Godzilla vs. Mothra Pachinko Game (Toho, 1992)

This is almost two posts in a row about Pachinko (the other having to do with Ebirah), but this is such a cool toy, I had to write about it.  Amazingly, it's from 1992, and was in the hands of a collector, rather than a child, because it's in flawless condition.

It's a working pachinko game (albeit with 8 balls), but it's all about the graphics.  Just look at the chibi-style Mothra larvae!

The game is bigger than I thought it would be, and stands around 6 inches high.  When you launch a ball, the Mothra larva spinner spins.  Other spinners/pockets have cute versions of Angilas, Baragon, Gigan, Rodan...and the jackpot, King Ghidorah.  In the background graphics, Minya, Adult Mothra, and, strangely, Mechagodzilla, are lurking.

Now, they could have phoned it in with this one, and just made it a pinball game with no features! But they didn't.  The jackpot target, pictured above, is a perfectly-engineered, slow-moving funnel.  Did you ever put a coin into one of those giant funnel things, as a kid, that collected money for charity?  They used to have them in malls, and also in McDonald's restaurants.  This funnel is a miniature version of that concept!  Upon exiting the funnel, the ball drops straight into the King Ghidorah target, and JACKPOT!

And it really does jackpot, too, like its bigger Pachinko siblings.  And just in case it doesn't, there is a "reset" lever on the back to release the balls.

I found it quite bizarre, but there is no manufacturer listed anywhere that I can see, other than Toho, which I didn't THINK ever made toys, but who knows.  I'd expect a Bandai, Banpresto, or Tomy, even.

A great addition to the collection, but don't play this game if your loved ones are trying to sleep...it's extremely noisy!

THE SUPER DICTIONARY (Part Two)

Continuing our Friday foray into the madness that is THE SUPER DICTIONARY.  The previous post was excessively wordy, and after editing it three times, I'm going to mostly let the pictures speak for themselves today!

Sometimes I think Dr. Wertham had a point.

Robin, directed by Alfred Hitchcock.  What the crap is "CHUP." ??

As previously stated, Lois is an idiot.  Occasionally, the SUPER DICTIONARY's definitions are credible, but sometimes they are also ridiculously obtuse:

You can see how a poor child could be mislead.

A..............soapy water ball?

Looks like more than a BUMP on his head....how about, "People tried to BUMP him off anyway?"

This is one of my favorite pictures in the book, and it's hard to hold back on this one...first of all, Batman's neck is apparently broken, and I'm not 100% sure where he is standing.  Secondly, Robin looks a little young to be driving anything, so what did you think was going to happen?  Thirdly, is this the Batmobile from Toontown?  I have a lot of questions.

TO BE CONTINUED...

You Know You Are Obsessed When...

...you start seeing kaiju in the strangest places.

MONSTER MEANIES "Godzilla" (Carlin Playthings Inc., c.1980)

One of those "gray area" toys, but there is no doubt that this is supposed to be Godzilla.  I don't know much about this line, other than it was made by Carlin Playthings, Inc.  I have seen both 1980 and 1984 listed as dates for this series, and there were apparently four different figures (also maybe sold together in a 4-pack).

I had been hunting for one for some time, and did not expect to find one that was still on the card (even though the card is pretty rough)!  It shouldn't really be a surprise that the back of the card is completely blank.

Here is another photo that I dug up and saved, that at least shows you what the back of the figure looks like:

You will notice familiar (Ultraman) faces in the other three figures lurking on the background of the card.  What puzzles me are the sculpts for these figures:  were they new, or maybe taken from some bootlegs from other countries?  They don't look like any Japanese figures I've ever seen, and I'd like to know more about their origin!

THE SUPER DICTIONARY (Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1978) Part One

The SUPER front cover!

Have you ever run across something from your childhood that you totally missed? Something that you completely were unaware of its existence? Something that you SHOULD have known about, but somehow had no idea of? Well, over the years, I have read so much about this book, piecing together clues about it here and there...which have become legion in recent years...that I knew I had to own it.  You probably know something about it too, for the preliminary reason that I did:  the Lex Luthor "40 cakes" phenomenon.  This image has been circulated around and used in many a meme.

The truth is, there's an entire 400+-page tome full of that stuff, and it's called THE SUPER DICTIONARY.  Have you ever sat down and just READ a dictionary? No?! Well, I hadn't either...until now.

The SUPER back cover! Flash is glaring at the reader as if to say "You aren't looking at MY bum, pal!"

