It's Alive! My Overnight Remco Mini Monsterizer

 Last year I rescued some trash from Aldi, a bunch of plastic toothbrush displays.

Considering what to do with them I toyed with perhaps some Action Man raft crates or maybe a Corgi lion cage.

But then I saw this!

The Remco Mini Monster Monsterizer!

Yes!

So, overnight I've whittled and spittled and fettled my own monster machine using one of those toothbrush racks.

It's been fun and Baron Frankenstein lent a hand (and a foot and a head!)!

Oven-ready, a willing creature, old Burger King Frankie, stepped up to test it out.

Dr. Bones threw the switch.

Monsterizing in progress! 

And the final stage ...

Hope you like this home-made, quick and easy Monsteriser folks.

I've got to go. Villagers are mobbing with pitchforks at the door! 

Will's Mighty Mike Skyway

Hi.

My mighty Mike set. I remember playing with one when I was young … a little unstable but great fun.( the toy , not me! ) .

Will O

UK

Mighty Mike Trailers

I think these look fabulous, Remco/ Palitoy's 1967 Mighty Mike trailers.

Detachable and changeable, all individually and beautifully boxed and part of the big Mighty Mike toy line.

Do you like them?

It's Just Not Cricket!

The SpaceX Cricket has a long history on Moonbase and a really long history as a toy. Here's a 1965 ad I saw on Piclic for the Remco Mosquito Jeep. Is this a toy you had? Think Hamiltons Invaders and Monkey Division!

Wheely? It's a Dune Buggy!

This is a new one on me, the Wheelies Dune Buggy by Remco. It's a neat looking design. Anyone had one of these?

THE FORCE AND THE ARM'S MASTER: STUNNING KNOCKOFFS FROM SPACE 1999

 Tuning into Scoop's 1999 vibe here's something weird I spotted.

This is the Remco Space 1999 Stun Gun toy. Nice. Nothing strange here.

But am I seeing things! Check out this The Force water pistol. Is that similar? The maker, Barton Magic Toy, seems to have reversed the stun gun for their deep-space effort.

What do you think readers? 

Here's another bit of Barton magic, the Mean Machine, aimed straight at a bewildered caveman!

Barton weren't alone in the stun gun knockoffery department. Here's the more well-known fake, the Arm's Master seen on Worthpoint! What on Earth is that on the header art? And why Arm's Master? Is that a Space 1999 reference?

As it happens there of loads of Space 1999 toy gun knockoffs, which I would love to see in the flesh. Check out the Catacomb's excellent merchandise guide for  a run-down. Have you got any readers?

https://catacombs.space1999.net/main/merc/vmmcomlock.html

Kennedy Airport Remco Playset

Hi

              Here is an old TV ad for the  Remco Voice Control Kennedy Airport playset. A playmat with buildings, and planes. A record player in the control tower gives instructions to you over a set of headphones, and you follow the directions to take off or land.

(1) Classic Toys - "Remco Voice Control Kennedy Airport" - 1968 - YouTube

Then we have the Schaper U-Fly-It, in which you control a Piper Seneca twin-engined plane on a line, and land it on the runway.

(1) Classic Toys - "Schaper U-Fly-It" - 1970 - YouTube

This one has more detail on the U-Fly-It range. There were sets with the Seneca, an old biplane Barnstormer set - complete with barn, and an aircraft carrier set based on the carrier USS Enterprise, on which you attempted to land an F-4 Phantom II jet. This is even shown on the US Johnny Carson show.  An updated version was still available at the time this video was made, but the Phantom carried the markings of the Thunderbirds, which was the USAF, not Navy, aerobatic team. Why would an Air Force jet be landing on a Navy carrier ? Great history lesson.

(1) U-Fly-It by Schaper - YouTube

Finally, the Airfix Flight Deck set, in which you have to land a Royal Navy Phantom on a carrier deck, which I assume is meant to be HMS Ark Royal (she was the only British carrier with Phantoms).. The black and yellow tail markings look vaguely like the bird markings of 767 Squadron, Fleet Air Arm, which was the RN Phantom training unit. But the numbers on the fuselage seem too low, 126, while the real Phantoms of 767 had numbers from about 150 up to about 159 judging from photos - or am I being far too pedantic again ?

