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Mattel's Captain Lazer - above - was one of my all-time fave toys as a kid in Sixties Preston. The day-glo purples and blues of the speckled shield and the ribbed ray-lance held me spellbound. The glowing eyes and chestplate did too. Above all I loved the strange wobbly sound when you pressed the button on the backpack and the fiddled with grey slidey aerial. As expected ol' Cap was one of the first of my old treasures I bought again when I was a 'big' kid with enough grown-up pocket money. It's not as good as it was back then in those endless tizer-drenched years of childhood but it's not bad knowing it's in the cabinet upstairs. Years later in 1978 I was amazed to see 'my' Captain again in a different guise, Mattel's Colonial Warrior from Battlestar Galactica. They'd simply used the same moulds I guess to create a white-haired version, who reminds me of Leslie Nielson! I don't have the Warrior but presumably the original accessories fit the imposter: ray lance, shield, helmet and so on?
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And finally, just googling for Captain Lazer I found this amazing 'homepage', which includes an old photograph of a huge Captain model suspended from a crane at the 1969 German Toy Fair! The passers-by don't even notice! Fabulous.Wonder where he ended up?
O Captain My Captain! Our fearful trip is done (Walt Whitman)
the warrior came with different gear, but the molds are almost identical. They also did a black cylon with an overly large chrome bonce!
ReplyDeleteYou cant beat the Scorpio figure though - he's the best!
Did the Pulsar doll/figure ever make its way to the UK? He was the superhero with the single most disturbing and ultimately useless super power ever conceived.
ReplyDeleteWhen I saw that picture a few years ago, thought what a giant Captain, like you. But the crane is holding the giant rocket in the background. Captain Lazer is the usual toy. My guess is, someone tossed him and made the snapshot.
ReplyDeleteRP, not sure about PULSAR? What's he look like?
ReplyDeleteAnd Blechroboter, I see what you mean! Could he really have thrown Captain Lazer in the air and photographed it so exactly?
Well, it´s also possible that Captain Lazer uses his Jet Pack. LOL.
ReplyDeleteStill have mine since Christmas 1969. Complete and working, although I played a lot with him. Here in Germany ( and Austria & Swiss) Mattel distributed their Major Matt Mason toyline in boxes with german describtions. The odd thing about the german Captain Laser is he was described as a robot. My guess is Mattel made it because robots were so popular in the late 60s.
Well, Pulsar was a muscular platinum blond dynamo with a square jaw, computer enhanced brain and a....well uh, transparent torso that exposed all of his internal organs which could be operated from a switch on his back. Yeah, amazing super powers. I figure he made his opponents surrender by threatening to make them watch the contents of his intestines whirl about. Yeah, the doll did that.
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