A nice ebay find from a couple of years ago was this packaged Toltoys Frisbee. Another product of the Wham-O / Toltoys partnership, Frisbees were heavily promoted by Toltoys in Australia in the early days, as this article on the AFDA website discusses.
How many of these were lost over the back fence or in the surf in the 70′s?
The 5c price point on this Australian Milk Bar store display for Streets Mountie ice creams suggests it is from the early 70′s. That also happens to be when I remember watching a lot of Rocky & Bullwinkle on Saturday morning TV. A Canadian moose in a Mountie uniform – what a coincidence!
Anyone remember these? As kids I would presume that we’d never have known we were eating bootleg character confectionary, nor would we have cared!
A rare trio on display here, the Tie Fighter, X-Wing and Landspeeder on hard-to-find early release Toltoys logo cards!
Thanks to Superdans Auction House for the pic.
And finally we have the Toltoys pages from the Toyworld 1975 Christmas Sale catalogue!
The 6 Million Dollar Man heralded the arrival of Kenner as a licensing force in toys, cemented a couple of years later by their securing of the Star Wars license. Toltoys would come to profit greatly by this relationship, coming under Kenner owners General Mills group of companies themselves around this time. The Bug Catcher is the only toy still produced today under the Toltoys brand, essentially unchanged from this 1975 model. Colourful Child Guidance branded toys were a multitude of plastic toy designs for younger kids, and included the wonderful railway system that everyone had, but whose name was remembered by no-one!
The Toltoys Jenny doll was based on the Kenner Dusty doll, and featured a Qantas hostess outfit, with other outfits sold separately. (Of course!) Jenny was modelled on real hostess Jenny Tregaskis, and the 1974 launch was held on a 747 Jumbo above Sydney Harbour during Toy Fair, with a video featuring Bert Newton as the pilot introducing Jenny the hostess and Jenny the doll to a captive audience of toy buyers. The launch was a huge success, as was the doll, outselling even Barbie in Australia that year.
The Puffing Billy train set is a new one to me, based as it though on one of Melbourne’s most famous tourist attractions, Puffing Billy. Toltoys produced most of the Play Doh sets of this era in their own livery (including the individual cans) I have a Fuzzy Pumper Barber set somewhere that I’ll add to this post when located. The less said about the dishwasher set the better I think!
Wrapping up the catalogue is great page of Tonka toys, my brother still has his “Mighty Dump”, trying but failing to destroy it over a childhood of sandpits and school yards. They really were “Tonka Tough”!
A few more pages from the 1975 Toyworld Christmas catalogue…
Croner Toys had an eclectic mix of international brands including the popular Janex talking alarm clocks, I’m still looking for a mint boxed Batman version! The Holly Hobbie sewing machines seemed to grace every girl’s dresser for a time, including my sister’s. I can’t recall seeing the Sesame Street radios, but that Bugs Bunny camera is very familiar. Digging the LEGO knock-off Pedlo bricks, rubbish name though.
Intertoy landed some of the biggest names in international toys, including Hornby trains, Sindy dolls, Scalextric slot cars and the highly detailed Lone Ranger line of action figures by Gabriel. Combex kept mums and kids happy with a great line of inexpensive plastic toys.
No prizes for guessing the stand-out item on this page, the legendary Corgi Batmobile is one of the most successful and iconic toys of all time. Interesting to note that the loose triple pack illustrated above still includes the earlier issue tin-fin Batboat. The Rustler Ace 100-shot cap rifle would have been a lot of fun, 1975 seems quite late for a western style toy rifle but I’m sure I would have been happy holding up the local stage-coach with it! I also note that the Electrolux Battery Operated Toy Vacuum cleaner is “for girls” aged 3-8. It has “real suction” too, a refreshingly honest statement for a toy that really did suck.
I remember Toyworld stores of the 70′s as the quintessential local toy destination, a medium sized store on the local strip, jam packed with toys of all descriptions. They had the latest TV backed hits, along with the wonderful cheapie rack-toys for the after-school run.
This great catalogue showcases the range available for Christmas 1975, including the Toltoys distributed Six Million Dollar Man, a pointer to the licensed film and TV toy tsunami on the horizon.
Tonka, Kenbrite’s AFX, Mattel Baby-That-A-Way and Toltoy’s version of Kenner’s wonderful Super Sonic Power “Smash-Up Derby”, one of the best toys of all time in my opinion.
The Kenbrite page featuring some of the great brands distributed in Australia by Kenbrite including Cox gas planes, TYCO electric trains and the awesome MEGO Muhammad Ali boxing ring and figures set.
These rifles show up boxed much less frequently than the smaller Han Solo Blasters, and finding one in Toltoys livery (Rather than Kenner) is near impossible, so it was great to see this relatively nice example appear on Ebay recently and subsequently make its way into one of the best Toltoys collections here in Oz.
Thanks to Paul Naylor for the photo!
Will
Things were getting a little wacky for ole’ GI Joe by 1975. Hasbro USA had ended his military duties in 1970 and enlisted him in the boy scouts as an Adventurer instead of a soldier. His English cousin, Palitoy’s Action Man, had stayed in (increasingly elaborate) uniform but added adventure sets to the line.
Here in Oz we enjoyed Hasbro’s GI Joe (Albeit with Canadian produced bodies for a time) all the way through his military career and into his adventure days. Concurrently Toltoys offered re-badged “Action Man by Palitoy” figures and sets from the early 70′s to 1980-81. Into this mix came Melbourne firm Kenbrite, who in the middle of the 70′s began reproducing the old GI Joe “Soldiers of the World” military outfits and marketing them under the dual banner of GI Joe and Action Man (And even “Man of Action”). Confused? Me too.
I hope to sort out all the timings of these concurrent releases one day, if any of you Aussie Joe / AM collectors have info I’d like to add it here.
Anyway I’m sure you’ve stopped reading by now and have skipped down to the pics, so I’ll shut up now…
Kenbrite Action Man / GI Joe French Foreign Legion set
Kenbrite Action Man / GI Joe German Staff Officer
Kenbrite Man of Action / GI Joe British Infantryman
Note the change from “Action Man” to “Man of Action”, or was it vica versa?
The list of available Kenbrite sets.
Kenbrite GI Joe / Man of Action German Stormtrooper Window Box
Another intriguing piece of the puzzle, a panel from a Hasbro Adventurer Box (Hunt for the White Tiger?) with Kenbrite copyright info. I know, it contradicts stuff I just wrote 10 minutes ago, clearly more to the story here!
Will
You know those memories from childhood that flood through your mind when you hear an old tune or smell a long lost aroma? Well that’s what it was like when I saw this early 70′s Streets Whammy Stix Milk Bar display. It wasn’t so much the ice cream, it was those great little construction sticks. While I can’t recall constructing anything as exciting as the rocket featured, I’m sure I made many three sided boomerangs that may or may not have come back…
Will
This short run of stickers (6 in total) was produced by Scanlens Australia during the peak of The Incredible Hulk mania, 1979.
The big green guy never goes out of fashion does he?
Cheers,
Will