
The Battle Warriors figures weren’t as big as Magus, but the stuff they contained was just as sweet. Usually. They’re called a number of other names such as Battle Max or Battle Masters or whatever. Wikipedia says Battle Warriors, so I’ll stick with that.
BATTLE CONQUEROR is one of my two favorites. He’s the ultimate badass, a twenty-foot lion man with a flail that could crush a house. It features a unique Norman figure (from the cartoon show) who can wield the Giant Sword of Badassitude.
DOUBLE-DEMON tends to be a pain in the ass to pack up, probably because Max and Skull Master don’t wanna be packed so closely together; I know I’d be fussy if I had to share a closet-sized apartment with my mortal enemy. The ‘Demon itself is pretty wicked-looking and stores a sleek flying platform in his belly. It also has three different weapons that it can spit from one of its two heads or wield in a melee.
LAVA BEAST looks like Sweetums the Muppet, and he’s about as lame. He comes with a not-so-cool Lava Lord figure, a fiery sword, an angry lava monster that rides on his head, and a fist projectile. The most interesting thing about him is the articulated jaw, which is connected to a catapult so he can puke up Max.
PHARAOH PHANG makes up for his lack of interesting features by being one beautiful sonofabitch, and coming with the most awesomely memorable villain in the entire toy line. Look at that pharaoh and tell me he isn’t the coolest thing you’ve ever seen.
This big ol’ gargoyle opens rather nicely into a dilapidated cathedral (or a gargoyle’s toilet if you leave the big red monster intact), and features the Bruce Lee of Lizardfolk as the star bad guy.
CYBOT is my other favorite of this line. It’s impossible to be a 90’s kid and not love this thing: an undead ED-209 controlled from the inside by another, smaller undead cyborg! The head opens to double as an ugly turret, and both Max and Cyberskull (recurring Mighty Max villain #3) can ride the Surfboard of Doom.
Beware! The Death of Mighty Max is next!
Read about the knock-off toy line, Sammy Steel!
Wanna read more about Mighty Max? Check out the Retrojunk article and the Mighty Max Archives forum!
Here the bulk of Max’s adventures draws to a close as we finally round out the Doom Zone collection.
SERIES 3 DOOM ZONES
On the plus side, the designers went all-out with the playset layouts: almost every one of them is a complex puzzle box of moving parts and odd configurations, from the vertically splitting Nautilus to the bagel-shaped Geela Guts. There are a few golden moments here, but despite the unchained creativity in the playset compositions, it was at this point I realized Max wouldn’t see a fourth adventure. Where the designs are cool, the substance is…lacking.
CYBERSKULL is too abstract for my tastes: it plunges Max into the belly of his own computer (just like the elusive Geela Guts doom zone, which plunges him into the belly of his pet iguana), so the interior is an amalgamation of computer parts and electronic miscellany. I only got it because, at the time, I was a completist. It’s also the only doom zone with a black Mighty Max logo, instead of the usual red. I’m not sure why this is.
There’s another Mighty Max blogger who seems to love this one. Different strokes I guess.
Leagues cooler than the random computer mishmash of Cyberskull is THE HAND, by far the most macabre of all Mighty Max playsets. Bury the hero in a graveyard? Zombies tangled in their own intestines? A set designed like a rotting, severed hand? They went all-out with this one. Once again Bluebird’s love of dancing villains rears its funky head, in the form of the prancing tree monster and the “hip hop hooray” zombie.
RATTUS suffers from bad set design: the main feature is a huge cage with a double-trapdoor setup. The floor, meanwhile, is completely bare when unpacked. By far the worst offense is those damn ears: they’re murder to remove from the set, and absolute hell to get back on for storage, which doesn’t bode well for a kid’s toy. It does have its finer points though: the villain is really snazzy-looking, and his pet spider is scary as hell. It’d actually be a pretty swell playset if there was more to the main floor than a decal and a bit o’ detail.
