Toltoys Kid

April 10, 200970's, Catalogues, Hulk, MEGO, Safeway, Superman

Safeway catalogue from Christmas 1978

Superman at Safeway

The Aussie Safeway catalogue from Christmas 1978 (I think!) features all the usual specials one would expect from a large grocery store; nappies, bananas and …

…the Man of Steel and his big green mate The Hulk. Yes sitting there among the no-name brand trikes, bikes and ray-guns were the beautifully crafted 12-inch MEGO World’s Greatest Super Heroes.

Interestingly the Superman is the harder to find “Comic Head” version, previously thought to have only seen release in Canada, the UK, France and Italy according to the authoritative Mego Museum. Hulk appears to be a regular US version. Dig that lab coat!

No telling if there were other Heroes available on the Safeway shelves “ready to continue the fight against the baddies” back then, but we can only hope so.

Did you buy your super heroes in Australia at Safeway?

Tell me about it – will(at)toltoys(dot)com

Cheers!

Will

April 5, 200970's, Toltoys, Waltons, Weird Toys, WHAM-O

Willy Water Bug

If you look closely underneath the “1982” text on the Walton’s Wishbook cover below you’ll see a strange little yellow creature. He’s the one sitting innocuously next to the cool Tomy / Toltoys Air-Jammer motorcycle.

Who or what is this thing you ask? Meet Willy Water Bug, one of Wham-O’s contributions to the summer-toy craze of the 70’s. This was to be no Slip’n’Slide however, since the result of attaching the prescribed garden hose to the rear of Willy produced viciously whipping tentacles of terror reaching out for small bare legs in all directions. Fun for all the family!

I can’t say I recall Willy from my childhood, but finding the example above complete with Toltoys liveried box was manna from heaven for this blogger let me tell you. What was it with Wham-O? Not content to poison us with Super Elastic Bubble Plastic they went on to unleash this water-laden lacerator on frolicking children. Even the kid on the box is recoiling in fear.

Being a William in real life, I’m not a massive fan of the nickname “Willy” either, so lets’ just consign this one to the circular file shall we?

Cheers!

Will

March 31, 200970's, Kenner, Star Wars, Toltoys

Kenner Toltoys 12 Back

An unusual Star Wars Toltoys find!

To most Star Wars collectors that item above appears to be your run-of-the-mill Kenner Star Wars C3PO 12 Back figure. The keen eyed collectors will note that the blister has been reattached to the card-back for use as a display item, but that is not of consequence here.

Flipping the card over reveals a metric conversion sticker of a type used by Toltoys Australia. These stickers were applied to foreign card-backs to comply with local sales laws requiring the use of metric measurements over imperial. These stickers have been previously found on Toltoys printed cards, but to my knowledge they have never been found on a Kenner card-back.

These are tough enough to find on Toltoys card-backs, but this discovery opens up a whole new variation for collectors to search for! Speculating on where these figures fit into the chronological release of Star Wars figures in Australia is tough to do, were they late release items dumped here at the change-over to Empire Strikes Back figures? Or were they in fact the very first Star Wars figures sold in Australia, before Toltoys managed to print their own card-backs. All suggestions and ideas are welcome!

Special thanks for this discovery goes to Toltoys collector Pat O’Brien, who also provided the photos.

Cheers,

Will

March 21, 200980's, Catalogues, Special Offer, Star Wars, Waltons

Star Wars in the 1982 Waltons Wishbook

More Star Wars from the 1982 Waltons Wishbook

$60 was a lot for a toy in 1982, hell it’s a lot for a toy today. Just as well then that you received one of the all-time great play-sets for your cash back in ’82, the Kenner Millennium Falcon.

Walton’s caption writers went off the deep end in this one, declaring the Falcon to be ‘faithful’, as opposed to all those other lousy cheating spacecraft one presumes. Dig the “Simulate Space Chess” – is the simulate really necessary? I mean even slow Darren from down the road gets that we’re not actually playing real space chess here.

The keen-eyed among you will have already noticed the uber-cool Empire Strikes Back Electric Toothbrush labeled as a Star Wars one, a tough item to locate for collectors today. They were one of the earliest Star Wars toys so it’s good to see them still around in 1982.

