Lost Toys #9: Godzilla Shogun Warrior

This is probably the strangest Godzilla toy you’ve ever seen.  It didn’t look like Godzilla, and his damn hand could shoot off!  Where did they get this idea from?  I suspect the toy was designed by Americans with only a passing familiarity with the Japanese icon.  But still, it was Godzilla, and therefore to me it was the coolest toy in the world.

I’m not sure why, but Godzilla fascinated me from early childhood.  Whenever any Godzilla movie would appear in the theater or on TV, I was there to watch it.  I would stay up until 3:00 AM to finish a movie—they used to come on WGHP’s “Shock Theater” on Saturday nights.  (It was always a double feature, starting at 11:30 PM, and Godzilla was always second in line.)

Accurate Godzilla action figures were nearly impossible to find in the 1970s, at least where I lived.  The Shogun Warrior was as close as I could get.  But seriously, he doesn’t even closely resemble the real thing:

(Believe it or not, that’s King Kong that Godzilla is dancing with, in the worst Godzilla film ever made.)

Godzilla’s appearance changed over the years, but he never looked like the Shogun warrior.  Neither did his kid:

The Shogun Godzilla was a simple toy to play with.  He had rollers in his feet, so you could push him around on the floor to destroy whatever cities you had built.  (I made mine out of stacked cups.)  His arms would rotate at the shoulders, so you could smash things—total coolness.  But he also had a “fire tongue,” a feature which made the toy more similar to Reptilicus than to Godzilla.   A big red lever on the back of the head controlled the tongue.  It was absurd.   But his strangest feature was the “attack claw.”  It was a spring-loaded weapon that you could launch across the room, and had absolutely no basis in any element of the Godzilla mythology.  If I’m charitable, I can assume the attack claw was the designers’ best effort to replicate Godzilla’s famous “atomic breath.”  But they would have done better to design a water-gun feature that allowed you to squirt water out of his mouth.  In fact, in the original Godzilla film, the atomic breath effect was created with water vapor expelled from a nozzle in Godzilla’s mouth.

Today you can get accurate Godzilla action figures almost anywhere.  A few years ago when I lived in Alabama, I had one like the example below.  Yes, Dear Reader, I lost it.

If you’re looking for the Godzilla Shogun Warrior, a mint condition example with intact fist and working “fire tongue” will probably cost you $100.  Expect to pay between $20 and $50 for lesser models, depending on the particular defect.

Here’s a laughable commercial for the Godzilla Shogun Warrior courtesy of YouTube:

Don’t you want to get one?

Lost Toys #8: Battlestar Galactica 12″ Cylon

In the late 70s, Battlestar Galactica was Star Wars on TV.  The basic story was easy to understand (robots who hate humans are chasing humans through space; humans are looking for Earth), and there were spaceships and laser guns.  That’s all you needed to capture kid’s attention.  But the toy line was never as impressive as the one Star Wars gave us.  For starters, you couldn’t get a scaled model of the Galactica itself, and the action figures always looked a little cheap.

Then along came the 12-inch action figures.  I think the Star Wars line was first, but it didn’t take long for BSG to follow suit.   The original 12-inch cylon was as menacing as the real thing, and it had a gun!  Who could resist?

But this was one of the few toys I never liked, because it was impossible to play with it.

As everyone remembers, the original cylons possessed a red eye that would sweep left and right.  The toy featured the same thing, but the sweep action was controlled by a lever at the back of the head.  That part was fine.  The problem was turning on the light, which was accomplished through one of the craziest design decisions I’ve encountered in a toy.  The batteries that operated the light were inserted into what was basically a backpack.  Instead of providing a simple on-off switch for the light, you had to depress a push-lever with your thumb, and hold it down.  And it was hard to hold that sucker down.  (At least it was hard for a child to hold it down.)  In fact, it was plain awkward to try to depress the lever using one hand, while using the other hand to move the other lever that created the sweeping action with the eye.  You didn’t have any hands left to play with the damn toy.  I think we eventually took the cylon back to the store.

Examples with the electronic eye are difficult to find on Ebay, but aren’t very expensive when they pop up.  I think Mattel eventually issued a 12-inch figure with no electronics.

The modern Battlestar Galactica has replaced the cylons with this:

I don’t know about you, but I kinda like the new cylons.  In fact, I’m not sure they’re all that bad.  I mean, seriously . . . look at them.  It’s hard to understand why the Galactica is running away from these guys.

Lost Toys #7: Star Bird

The Star Bird was made by Milton Bradley.  It had tremendous detail and features considering it was not connected with a movie or TV series.  Whoever designed this toy put a lot of thought and love into it.  No doubt it was inspired by Star Wars, Star Trek, and other 70s-era science fiction movies and TV shows.  The front of the ship, presumably where the pilot(s) would sit, looks similar to the head of a Y-Wing fighter from Star Wars:

The Star Bird was a feature-packed toy.  The cockpit section would detach from the body (see below), and the electronics created a unique sound effect that changed pitched when the ship was tilted up or down, allowing you to simulate landing and take-off sequences.  Of course, it also featured special sound effects to similate laser fire.  The flashing red lights would have been enough, but with all the extras the Star Bird became one of the coolest of late 70s sci-fi toys.

According to ToysYouHad.com, Milton Bradley changed the name of the Star Bird to the Space Avenger to avoid confusion with Star Wars and lower the probability of a lawsuit.  (I’m not sure I buy the lawsuit part.)