I end up talking about the 1970's way too often in this blog, and I am going to limit it to one sentence here.  In short, the generation in the 1960's who were old enough to become figures of authority in the 1970's had some unusual ideas about learning.  I think that about explains all of the chroma-key and surreal weirdness of educational children's shows during that period.  

I honestly have a theory in the back of my mind that the stately group of wordsmiths and Education PhD's listed at the front of the book were bombed out of their minds the entire time they were putting this together, and probably cracking each other up as they went along.  

And believe me, it's on every page.  Even a simple entry such as "camera" can take a turn into Strangeville before you even see it coming: 

Wait, WHA-? How did a giant goose get into this?!

Instead of DEFINING the words, like a normal dictionary, this book takes the approach of "if we use the word in a sentence, it will become obvious to the child what that word means.  If we use it several times, they will definitely no longer be confused."  (Of course, if you are five years old, and you are having to look up the word arm, you already had a MAJOR problem that no book could help.)  It leads to some hilarious double-speak, that at times sounds like the mumblings of a drunken mental patient.  Words are used, reused, and, sometimes, re-reused in the same balloon.  If the word is a homonym, it can even be used once again, all WITHOUT PRONUNCIATIONS, mind you, also a crucial part of a normal dictionary.  "Where did you lead me?  Where are you leading me? I have many leads to follow on my story.  This pipe is made of lead."  That sort of thing.  [Footnote:  it should be noted that Craig McCracken has said that this book was an inspiration for the speech patterns of Mojo Jojo in THE POWERPUFF GIRLS!]

Let's jump in.  At the beginning of the book, there is a glossary of all the Super Heroes that will star in the dictionary.  The usual suspects are here:  Batman, Robin, Superman, Wonder Woman, etc., and some villains, like Lex Luthor, The Joker, and The Penguin.  Aquaman and Lois Lane are also present, to fill out the requirements for complete idiots (you shall see, dear reader).  Also, there are a few "randoms" that it looks like were invented for the book, and some very dubious "heroes" of other races.  For example, a black version of Zatanna they created on the spot for the dictionary, named "Conjura."

Also, there is a Spanish guy in a garish costume called "El Dragon," as in "El Dra-GOAN"...wait, didn't we already have ridiculous two-dimensional stereotypical heroes of other races, created for the Super Friends?  Black Vulcan? Samurai? Apache Chief? (By the way, in the Native American category, we get Firehair, a lame character...but they are quick to point out in his bio that he is NOT AN INDIAN.) FAIL.

El Dragon's name means "The Dragon."  Likewise, the name of your parents' car means "The Camino."

I did some research on this next one, to make sure she was made up for the book:

Turns out, she was, although I don't know why.  Perhaps to make the other purple-haired kids from space feel okay about themselves?

Did you know that Catwoman loves cats very much? Did you know that? Seriously, this is insulting, even to the dumbest kid in the class.  "And she loves to do bad things."  Like dressing as some sort of Three Muskateers-themed hooker.

As we have already seen, Lex Luthor is terrible.  Also, the phrase "shoot people with his rockets" is so randomly-inserted, it's almost a non-sequitur.

And now, a note on the art...most of the illustrations were cribbed from various DC back-issues, and look as though they were traced by the hired help.  Supergirl's costume changes....as fast as it did in the comics, actually.

Today, we begin in the A's.

Batman and Robin are having a moment...did you notice the mangled pile of bodies behind them?  Is Robin Wolverine, suddenly?  Is that guy missing fingers??

She is also completely lassoing her own feet.  And....the generic crook gets away.

Will Atom ask the bee to the prom?  Atom has quite an ongoing relationship with bees in this book.

I need some context for this picture...is Superman shrunk to a tiny size?  Is he cleaning the Justice League fountain? How does one "win" over algae? And, how does "little water plants" even get the meaning of algae across to children?!??

Oh, okay, I see.  Animals only have two characteristics:  they are living, and they are not a plant.  So far, I have learned that Krypto is not algae.  Let's move on, to a bit of nightmare fuel!

My goodness; that's not creepy at all, now is it? Is there any context that makes this picture less than truly frightening?

TO BE CONTINUED...