The last little reveals of this particular page are the fantastic AT-AT, still sold in the modern Hasbro line today, and the short lived but much admired Micro Collection, represented here by the Bespin environments. Comparing the prices of the Micro stuff with the creature / figure combos to their right gives some insight I think into why the line did not last. What would you have preferred as a kid? Micro Rob don’t answer that 🙂

Finally we have the whole page on show, and what a treasure trove it has proved to be, solving the mysteries of the not one but three Toltoys Special Offer items, and throwing in rare ads for 3-Packs and ESB Toothbrushes just for fun.

I’ll be continuing the Wishbook posts soon, but stay tuned for some other vintage toy coolness this week.

Cheers!

Will

February 26, 200970's, Action Man, Ads, Gi Joe, Kenbrite, Playmobil, Pocket People, Toltoys

Kenbrite Australia GI Joe Adventure Team Commercial

Kenbrite GI Joe Adventure Team Commercial

Check out this super cool GI Joe Australian TV spot from the early 1970’s, before colour TV was common in Australia!

The vintage 12 Inch GI Joes were distributed in Australia by Kenbrite, later famed for the Australian release of Playmobil, known here as Pocket People. Interestingly the old store stock Joes I’ve been lucky enough to uncover over the years were more likely to be of Canadian origin than USA, us Commonwealth nations have to stick together you see.

Meanwhile Toltoys were distributing Action Man alongside Joe on the toy shops of the 70’s, confusing the hell out of collectors today trying to sort though vintage part lots containing both!

Cheers,

Will

February 25, 200980's, Catalogues, Special Offer, Star Wars, Toltoys, Waltons

Waltons Special Offer Star Wars

Two more Special Offer mysteries solved…

A couple of years ago on Toltoys.com we presented a feature on all the known Star Wars Special Offer boxed toys that had surfaced in Australia during the 1978 – 85 period. In the post below we were able to confirm that the Attack Base was a Waltons Department Store special offer and also list the contents.

This week I’m happy to reveal the origins and contents of two more mysterious special offer items, the Empire Strikes Back Wampa and Tauntaun. There is only one known example of the Wampa box, and only a cut front of the Tauntaun box.

Neither were found with contents intact, leaving it open to speculation as to which figures were included.

Now thanks to the discovery of the 1982 Waltons Wish Book we can confirm that these two were also Waltons Special Offers, and narrow down the identity of the figures included.

This is the ad for both items, and while we can confirm the price and the three figures included, I’m not sure we can say which figures came with which! The photo suggests that Han Hoth came with the Wampa and the other two with the Tauntan, but it could just as easily have been the Snowtrooper with the Wampa (Bad guys together?) and the other two with Tauntaun.

Until we find a sealed example let the speculation continue!

More reveals coming soon…

Cheers,

Will

February 4, 200980's, Catalogues, Special Offer, Star Wars, Toltoys, Waltons

Toltoys Star Wars Special Offer Origins

Toltoys Star Wars Special Offer origins revealed!

A couple of years ago I was lucky enough (thanks to the eagle eyes of fellow Toltoys collector Dax) to pick up a very cool Imperial Attack Base featuring a huge “Special Offer” sticker across the front, indicating that four figures were included. As featured in a previous post on Toltoys.com the origin of this piece was at first a mystery, until a Queensland collector named Paul chipped in with his recollections of seeing it at the Waltons chain of stores.

His recollection was remarkably accurate, as thanks to the recently discovered 1982 Waltons Wishbook above we can confirm that the item was indeed a Walton’s Toltoys exclusive, and that the four figures included were Rebel Commander, Hoth Rebel Soldier and two regular Stormtroopers.

Another part of Paul’s recollection was proved correct with the catalogue appearance of the rare Star Wars Three-Packs, priced at $6.99. What’s very interesting is that the three-packs were being sold new at retail, still in Star Wars livery, just a year before the single cards changed to Jedi packaging. Were they overstock from overseas? It’s hard to believe that they weren’t a popular item wherever they were sold.

The final toy items featured today are Luke’s blaster , presumably in ESB packaging, and the hapless mini-rigs apparently used by the ‘Empire Spy Force’. Not quite the most bone-chilling secret police name I’ve ever heard. And at $2 more than a three-pack, what are you going to buy? Ahhh… yeah.

