Crazy Toybox from Heck: Volume One

Crazy Toybox from Heck is a new feature I thought up while I was cleaning out my closets and basement. Thanks to my parents never moving, I still have a lot of junk from when I was a kid. The bulk of it is standard 80's kid stuff - GI Joes, MASK, Transformers and such. But there are some long forgotten gems that have been shoved to the far recesses of my house, only to be found years later like some time capsule of my geeky-yet-supercool youth. This recurring feature will showcase some of the highlights I've discovered.

"Dick Tracy" Figures


If you know what's up, put it in the cup! Help is on the way!

Despite the fact that everyone said it sucked, I loved this movie when it came out in the summer of 1990, and even still like it now more than say, Schindler's List. Thanks to the tried and true method of "being just barely below the pain-in-the-ass threshold at the grocery store," I can proudly yet shamefully admit that I have the entire collection of these guys in a Rubbermaid box in the basement. This is aside from the ellusive Blank/Breathless Mahoney/Slutbag Madonney figure, which as far as I can remember was pulled from the market due to controversy stemming from something about the Pope hating Madonna.

Ronald Reagan... with the lead pipe... on my desk.

What kid wouldn't want to play with toys of physically deformed criminals with clever names reflecting said deformities? Plus, they were the same size as Ninja Turtles, making for some fantastic cross-over hijinks. In retrospect, the idea of kids playing with hobos and grizzled old men is fairly creepy, and as such I don't think these things are worth the film I didn't use to take these digital pictures.

Generic Transformer Bus Thing

Retarded bus, but less retarded than that movie about a retarded Rosie O'Donnell riding the bus.

Like any boy that wasn't dead in 1985, I enjoyed the Transformers. Unfortunately, they were a little too pricey to qualify as a what-the-hell gift for doing something like not getting Stompers stuck in my sister's hair. Usually, I had to settle for Go-Bots or worse. This thing falls into the latter category. According to the decals, it's made by Buddy L, who although made decent regular cars and stuff, could not transform his way out of a paper bag. That joke will make sense to you tomorrow when you're drunk, and everyone at the bar will think you're a jackass for laughing at the wall.

Bus stop, bus goes, she stays, love grows.

The concept of the toy is simple: a bus from what people in 1983 thought space was like transforms into a bus station that homeless people in 1983 slept in. It would seem to be more practical for the bus to just pull over and wait for people to get on, instead of transforming to a station and presumably crushing everyone inside. What do I know, I'm not an expert in transit logistics. I did play Railroad Tycoon II for a few days one time though. I don't remember if this thing was allowed to play with my normal Transformers, but if it was I can't figure out why it's still in one piece and not melted by being taped to a lightbulb.

Sandy Bullock and Keanu are no match for Smokescreen.

Hotwheels Crack-Ups


Look out, Magnum PI!!!11

The good people at Mattel knew what little boys of the early 1980's thought was fun times: devastating and fatal car crashes. In order to capitalize off of our hard-wired desire to re-enact shit from Knight Rider in 1:64 scale, they released the Crack-Ups line of Hotwheels cars. The concept is pretty neat actually... spring loaded panels on the front, rear, or side of the car would flip over to show damage when they were hit, and could be reset to do so over and over again till the little plastic bit holding them in place broke.

Don't worry, I can fix this, my dad's a tv repairman.

The downside to these cars was that the panels would either spring for no apparent reason, or not at all without the aid of throwing the car at your basement wall. And ultimately, no matter how elaborate of a crash scene you staged in your fold-up suitcase service station, it still wasn't as rewarding as just bashing a regular Hotwheels car with a hammer, which was probably more cost effective for Mattel anyhow.

75 cents I will never see again. Still, a bargain at twice the price.

The Horde (PC)

I think this is the episode where Eddie and Boner almost do coke.

I honestly don't know anything about this game. I bought it not long after I got my first computer, back when Weezer were still in the garage calling eachother Jonas. It refused to work on that computer, or any thereafter. As a fun reminder of how shitty this game is, posting this picture of it deleted this entire article back to the bus thing.

What I can tell you is that Kirk Cameron stars in the Horde, presumably in the 35 minutes of video on CD-ROM that the box brags about via a Garfield thought cloud coming out of a monster's ear. As far as I can guess from the screenshots, monsters try to take over Kirk's village, and he defends it by building spike-pits and telling everyone about how awesome Jesus is. That is the way of the master, after all.

LESTER!


"One of us is white!"
"One of us is brown!"

I know, I didn't think it could get much worse than the Kirk Cameron game either, but then I found Lester. There are three things that are hilarious about this:
1) I wanted a ventriloquist dummy.
2) I wanted a fucking LESTER ventriloquist dummy.
3) My grandparents actually bought me a "colored dummy" for Christmas.

I have no idea why I wanted this thing so badly, but I did. All I really remember is that Willie Tyler and Lester hosted or guest hosted some Saturday morning special on ABC. You know, the shitty one after all the cartoons that always showed Ralph S. Mouse or the Velvetine Rabbit or some other stupid movie of a book that wasn't Superfudge. Actually, maybe they just sold Rollos during the commercial breaks, it honestly doesn't matter at this point.

In the end, Lester was used for ventriloquism about .04% of the time I actually played with him. The remaining 99.96% of our life together was spent by me Perfectplexing that little bitch off of my bed. That might explain his missing hat and glasses, which I've tried to recreate as best as possible for you here.

"It ain't easy bein' light!"
"I got children all over town!"

Alright, that's all for now. I've got enough toys here to last us till the internet implodes under it's own weight of Czech porn and pretentious indie music reviews, so expect versions 2-8 sometime between right now and the future.

Yes, that is my second Czech porn reference in as many weeks. Oops.

Love,

Mike