(1) Airfix 1970s Flight Deck toy - Top Gun Academy - fighter plane action - YouTube 

The Airfix Super Flight Deck set has a Phantom in 892 Squadron markings, which was the operational unit assigned to the Ark Royal, but the plane is bright yellow !!! I really do think that deserves three exclamation marks. I have no idea what the number 56 on the flight deck is meant to be - Ark Royal was R09.

(1) Airfix Super Flight Deck - YouTube

I should not think too many of these toys would survive today, as the planes must have taken a real battering from rookie pilots.

Paul Adams from New Zealand

Remco Movieland Drive-in Theatre

Hi

Here is the Remco Movieland Drive-in Theatre toy (the British spelling of theatre is used on the toy itself, rather than the US spelling, which is only used in the YouTube titles), which had a working projector. First up is an advertisement for the toy. The set included six toy cars, which look to be tinplate.

(2) Remco Movieland Drive-in Theater - YouTube

Then a very brief look at how the film strips were loaded - the 'films' were simply a series of still images, like many other toy movie projectors.

(2) Drive In Movie Theater Toy - YouTube

This one runs through the Mighty Mouse film. I do not know if further films were available separately.

(2) Vintage Remco Movie Drive In Theatre Battery Operated Toy - Reanimation Toys - YouTube

Paul Adams from New Zealand

Remco Toys

Hi All,

Here is a collection of still photos of various Remco toys. There are so many great toys and sets shown - some have been featured on Moonbase Central before, others I have never seen. 

There is a great Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea set, with a yellow Seaview; various Batman toys; a bobby trap that resembles a WW2 German Teller mine; a mortar; a host of Star Trek toys that have nothing to do with the show; A Land of the Giants Spindrift spaceship made from toothpicks (that belongs in a book on the most bizarre toys of all time); a grow-a-tooth doll; Speedrail monorail train sets; the Partridge Family bus; in I Dream of Jeannie, Jeannie lived in a bottle, and Remco did the bottle as a sort of doll's house playset; an Earthquake Tower skyscraper over 5 feet tall - was this a tie-in with the 1970s disaster movie ? 

Universal movie monsters, and various cheap toy lines from more recent times. What an amazing line-up of toys. Wow.

REMCO Toys : A Pictorial History - YouTube

Paul Adams

New Zealand

Remco Ads

Hi Woodsy

Here is a batch of three old Remco TV ads. First up is a Flying Fox Airlines prop-jet (the American term for a turbo-prop), which is a Lockheed Electra. With working engines, landing gear, lights and sounds, all operated from a child-sized instrument panel. Then the Whirlybird Rescue Corps helicopter, which is a Piasecki H-21 Workhorse (Shawnee in the US Army), complete with troops and vehicles. The real H-21 could carry a light vehicle, but not a 30 ton Sherman tank. Finally, Mr Kelly's Automatic Car Wash, which really washes toy cars. All these are battery powered. Wow.

REMCO TOY COMMERCIALS 1959 - YouTube

Paul Adams from New Zealand

THE REMCO ENERGISED 12 INCH FIGURES

I remember buying a loose Remco Batman from 1978 at an evening toy fair in the late 1990's. Normanton I think. It was an exciting find as I'd only just read about these 'action figures'.

Made of a similar hard plastic to my beloved Captain Laser by Mattel, Remco's energized toys combined great DC looks  - Batman, Spider-Man and Superman, with that universally fascinating device, the winch.

These 12 inch figures could go up and down on a nylon line and I was thrilled to find that my own car boot find actually worked. I was sad to sell it a few years later.

Here's the 1979 TV ad for the uber-cool Remco energised Spidey.

Have you got a Remco energised DC figure?