Nabisco/Frito-Lay Dinosaurs (1950's/1960's)

Today, we take a look at a very prized set of tiny figures that are dear to me.  First, a short backstory:  When I was small, occasionally I would get to play with these small plastic dinosaurs, because my father had a large bag of them, and he always told me that he earned them by eating many, many bags of Frito's corn chips.  Years later, he was nice enough to let me pick out a set of all ten for my own, and they are proudly displayed in a glass case in my office:

Only recently can I fill in a bit more of the details about their origin.  They were first offered in the 1950's by Nabisco, as a cereal premium, specifically "Wheat Honeys," which are the same thing as "Sugar Smacks," ...which are gross.  They even gave you a handy guide with extremely simple, kid-friendly names:

Although I don't think "Reptilian Tank" was a good test answer, even in the 1950's.  Hey, I just thought of something:

Anyway, there are two amazing things I notice on this Wheat Honeys box:  1) You could mail away for the entire set of ten dinosaurs for 25 cents, and 2) a large box of cereal cost TWENTY-THREE CENTS in the 50's.  That's amazing.  Of course, houses were like ten bucks, so go figure.

Fast-forwarding to the 1960's, these figures were again produced, this time as premiums included in bags of Frito-Lay products.  (Nevermind that cereal premiums are long gone, can you imagine getting free stuff in bags of chips? The last time I saw that was in the 1990's, when you could get little Star Wars discs.)  And that's where my set came from.  Here's a closer look at all ten:

These little guys actually have quite a bit of detail, which hopefully shows up in my crappy I-phone photos.  The technical scientific names for these three are Tyrannosaurs Rex, Goat Head, and Duckbill.

Here's three of the best. I think the Triceratops has always been my favorite dinosaur, with the Dimetrodon a close second.  You have to wonder if Frito-Lay thought they were unintentionally doing some marketing for Sinclair gas stations, with the Brontosaurus?

Stegosaurus and Diplodocus, which the cereal box refers to as "Sea Serpent," as in Loch Ness??

The distant relatives of Angilas and Rodan, the Ankylosaurus and the Pterodactyl.  It takes a lot of work to get the Pterodactyl figure to stand.  It has an angled flat spot, which makes it stand crooked for a few seconds, before it falls over.

One last point, about the amazing colors these things came in!  It's actually hard to photograph these things and get their colors to come across accurately.  They were available in several colors, and many of them are very unique.  You just don't see molded plastic in these colors anymore, and you know right away by looking at them that they are vintage.  Here is an attempt to better show this, using a white background (and correcting the photo some):

1)  Black, which appears to be pretty common for these guys.
2)  A rich green color, that is kind of close to a hunter/forest green, but not quite.
3)  Gray, but not so much on my computer monitor.
4)  A lovely soft purple; not so much to be lavender, but in-between.
5)  Kind of a mauve, is the best way to describe it.
6)  My favorite, it's like a gun-metal blue-gray that is extremely pleasing to behold.
7)  A vivid, red/orange/brown rust.

2023 UPDATE:

This remains one of the highest-read posts on this blog, and some kind soul actually saved the little flyer from the original packaging for all these years, and recently sold it on Ebay.  Now, through the magic of technology, we can see it for ourselves! Behold!

Monsters of the Movies: Rodan model kit (Aurora, 1975)

I must have waited two years for one of these kits to pop up on Ebay--well, this is the second one, because I missed out on the first, but it was worth the wait.  This lovely kit comes from 1975, at a time when Aurora was beginning to push monster kits again, after a hiatus of several years.  Apparently, from my reading this weekend, Nabisco had bought the company and phased out monster kits.  At any rate, by the mid-70's, they were ready to try it again, and included two brand-new kaiju kits in the line, the other being Ghidrah, which you can see in depth here.

The box art is very nicely done, and I think it does a good job of tempting the buyer.  I actually prefer it to the 2000 re-issues.  "Downtown Tokyo gets run down again."

The lovely 1970's orange-rust color goes well with its counterpart, which is purple.  Interestingly, they don't include the "clack board" in the photos anywhere.
Now let's look at what's included!

Here's half of the pieces, some still on their trees!  And also the base...but what to my wandering eye should appear...?

Yep, sharp-eyed Marvelites have already noticed this, but my seller had stored the pieces for his kit in vintage bags for Marvel comic three-packs! I used to love these things.  (In case you don't know, you used to be able to buy 3-packs of old-stock comics in grocery stores, and probably others, at a discounted rate.  They were frustrating also, because you never knew what the middle comic was going to be!)  I was happy to see that these bags appeared to be unused, or at least very carefully used, because they are perfect, and I wanted to keep one separately.  I love buying things and getting a little bonus that you weren't expecting!

And here are the pieces of Rodan, as well as the trees that they came on.  If you look to the left of Rodan's head(s), you will see the movable tongue piece that the box mentioned.

Finally, here are the instructions.  I'm glad to say that the "Film History" section isn't full of glaring errors, so somebody actually cared to know their stuff.  After all, unless you watched the movies, kaiju information wasn't extremely easy to come by back then!