THE FLY is my favorite from Series 3: it takes place on a flying fortress piloted by a mad-scientist-turned-Brundlefly and comes with a giant bug-legged vehicle that could duke it out with the scorpion tank from Series 2. The cockpit windshield opens up to reveal the pilot inside, even when the set is closed up. It’s the smallest Doom Zone in the toy line, but the stuff it comes with makes it worth it, and what little space there is definitely has its share of awesome detail.
Then we come to NAUTILUS. Yes, it’s that Nautilus — the villain is none other than Undead Captain Nemo. This Doom Zone is unique from all the others in that it opens vertically in half rather than horizontally; whether or not it’s your favorite Doom Zone, it stands out from all the others in a positive way, enough to make up for yet another gaudy color scheme.
GEELA GUTS (aka LIZARD) was not released in my region of the US, so I wasn’t able to acquire it until recently, and even then it came with the wrong Max figure, which I’ll have to replace at some point. But the set itself is by far one of the most creative and unusual as far as outward design goes. The articulated tongue can swallow Max if the jaws are open, and the overall shape is donut-like with a large empty space in the center that penetrates the entire set. The interior is delightfully gruesome, a new high for Mighty Max Macabre: Max runs around the innards of his pet lizard, which is apparently INFESTED with hideous alien parasites. The Parasite Prince villain is extremely cool and has a nicely detailed mug.
SERIES 3 HORROR HEADS
These ‘Heads shows the first major signs of the death of the Mighty Max line: the interiors are lazy and uninspired like most of the Series 1 ‘Heads, but the figures are kind of cool at least. There are two gimmicks this time around: they seem to jaw-themed, with most of the compacts’ jaws doubling as vehicles or monsters when open; and none of them come with the featured villain! It’s too bad, ‘cos this is the batch that featured Freako, the clown with radiation poisoning. That woulda made for an awesome Doom Zone.
RHESUS 4, the most common of the Series 3 ‘heads, is lackluster at best. It has a vaguely Planet of the Apes motif that could have been exploited better, and half the accessories are for a goofy looking combine. This set is also known as HYDRON for some reason.
TALON came with some cool monsters, and a badass jaw-tank. The giant vulture has an assortment of perches all over the playset, including one at the very top of the opened compact. This set is also known as CLAWBER.
FREAKO THE CLOWN has a great compact face: a bright-green grinning clown monster. The set itself is a psychadelic circus which seems largely uninspired: they could’ve at least included a hellish trapeze or something. The monsters are pretty cool at least: a two-headed freak and a giant shark-wolf(?). It also has the most striking face of all the horror heads — as an added stroke of design brilliance, the two-headed freak’s fingers and wristband become further eye tendons for Freako when the set is closed.
BEETLEBROW is the rarest of all the Mighty Max playsets. The insectoid robot likes to ride around on a space-jetski, and has an abode filled with creepy crawlers and some poor, unlucky spaceman being eaten alive by worms. Max can’t ride the jetski, but he can giddyap the generic tentacle beast.
The Beetlebrow and Freako horror heads, like the Geela Guts doom zone of Series 3, were readily available all over the UK, but only select areas in the US for whatever reason. Some states didn’t get anything from Series 3 apparently. I have no idea what the deal is with Series 3’s wishy-washy US distribution, but it’s a shame it kept me from getting the entire playset collection for twenty years. That has finally been remedied, so the collector in me can finally sleep well at night.
I know, first world problems.
SKULL MASTER
This set’s connection to the cartoon is obvious from the get-go: it’s made in the striking image of Max’s nemesis, the titular Skull Master. Many a kid probably enjoyed busting this evil bastard’s face open. It sports a lot of silly, cartoonish decals — one more sign of Bluebird’s growing disinterest in the toy line — but there’s tons of great stuff to make up for it. We also get the return of the Skull Master figure from the Double-Demon figure set — he can wield his menacing staff when it isn’t being fired from his big blue howitzer.