A Star Bird in good condition will cost you over $100.  A recently-posted item E-bay was bidding for $150.

(Click the “Lost Toys” link at the right for the other entries in this series.)

Lost Toys #6: Every Frickin’ Baseball Card I Ever Owned.

I don’t know how many I had.  Hundreds.  Maybe thousands.  They were arranged by teams with each group wrapped by a rubber band.  But the best cards were kept in plastic sheets in a binder.  Most were Topps, but there were Donruss cards too.

I built my collection the old-fashioned way: I bought individual packs
instead of purchasing the entire year’s collection.  (My parents were
too cheap for that anyway.)  Each pack contained a stick of bubble gum.  If you search hard enough, you can probably find old sticks of that bubble gum for sale.  They might be worth as much as some of the cards.

I conservatively estimate the value of my collection at $46,000,000.  What happened to it?  I don’t know, but here is my guess.  While I was at college, my parents snuck into my room, stole my baseball cards, and along with the parents of all my friends, built a huge bonfire in which they sacrificed our years of accumulated wealth in some type of sad quasi-religious ceremony repeated in small towns across America every year.  That’s what happens to all our old baseball cards, which is why my friends and I are not filthy rich today.   The moral of this tale is this: put your baseball cards in a safe deposit box.

Reggie says to guard your cards:

Lost Toys #5: Horse Race Mini Derby

The Horse Race Mini Derby was one of my favorite toys, not only because it was so cool, but because of the story behind it.

The game included six metal horses (and two spares) that traveled in tracks from the starting line to the finish.  The tracks would vibrate back and forth, kind of like the electronic football games with moving players.  The vibrational motion propelled the horses down the track and as they arrived at the finish line, each horse would trip a little flag to help you tell which one won the race.   It also had a starting that ensured each horse started the race at the same time.  It was awesome.

My parents bought it for me at a toy shop in Williamsburgh, VA, when we visited Busch Gardens in 1981 or 1982.  This was best vacation of my childhood, because for me Busch Gardens was basically magical.  So everytime I took out this game, it brought back all the good memories of that trip.

I have no idea what happened to it.  Probably I lost the horses one by one until the track was useless.

The toy is difficult to find, probably because so few were sold in the United States.  Horse racing isn’t very popular with children, and even in the early 80s there were many other electronic games to grab kids’ attention.  I found a few references at this web site, which has links to some ebay auctions.   Expect to pay between $10 and $50 for a model in good working order.

Because the Lost Toys series was interrupted for several weeks, here are some links to the previous articles:

• Lost Toys #1, Archon Black King
• Lost Toys #2, Dinky Enterprise
• Lost Toys #3, Strombecker Battleship
• Lost Toys #4, Pulsonic II Electronic Baseball

Lost Toys #4: Pulsonic II Electronic Baseball

I’m not sure when my obsession with baseball started, but after it took hold it was pervasive. I not only loved playing the game, I was mesmerized by its structure, cadence, and symmetries. And not just the game, but the people, stories, stadiums, and history fascinated me to no end. By the time I reached junior high, my friends and I were creating fantasy leagues complete with schedules, divisions, playoffs, and all the data we could record. But before my obsession evolved to the level of J. Henry Waugh, I started with a simple electronic game: Pulsonic II Electronic Baseball.

The coolest thing about this game was the stadium. I don’t think any other handheld electronic baseball game featured such a realistic ballpark—even though this one was a bit odd since it seated more people in the outfield seats than around the infield. I knew this wasn’t right, but I didn’t care.

Lost Toys #3: Strombecker Battleship, and Star Blazers

One of my most used toys when I was in elementary school was the Strombecker Battleship.  I know now that it was a model of the U.S.S. New Jersey, but when I was nine years old I thought “Strombecker” was the name of the damn ship.  (It’s the name of the toy company, based in Chicago.)  Although it was bathtub-worthy, my battleship was a spaceship, not a sea-going vessel.

Now, you might be asking yourself, how could a battleship get into space?

Lost Toys #2: Dinky Enterprise

I wasn’t a huge Star Trek fan growing up, but I always thought the Enterprise was one of the coolest things I’d ever seen.  When I first saw Star Wars, I thought the Y-Wings were inspired by the Enterprise.  Maybe they were.

Unfortunately, toy models of the Enterprise were few and far between in the 70s, except for glue-together models that could only be completed by elite model-builders.  This made the the Dinky Enterprise a cherished toy, even though I didn’t take very good care of it.  I owned it when I was between eight and ten years old.  (“Dinky” is the name of the British company that made the toy.)  I never thought the scale was quite right (it isn’t), and the shuttle craft was loaded into the bottom of the ship, which of course is not where the hanger bay was located.  Nevetheless, this was one of the coolest toys I owned.

You can see the shuttlecraft and hanger doors in the photograph above, which I swiped from Ebay.

Lost Toys #1: Arklon Black King

The Arklon Black King is so rare it’s difficult to find photographs of it, much less the actual toy. It was produced in Japan by Ark in the 1970s, and was part of a series of six robots based on characters from the Ultraman television series.

Lost Toys

I’m starting a new series on all the great toys I had as a child, growing up in the 70s and 80s.  I don’t know if the toys we had back then were any better than today’s toys, in part because I have two daughters and no idea what kind of toys boys play with these days.  I guess today they’re all playing with video games.  But I know the Star Wars toys from the 70s were a thousand times better than what’s available today.  In the late 70s and early 80s you could acquire a virtual prop department capable of supporting a Star Wars sequel.