Is There A Game Tonight?

 

Brief one today...this was hanging in a flea market.  I can't quite imagine how this would all work (as a sport?) exactly, but it passed for entertainment in those days.  If you think about it, it's doubtful this was ever allowed inside a real gymnasium or court.  As I recall from PE class, they were really maniacal about the wrong types of shoes on the court....much less hooves.

By the way, what is the official name of this sport? I would like to submit "Ass-ketball" for consideration. Anyone?

I had to clean it up a bit in  Photoshop, but there is no AI nonsense involved here.

ULTRAMAN TARO: GREAT MONSTER THE 30 (Bandai, 1991)

 

Here is an item that took me by surprise.  You may recall that we reviewed both the ULTRAMAN and ULTRASEVEN "Great Monster the 30" figure sets, a while back, but I didn't know this existed!

So these are 30-figure sets that are basically "keshi," a category of soft rubber, gashapon-type Japanese figures (sometimes even including erasers). Each set includes the hero Ultra, and 29 kaiju from his series.

To American eyes, these are highly reminiscent of the awesome M.U.S.C.L.E. 28-packs that we had over here (and hey, those were connected to Bandai too, so there you go):

Back to our set at hand, here is the back of the box:

While the previous two sets included a die and a colorful game board, enabling you to play a board game with the figures (because Japan), this one does not, and instead gives you a heavy sheet of die-cut labels:

Interestingly, there isn't very much "Taro" content in the stickers...in fact, all of the kaiju pictured are from other shows.  There is good reason for this, because by this point in the lineage, the shows were beginning to show some fatigue, and the enemy designs were starting to suffer.  There were still some high points, but some were just forgettable. Lots of feathers and dangly things.

Here are the contents of the set.  How many can you name? The answer for me is, "precious few." And I will admit it!

After puzzling over these, I went to the booklet for the blu-rays, and then realized lots of the spellings are pretty knackered up, so I resorted to correcting as many of these as I could via online sources...so here are the names:

So my main take-away from this is:  does this mean there is a RETURN OF ULTRAMAN set (Jack, that is) that exists somewhere? If so, sign me up.  The first three shows were the best. It makes me wonder how many of the classic shows had sets in this line.  It's extremely hard to find any information online about these, but I am digging away.

As you can probably tell, I have sort of a love-hate relationship with the last few classic Ultra shows.  They tend to be hit-and-miss sometimes.  With Taro, it seems like he is always having to be rescued by his mama. I was still very happy to discover this one, though.  I will always take more classic Ultra!

GODZILLA vs. THE THING Unused Ad Mat #203 (AIP/National Screen Service, 1964)

 

This is another brief one today, but here is an UNUSED vintage Ad Mat (or Ad Mold, or even "flong," which some people call them) from GODZILLA vs. THE THING!

We have looked at a few of these over the years, but if you are new here:  these were ordered through the pressbook, and were made of molded wood pulp.  The idea was that molten lead was poured into them, and added to a block of wood to make a newspaper ad printing block! As such, this destroyed the mold, so as you can imagine, unused ones rarely pop up!

The entire piece measures 4 & 5/8 by 3 & 3/8 inches, but that is including the large border around the ad.  Through the magic of "having the pressbook," we can compare the ad mold to the actual finished product, below!

This of course plays off of the legendary Reynold Brown artwork for the half-sheet poster of this film, which is a masterpiece.  

This ad mold has been added to the newest edition of our Guide to Vintage American Godzilla Theatrical Promotional Items, which you can download for free and see this and much, much more!

Godzilla & King Kong Aurora Model Kits Retailer Order Form! (Aurora, 1964)

A quick one today, but the image speaks for itself. Here is an original retailer order form (measuring 8.5 x 11 inches) that is announcing the 1964 King Kong and Godzilla Aurora model kits, which will run you the princely sum of a buck-forty-nine apiece!