You can put Norman on a torture rack controlled by a giant head-cleaving axe on the rear balcony. Figures can easily plummet to their doom through the eye socket windows, above which hideous green ghouls are crawling down from the rafters. There’s a bodacious babe held captive on the ground floor, but she’s part of the background and not a removable figure, which is a shame.
That last pic shows the Pit of Despair: anything you drop while playing with or packing up this playset will land in there 10 out of 10 times.
This set seems a little small compared to the other Super Doom Zones. That’s because we haven’t yet assembled the Skull Master’s ultimate weapon: a giant, over-armed, bat-shaped glider, which comprises about one-third of the playset. Its thrusters — also the playset’s “eyes” — are battery-powered and glow while in flight.
This concludes my primary Mighty Max articles, and Max’s main adventures. Hope you enjoyed readin’ them and looking at my silly photos. Now I can put these playsets back in my closet and stop breathing and eating dust, like I have been for the past week.
Read about the knock-off toy line, Sammy Steel!
Wanna read more about Mighty Max? Check out the Retrojunk article and the Mighty Max Archives forum!
Mighty Max is back, and badder than ever! Things change for Max in his second run: he’s a teenager now, not the big-eyed urchin we’ve come to know and love. And his adventures are even more detailed…and more gruesome.
SERIES 2 DOOM ZONES
You can tell just from the picture that these sets are more hardcore than the last: no more pastels, and certainly no more cuteness. Series 2 traded in Scooby Doo for H. P. Lovecraft.
SCORPION is less of an environment and more of a two-pack of massive machines: a scorpion tank with thrusting tail, and a wall-mounted turret thing with moving claws. The evil dude looks like he stepped in nuclear dog poo and is furious about it (I would be too).
APE KING features a lush jungle environment with a slew of gruesome touches. Check out the look of horror on Max’s face as he witnesses the Ape King’s finisher move, the Megaton Nut Stomp.
DINO LAB has an odd interior color scheme. It also has a Jurassic Park thing going for it, though, so it’s all good. I really love the electrified cage door and the dinosaur incubator on the bottom floor.
CYCLOPS is my favorite Series 2 Doom Zone for the same reasons Skull Dungeon was my favorite in Series 1: spooky old castle with so much stuff to do! Look at all the torture devices! The iron maiden actually works, too! And the big monster is one of the coolest, channeling The Dunwich Horror or something along those lines. The colors are what they ought to be, a dull bluish-gray, not a goofy shade of turquoise like Dino Lab’s floor.
MANEATER is the rare case of a “mobile” set: the entire thing is supposed to be an attack sub that eats through the hulls of cargo ships. The likeness to a battle-scarred shark is an awesome sight. I also like the Dancing Squid Twins. Inka-dinka-doo, ha-cha-cha-cha.
BATTLECAT is an odd one: it doesn’t feature the titular battlecat! He’s in the comic on the back of the card, but not in the set itself! It’s weird, but I’m not complaining: the man-hunter Gor is one of the most memorable Mighty Max villains, for all his ugliness and that hideously gore-slick boulder in his hands. The interior colors are once again goofy, but we can forgive that thanks to the awesome bad guys included.
SERIES 2 HORROR HEADS
The Series 2 ‘Heads number half as many as Series 1, but they make up for it with their overabundance of detail and creepiness. Where the previous ‘heads were little more than glorified carrying cases, the Series 2 environments are interactive enough that they feel more like miniature doom zones. If Series 1 had been as good as this, it would have been astounding.
AX MAN is one of the coolest Horror Heads, due to the demented asshole with the chainsaw and his supremely nasty torture device.
The special feature of CORPUS is the face, which splits in half: it can simulate an open grave if only half-opened, and a catacomb when open all the way. It might actually be my favorite horror head because of this, and because of the creepy, gangly ghoul.