More Toltoys Star Wars mysteries will be revealed this week…

January 31, 200980's, Action Man, CHiPs, Corgi, Dukes of Hazzard, Hot Wheels, MOTU, Toltoys, Waltons

Action Man, Masters of the Universe and Hot Wheels 1982

The next page from the 1982 Waltons Wishbook sees some of the final incarnations of Toltoys Action Man. This late version figure came with eagle eyes and the ability to pose in a sniper position, popular with all budding assassins. That chopper was bloody expensive at $39.99, especially when compared with the Castle Greyskull below at the same price.

The appearance of Masters of the Universe (MOTU) heralded the dawn of a new era in action figure scale, the 5 inch, later to become the standard. I heard somewhere that MOTU was a direct result of the Reagan administration’s overturning of a law that prevented children’s cartoons from being essentially extended toy advertisements. I can imagine that being correct as the toy companies quickly churned out MOTU, Transformers, Thundercats and a bunch more to cash in while the political breeze blew their way.

More 80’s TV classics the Duke’s of Hazzard and CHiPs were represented in toy form too, I believe that Duke’s Barn Buster set is pretty sought after today.

Finally we have Mattel’s 1982 Hot Wheels offerings, including the short lived Scorchers (Pull backs, as opposed to the ‘frictionless’ other cars lol ) and the Redline-era concept ‘Loop and Chute’ set. The Service Centre was another winner for Mattel, that mold was re-liveried time and again and gave great service to the company, bad pun intended.

Right down near the bottom left is a sad remnant of the once great Corgi diecast model company, who admittedly have done well just to make it to 1982 after jumping the shark sometime around 1974.

More pages coming soon…

Cheers,

Will

January 6, 200980's, BMX, Catalogues, Waltons

Waltons Free Spirit BMX

Treasures from the Waltons Wishbook

Not to be confused with the American Waltons of Walmart fame, Waltons Department store in Australia was a retail institution during the 70’s and early 80’s, especially at Christmas time. Over many years they offered a Christmas “Wishbook”, an idea most likely borrowed from Sears in the USA, with whom they had a pre-existing relationship.

Toltoys.com has managed to obtain a handful of these catalogues and will be presenting highlights from them over the next few months.

Kicking us off above is the cover of the 1982 Wishbook, which was included as an insert in the September 19th, 1982 edition of Sydney’s Sunday Telegraph newspaper.

That’s a lot of vintage toys. I can see Toltoys Action Man, Care Bears and Star Wars amongst the loot, so you’ll get a fair Idea of what might be coming in the next few posts.

For our first page, how about some vintage Aussie BMX goodness, a selection of Walton’s own “Free Spirit” range of BMX bikes. Many a young Aussie kid had there first BMX spills on one of these, I never knew where they were from before seeing them again in this catalogue.

Whether you hit the dirt on the Free-Spirit Junior, Deluxe or Maxi you were out amongst it, almost as cool as those lucky little buggers on their Redline, Mongoose or PK Ripper. Admittedly they probably never had to deal with a mean kid who told them that their bike’s name sounded like an incontinence pad.

If you’d like to check out more Aussie BMX culture than you can poke a stick at, head over to vintagebmx.com. The Australia thread in the International section is up to 18,000 posts, I kid you not.

More treasures soon…

Will

December 16, 200870's, Kenner, MEGO, Palitoy, Stretch Armstrong, Toltoys

Toltoys Stretch Armstrong

The Toltoys Stretch Armstrong

If you don’t remember this guy from the 70’s then you’re either not trying or your parents owe you an apology. His heavy-as-hell corn-syrup filled body could stretch several feet before slowly reverting to his original form upon release. A fun toy and lethal weapon when swung in contained spaces.

Stretch was a huge hit for Kenner in the USA and Palitoy in the UK, so naturally Aussie kids were looked after by the good folks at Toltoys.

The box design is virtually identical to the US edition, save for the bright blue Toltoys logos on the side, top and bottom panels.

It’s interesting to see from the bottom of this box that the Toltoys Australian Stretch Armstrong body was manufactured in the UK, the head and pants in Hong Kong before insertion into boxes printed in Melbourne. A true citizen of the world.

For more Stretch Armstrong info than you ever thought possible check out Stretch Armstrong World, and then the Mego Museum’s Super Elastic Heroes section for more rare stretchy pics and info.

Some of Stretch’s very hard to find buddies were also sold by Toltoys in Australia, including the Stretch Serpent, more details in a future post…

Thanks for today’s model must go to the semi-willing Pete E. Marvel, The talented Mr. TV and the CRU Crew.

Cheers,

Will