This piece has an even cooler story in its provenance.  I purchased this from one of the top Aurora model collectors in the world, and it actually came from the personal collection and estate of Andy Yanchus (1944-2021).  Yanchus was a colorist at Marvel Comics for 17 years (he even colored the AMAZING SPIDER-MAN issue that was the Hobgoblin's first appearance!), but before that, he actually worked for Aurora for over 10 years, designing kits and rising to the rank of Aurora Project Manager.  As you would expect, he left Aurora with a huge collection of artifacts and artwork.

This is an awesome piece with its connection to Godzilla history already, but knowing the "rest of the story" makes it even better!

Godzilla DOOM ISLAND Spacegodzilla (and carded figures) Trendmasters, 1997

 

I recently added this beauty to my collection, completing my set of carded DOOM ISLAND action figures (which is what Trendmasters referred to as "6-inch action figures," even though they are really closer to 5).  

If you don't know the story, DOOM ISLAND was the third and final Godzilla line made by Trendmasters, which unfortunately was cancelled before it could be completely realized. What was finished was never officially sold in the United States, as retailers like Wal-Mart simply passed on the line, signaling that the Trendmasters Godzilla line had run its course.  It's too bad, because the premise of the line was incredible: Godzilla and friends fighting dinosaurs!

Six carded figures were produced and packaged, which was good and bad--on the one hand, they were the sculpts we had seen previously,  in the KING OF THE MONSTERS and GODZILLA WARS lines...and now with no option for sound...but on the other, all of them were now improved with different paint, and accentuated by a dark wash, which made them look super-cool. (The two Godzillas still retained their battery-powered "Atomic Plasma Eyes," though.)

Here is a high-resolution scan of the backing card, which shows lots of amazing entries in this line, both made and unmade (some of these exist only as prototypes):

We have taken in-depth looks at the four "Battle Armor" figures on this site before, which you can view here:

Battle Armor Godzilla

Battle Armor Kumonga

Battle Armor Mecha King Ghidorah

Battle Armor Anguirus

Back to the six carded figures, they were: Godzilla, Supercharged Godzilla, Baragon, Megalon, Varan, and Spacegodzilla.  For some reason, you will see an occasional Doom Island Godzilla appear for sale, but the others are very hard to come by--especially Varan and SpaceG!

I had custom acrylic cases built for mine, so I could hang them on the wall:

If you want to know lots more about the DOOM ISLAND line, check out our Guide to Trendmasters Godzilla Products 1994-97, where you can see concept art, prototypes, and much more!

Promotional Calendar (Hanna-Barbera Productions, 1978) Godzilla! Super Friends! ........Godzooky.

 

Who knew, but in December of 1978, Hanna-Barbera sent out promotional calendars as gifts, which were printed on 11 x 14 glossy paper, and bound at the top with a green comb, the type of which is still used today. We can obviously spot our favorite kaiju right there on the front, inside of a giant stocking (I mean a GIANT stocking) with everyone else!

Oh, and Godzooky is also there.

Let's jump in, and take a look at the contents!

January shows us YOGI'S SPACE RACE, a short-lived attempt to space-ify some HB characters in the wake of Star Wars, which is what everyone else was doing too.  It was also one of those Saturday-morning shows that was part of a "programming block," (in this case, 90 minutes) that included some other features we are going to see shortly.

February's subject might be unknown to you, but JANA OF THE JUNGLE was 1/2 of the original GODZILLA POWER HOUR, and did not go over at all. It's pretty obscure, but episodes are on the YouTubes.

March and April are even more obscure, if that's even possible! GALLOPING GHOST was originally a segment of YOGI'S SPACE RACE, and was later given half of a show, combined with THE BUFORD FILES (hold on for that one).

May is the main attraction, of course. This is a pretty well-used piece of promotional artwork for the series, but the composition is sort of odd, the more you look at it.  It almost seems like a paste-up. Godzilla's image is at a weird angle, and then Godzooky is just sort of tucked into the back.

For June, we have DINKY DOG, and I have no memory of this one whatsoever.  Wikipedia tells me it was part of THE ALL-NEW POPEYE HOUR, and later spun off to its own show.  It was also Hanna-Barbera's first show produced in Australia.

As previously mentioned, THE BUFORD FILES (which I don't remember either) was part of YOGI'S SPACE RACE.

