Hello From Monster Kid
Hello, I'm Monster Kid and I will be posting alongside my fellow monster fan Zombie Rotten. I hope to be posting an array of monster related articles in the coming weeks, months and years. But in this first post, I would like to say a few words about the highly collectable Monster Toys of the past. I'm a huge fan of vintage monster toys, I don't own a huge collection - but what I do have is cherished.
I grew up in the 70s and 80s, and then, horror was fun. Horror was for boys and girls of every age back in the day. Horror toys for me represent this time more than any other memorabilia.
The toys weren't slick, glossy or well detailed. They were humble, basic and often a little crazy. They depicted monsters that were shunned and somehow deeply sad, yet they had charm, big bags of charm. For me, they not only represent our inherent obsession with the dark corners of our world, but are also highly evocative of times that have passed almost too quickly.
Toy giants like Mego produced a range of Universal Monsters (Mego Mad Monsters) but it was the smaller brands like Tomland, Remco, Lincoln International and my personal favourite AHI that produced the weirder, more charming and more limited runs of figures - The Wolfman, The Mummy, Dracula and The Creature could all be found in fully posable 8" action figure (or 'doll' as they were called back then) format. These little guys were cheaply made, with crazy clothes and utterly bonkers head sculpts.
You can check out The Monster Store for auctions of these crazy figures; they are highly collectable now, and can go for high sums. But if you can afford them, they're worth every penny. Monster toys are still popular today, but for me they are too perfect and too stylised, they don't have the innocence or charm of their antique predecessors. I am going to make future posts about specific toys, but for the time being, I'm signing out. If you are interested in vintage monster toys, it's well worth checking out Ray Castile's excellent The gallery of monster toys
0 Comments:
Links to this post:
Previous Posts |
Monthly Archives |
|
|