WEREWOLF doesn’t feature the titular lycanthrope (foreshadowing Series 3), but his minions are frightening. I love the sitting one.
LOCKJAW’s Big Red is a nod to Jason Voorhees — he comes locked in a coffin, surrounded by painful-looking farm tools. Max can stand in the loft if you angle it just right.
DRAGON ISLAND
The big “climax” of Series 2 takes place on a horrid, rocky island shaped like a Dragon’s head and inhabited by unruly lizard folk called the Zilards. It’s a horrible place to be whether you’re scaling its jagged surface or roaming the dreary courtyard.
Oodles o’ neat stuff! The jaws extend to expose a ghastly waterline, along which Max may find an escape raft or a ravenous sea monster — choose your fate!
The courtyard is where all the action occurs. It appears Skull Master is making some dirty deals with the Zilards! Soaring overhead is the Great Red Dragon, surveying the scene. Norman would spring into action if he weren’t being held at gunpoint.
The burrowing iguana is a lever that makes Skull Master rotate on his green base. The silver minecart is the lever for opening and closing the island’s “jaws”.
Read about the knock-off toy line, Sammy Steel!
Wanna read more about Mighty Max? Check out the Retrojunk article and the Mighty Max Archives forum!
This was, and still is, my all-time favorite toy line. Mighty Max was the brother of Polly Pocket, although I guess you could say he wasn’t as successful, given how Polly is still around today, eating at fifties diners and going to salons. Max dropped out early, but it’s easy to see why: there’s only so much horror a young adventurer can take, as we’re about to witness over the next few blog posts.
Mighty Max was a great toy for a kid who loved miniatures as much as he loved horror and adventure. It was also a great toy for any kid who just wanted to do terrible things to poor Max, as if his curse were to travel endlessly between dimensions only to be tortured and killed in various horrible ways.
I always had him win, though. Honest.
SERIES 1 DOOM ZONES
Mighty Max never looked this adorable again: lots of pastel colors and characters that were spooky in a cartoony, almost Scooby-Doo-esque way.
WOLFSHIP 7 depicts the bridge of a nifty alien battle cruiser. The blue Geiger-esque aliens love orange highlights. The coolest feature is the little removable fighter ship at the front of the deck, which anybody can pilot.
ARACHNOID was a cool mad science lab like something out of a 1950’s creature feature. The villain is memorable for being the scariest villain of the Series 1 Doom Zones: a ghastly humanoid spider. His pet, the giant tarantula, is — comparatively speaking — cute as a button.
THE DOOM DRAGON was my first set, and essentially where I fell in love with this new toy. The rocky cave formations inside are super-detailed and sport a big ol’ acidy lake for evildoers (or Max’s dumb ass) to fall into. I liked that the dragon got its own little cave to sleep in.
THE PALACE OF POISON is easily one of the top two sets of Series 1. Never mind the awesome exterior — inside is an elaborate Egyptian tomb, laid out in a slightly different way than the other sets (the snake’s head becomes a tower o’ treasure). We had this set for about a year before discovering that the chest on the main floor could open up. You know you have a badass toy when you’re constantly discovering new things about it.
SKULL DUNGEON is my favorite Series 1 set. It’s exploding with neat details and all kinds of moving parts, and what’s not to like about the Universal monster movie decor? The highlight of course is the articulated “Frankenstein” table where Dr. Gore’s pet lies, waiting for new life!
ICE ALIEN is possibly the least interesting, but has a very nice minimalist color scheme and some neato monsters if nothing else.
SERIES 1 HORROR HEADS
Paired with every Doom Zone lineup was a series of half-sized playsets. The compacts themselves were little more than decorative cases for the wicked little figures inside, the interiors comprised of haphazard detail. I quite like the horror heads because in most cases they can be used as “expansions” for the original sets.
The unusual thing about Series 1 is there are TWICE as many Horror Heads as in Series 2 and 3. I gather sales weren’t as impressive.