August, however, is pretty special, and my second-favorite page in this calendar.  Not only was Saturday morning my introduction to Godzilla, but Super Friends was very important to me, and I didn't miss it. The 1979 season of the show would've been WORLD'S GREATEST SUPERFRIENDS, which was a good year!

September is SCOOBY-DOO, and if you can sort out the million permutations and combinations of Scooby-Doo shows that have aired over the decades, you are a better man than I.  I will point out that for the 1977-78 season, CAPTAIN CAVEMAN AND THE TEEN ANGELS was shown in the same 2-hour block, which brings us to October.  Do you remember kids running around the playground yelling "Captaaaaaain Caaaaaaaaaaaaaaavemaaannnnnnn!"???

We wrap up the year with two more easy ones.  Huckleberry Hound would've been seen on LAFF-A-LYMPICS about this time, and A FLINTSTONE CHRISTMAS was a prime-time TV special in 1977.

As a bonus, here is the original outer envelope that the calendar was mailed in!

Note the extra artwork up by the postage--9 years old by this time, Scooby-Doo was already the ambassador and symbol of Hanna-Barbera:

You may be interested to know, just in case you save and printout these calendar pages, they will be perfectly good to use again in the years 2029, 2035, 2046...and so on! Enjoy!

A Journey To The Center Of The Earth (Leo The Lion Records, 19xx) Rare LP!

 

Here is A JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH, with no Rick Wakeman to be found anywhere.  This is another classic from Leo the Lion Records, which was MGM's kid record label from the mid-60's until the mid-70's.  Among the usual kiddie fare in their library are some real gems, including "The Official Adventures Of..." records, which include Superman, Batman (x2), The Green Hornet, Flash Gordon, and more, as well as the super-cool DINOSAURS! LP with Basil Rathbone that you can enjoy at this post. 

This LP is actually much more than the title implies, containing dramatic condensations of 4 different classics, rounded out with THE TIME MACHINE, THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON, and WAR OF THE WORLDS....oddly enough, despite Jules Verne getting the title of the entire record, 75 percent of the stories were by H.G. Wells! All four of the books had been turned into movies by this point, too, so why elevate one above the others? You'd think the LP would've had a generic title like "THE GREATEST STORIES OF SCI-FI" or something...well, it was the 60's, so maybe THE GROOVIEST STORIES OF SCI-FI? ...No? Okay.

Apparently this is a rare one, because it's not on the YouTubes, or even on Ebay in the last seeable months.  I found this while out of state at a flea market, and luckily picked it up.  Enjoy!

LINK:  A JOURNEY TO THE (not Rick Wakeman) CENTER OF THE EARTH

Battlestar Galactica I.D. SET Rack Toy (Larami Corp, c. 1978)

 

Well, this is weird! This came from the very same Game Xchange store that the first Battlestar rack toy we looked at (back in October) did, so it must've been from the same owner! Well, either way, keep them coming, mysterious benefactor, and I will keep buying them.

If you are familiar with rack toys, then you know that the "I.D. Wallet" was one of the perennial staples of the genre, along with "shaving set," "flash light," "rubber band gun," and "flying disc (or launching flying disc)." Basically, you took whatever cheap toy was being produced, and slapped the sticker of the week on it, be it LAND OF THE LOST or LOVE BOAT. It mattered not!

Here is a better look at the included card (which helpfully pictures.....the Earth. Thanks!)  This type of toy actually had a longer lifespan than many of the other rack toys, in that it had some ongoing play-value, and probably outlasted its cousins.  I definitely would've run around the playground flashing this thing!

One other interesting point about this one:  when you first look at it, it appears the "CAPTAIN" insignia is stuck to the wallet, but it dawned on me that it makes no sense, because if you folded the wallet, it would be on the inside.  Then I took a closer look:

Upon closer inspection, you can see that it's actually a clip-on badge, stuck inside the package with clear tape! Well, duh! I guess I should have known that.  

Maybe I can continue to get lucky! If any Battlestar Galactica Shaving Kits or handcuffs show up, you can be sure they will turn up here!