Mego Teen Titans - 2009

This was the first piece I ever did for TwoMorrows' Back Issue! magazine (#33), a very small (500 words) sideline piece to accompany a larger article about the Teen Titans.

I was incredibly nervous about this being my first time in the magazine as a writer (I had been a reader and LOC writer since the first issue), so I must have gone over it half a dozen times trying to make it flow as well as possible. It must have gone over okay, since I did a number of articles for Back Issue! after this.


Contradictions.

If one word could sum up the legendary Mego toy company, that would be it. Capable of producing breathtakingly cool plastic reproductions of kids' favorite comic book, movie, and TV characters, they just as quickly could make something so pathetically cheesy that Santa wouldn't have dared leave it for you under the Christmas tree.

And no Mego line is a better microcosm of those inherent contradictions than Teen Titans. Produced in 1977, the Teen Titans line consisted of four figures--Wonder Girl, Speedy, Kid Flash, and Aqualad (Robin having been Mego-ized in 1972). Despite being established characters in the DC universe, Mego chose not to brand them with their massively popular World's Greatest Super-Heroes label, and their packaging was different than the standard WGSH design, even though in trade ads they were sold alongside the WGSH line.

Within the line itself, quality varies wildly. While Kid Flash, Speedy, and Aqualad are spitting images of their comic book selves (and Speedy coming with a full complement of detailed accessories), Wonder Girl has the creepy, dead-eyed visage of a baby doll, something I doubt any young boy would've been caught dead buying. At least you could buy Batgirl or Supergirl because you had feelings for Babs or Kara that you were too young to understand, but Wonder Girl looks like she wants to help you whip up some brownies in your sister's Easy-Bake Oven.

Also, Teen Titans would become victims of Mego's cost-cutting practices at the time. They used an inferior, cheaper plastic on them, causing "molting", where the caucasian skin tones eventually turn a sickly grey, making the kids look like they're the stars of Teen Titans Zombies.

As many toy manufacturers have learned, kids are an inscrutable bunch, and you never know what will sell. While the WGSH line was a monstrous, industry-changing hit, the Teen Titans line flopped. According to Benjamin Holcomb, author of the ultimate WGSH reference work, Mego 8" Super-Heroes: World's Greatest Toys, "The Teen Titans had an extremely short production life, offered to retailers only once, at Toy Fair in February 1977. With no marketing support, the Teen Titans failed." (Yet the line lasted long enough to produce one tiny packaging variant and two different sets of arms--one that bent, one that didn't--for Wonder Girl)

One of the other things going against the line was Mego's (usually excellent) timing. In 1977, there was no Teen Titans cartoon or movie, and the Teen Titans comic was heading for its second cancellation. Ironically, the Titans would take off to nearly unrivaled heights of popularity under the genius hands of Marv Wolfman and George Perez just a few years later.

Partly because of their unusualness (face it, you don't see a lot of Speedy toys out there, even in a post-DC Direct world) and the fact that they weren't collected en masse like a lot of the other WGSHs, the Teen Titans now go for hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars to collectors. Teen Titans Go!

Captain Action & Aquaman - 2010

A couple of months ago, my friend Ed Catto was kind enough to ask me to write a one-page piece about the Ideal Aquaman Captain Action dolls from the 1960s, to run in Moonstone's Captain Action Season 2 #2.

I was only happy to do so (because I don't write and talk about Aquaman enough), and was thrilled to see the piece in print when I met Ed at the 2010 New York Comic Con, where he had me autograph some copies.

I didn't want to post the piece on any of my blogs while the book was out, but now that a few months have passed I figured it was okay--brief as it is, I thought it came out well and looks good (which is why I'm posting it in its original form instead of as text). I'm posting it today because I'm hoping Santa will read it and leave me a MIB Mera Super Queens doll under the tree.

Click the above graphic to see a more readable version, and thanks again Ed!

"Mysterious M*A*S*H Figures" - 2009

This was a piece I did for ToyCollector.com, who asked me to write about a very obscure line of M*A*S*H toys, which combined two passions of mine.

I decided to go even more obscure and write about a completely mysterious set of M*A*S*H dolls that I wouldn't believe even existed, except for the fact I own them.


Suicide may be painless, but toy collecting sometimes isn't.

As both a fan of the TV series M*A*S*H (so much so I created a blog about the show, aftermash.blogspot.com) and a toy collector, of course I felt I should--nay, had to--go out and round up the action figures based on the show.

For most M*A*S*H fans, that meant the earnest but doomed 1982 line produced by Tri-Star, consisting of action figure representations of the whole cast, plus an early "variant", Klinger in a dress. But even a lot of die-hard M*A*S*H fans don't know there was an earlier, even more strange, attempt at harnessing some of that M*A*S*H heat onto toy shelves.

These two action figures (dolls, really) of M*A*S*H's Hawkeye and Hot Lips present an almost unending series of questions for those interested in either the show or toys in general. Other than a small "©1969 Aspen Productions" notice, there is no indication as to who produced them (1969 was the year the M*A*S*H movie was copyrighted, and Aspen Productions was director Robert Altman's production company). Inside the bubble it says they were distributed by F.W. Woolworth Co., perhaps they were produced exclusively for the chain.

The packaging goes out of its way to show stills from the series that do not show the other M*A*S*H cast members, except for one shot of Gary Burghoff as Radar. Judging from the looks of actors Alan Alda, Loretta Swit, and Burghoff, I would say these stills come from the first year or two of the show (Burghoff's Radar has stubble, something he never had past the first season, and Hawkeye is wearing an Army green hat that he abandoned during the first season, as well).

That might've been a clue as to when as to when these figures were produced, except on the back, each package has a small stamp that says "December 10, 1977" in exact same manner, looking as if it was put there by the factory, not a later vendor. Considering M*A*S*H was not popular in its first season, and wildly popular by its sixth (1977-1978), odds are these were made sometime in 1977.

The bodies and outfits for both dolls are identical except the heads and the addition of some breasts on Hot Lips (just like real one!). The hands are hard pieces of plastic with sloppy paint jobs, with the right hands sculpted so they can hold their accessories--Hawkeye is given a golf club to wield, where Hot Lips has a medical bag.

The figures are promised to have "Automatic Push Button Action", reminiscent of Mego's "Fist-Fighter" line, where if you press a button on the doll's back, it swings their right arm forward.

I can't bring myself to break open the packages, so I guess I'll never know whether this action still works, several decades later.

Despite M*A*S*H's staggering popularity as a TV series, it obviously didn't translate to these dolls. They were marked at the factory at $2.33 each, but someone has taken a grease pencil and slashed the price of each figure to a paltry .96 cents. And judging by the fact that almost no information on these figures has ever surfaced (do a Google search for these, and you'll find virtually nothing), it seems as though these dolls were almost completely forgotten.

I had the opportunity to meet Loretta Swit last year, and got her to sign my Hot Lips Tri-Star figure. In retrospect, I should have brought this Hot Lips doll--odds are she's never even seen it!