VAMP-BITER boasts the most coherent interior of the set: a spooky castle with a bloody, cavernous basement. Nothing says “kid’s toy” like a giant lake of blood…
…or a massive, putrid alien brain, like in ZOMBOID. The monsters in this one are some of the coolest; the interior and exterior, definitely the grossest.
ROBOT INVADER. The colors are tacky, but the big bad guy Cyberbrain still looks super cool.
NUKE RANGER. Max probably shouldn’t be hiding amongst glowing green skeletons without a hazmat suit. It’s one of the few Series 1 ‘heads that featured a big vehicle.
SKULL WARRIOR. I suppose this interior is some kind of cyborg arena, littered with the corpses of fallen gladiators, and Max is forced to fight the cyber-champ on his flying suppository.
SEA SQUIRM. Lots of cool little undersea details in this one, though I could do without the “reef” in the center. The sea serpent is pretty wicked-looking and gives me flashbacks of The Deep starring Nick Nolte.
LAVA BEAST. I love how the bad guy is tailor made to choke the life out of poor Max. Bonus points for the super cuddly beetle guy. The interior is kind of dull, being nothing but lava, but it makes a decent supplement to Skull Mountain.
KRONOSAUR. Somewhere in another realm, Ray Harryhausen is smiling. This one has my favorite exterior of the Series 1 ‘heads, for its vibrant colors and exquisite detail. The brutish caveman also rocks socks.
Finally, each series included one or more giant playsets, sometimes referred to as Super Doom Zones. I considered them to be the big finale for each series. Series 1 concluded with the ultimate Mighty Max toy…
SKULL MOUNTAIN
This is the big bloody red jewel in Mighty Max’s crown: the toy line just doesn’t get better than this, even though it was made during the cartoonish Series 1. Skull Mountain puts all other playsets to shame, regardless of the toy line: it has so many mind-blowing features for a kid it’s hard to know where to start. I got this set for Christmas one year, and it was probably the coolest toy my parents ever gave me.
The outside is as much a part of the playset as inside, and just as detailed: I find something new every time I look at this thing. The mountain has multiple entrances, including a hidden elevator dock! If you don’t trust the elevator, you can always take the trapdoor to the right. The elevator stops at five different points, some not so desirable: the dragon’s perch, for instance. A small island extends the playset further, where a hammerhead submarine can be docked. Two moving jawbridges, a trapdoor leading to a pit, an escape pod, two projectile traps, a crab that lunges out of its cave to attack unwary visitors. The launchers also double as torture devices. Take that, Geneva Convention!
Read about the knock-off toy line, Sammy Steel!
Wanna read more about Mighty Max? Check out the Retrojunk article and the Mighty Max Archives forum!
Apparently they made bubble bath, too.
Coulda sworn I sold these or gave ’em away: King of Fighters, Pinky Street Edition.
Pinky Street figures normally look like this: adorable fashion gals whose heads, torsos, and legs can be swapped to make new characters. I’m a notorious sucker for cute shit, so I grabbed a few more since taking these photos.
The point of all this was to prep my toys for selling on ebay; here i am buying more instead!
I can’t remember where I found these. They’re small enough to fit in a Mighty Max playset; thought it was neat that they still got carded individually.
All but two of the Bandai FF7 figures made when the game first came out (missing Barrett and Red XIII, and as far as I know they never made Cid even though he was advertised).
Another item I thought I’d never own, ’til I spotted it at a local hobby shop. It was $110, and I bought it for $30 in cash and the rest in trade (traded a couple Evangelion vinyl figures that weren’t nearly as nice).
Like with all my toys, she’s not in mint condition: her earring broke off due to a stupid accident. She’s still purdy, though.
EARTH! WORM! JIMMM!
From-plas-tic-he-was-caaast!
EARTH! WORM! JIMMM!
His-car-toon-sure-sucked-aaass!
Mike's Toybox 