Return to Base

The Cold War may have been a trying time for adults in the U.S, but for space crazy kids, it was a boom time. A little inconvenience like the threat of carpet bombing by enemy aircraft or ICBM's dropping out of a dawn sky was not going to stop toy manufacturers making a fast buck before a nuclear holocaust affected consumer spending. As a result, companies like Remco, Topper and Deluxe Reading produced some amazingly complex and involved toys, themed on the idea of countering an enemy missile strike. Needless to say, these expensive toys were slavishly copied by the small Hong Kong manufacturers to be snapped up by an eager audience.

A fine example of this plagiarism is the Delamare Rocket Launching set, blatantly ripped off from Remco's Voice Control Rocket Base. The Delamare set uses elements from the Apollo Moon Exploring range, such as the conical rocket, which unusually, has been produced in bronze, with two upper sections to extend the body and give it a more missile like shape. The anti aircraft missile bank on the left, has been fitted with two non-firing launchers taken from the LP Moon Bus (themselves copied from Lone Star Modern Army series years earlier). The lifting arm between them is also featured on one of the Moon Vehicles sold in abundance too: https://projectswordtoys.blogspot.com/2010/01/strange-tractor.html

The whole set is neatly finished off with some grey astronauts helpfully glued onto the superstructure, a miniscule green Helicopter fixed to the pad, a small army truck and a flight of three chrome silver F111A swing wing fighters, hideously out of scale, glued to the back of the box. My example came in a battered box, with a Xmas Greetings sticker still attached. Its plain that the toy had never been removed from its pack, the base was securely wired in and everything was in place. Its amusing to see the note on the front reads - THIS IS A TOY - just in case the buyer was tempted to try and defend his personal airspace.

Next on the copyists list comes another Missile Array from Redbox Toys. Originally made by Topper Toys for the Cape Canaveral set, this little battery also appears as part of the Apollo Moon Exploring series, by Imperial, but exchanging the rocket launchers for Radar Dishes.: 

http://www.triangspacextoys.info/SpGAderv/APEX/ApEx304F.html

I originally had this, the Atlas Gantry and a Rocket Transporter in the seventies, each coming separately window boxed with a handful of white figures. The semi circular Atlas Gantry actually fires the missile and the three carried by the transporter could be used with it. Unlike the big Topper base, the transporter only came with a single missile design, although Multiple Toymakers did 'borrow' one of the other types for a slightly larger 'Titan' missile in a rack toy.

http://projectswordtoys.blogspot.com/2014/08/failure-to-launch.html

Deluxe Reading probably produced the great grandaddy of all rocket bases with the elaborate Operation X-500, which took all the elements from previous releases, beefed them up somewhat and added extra features like lights and moveable controls. It fairly bristles with rockets and gadgets and even has a train to deliver the interchangeable nosecones to the gantry, to be lifted by crane onto the rocket! Its complexity probably worked in its favour, as to my knowledge, the Hong Kong companies never managed to reproduce a small version of it, although they did come close!

Finally this fine Cape Kennedy rack toy, with powerful spring launched rocket and ejectable satellite!

The gantry helpfully rolls back from the rocket and a large well-detailed radar dish tracks the ascent.

Card artwork is especially fine, with clear renditions of Mercury Redstone type rocket and instructions for use on the inner pack.

Safety conscious, the rocket was tethered to the launcher by string, the upper stage springing out to push the circular satellite into space as the rocket is stopped in its rapid ascent by the string. Quite a powerful ascent it is too, untethered the rocket can easily reach a good twenty feet.

THE REMCO 'CRICKET' ON FILM

You don't often see the Remco Jeep from Hamilton's Invaders on film but here's some footage of one collector's on You Tube.

I wonder if there's film of the related Remco Tiger Jeep and the Star Trek White Jeep anywhere?

REMCO ROCKET CAR

Always on the look out for rocket cars here's an interesting one from Remco.

Its the rocket attachment  from their Swap Mobile range.

Rocket cars interest me, aside from their obvious charm, because the Probe Force 3 from the Project SWORD range most likely originates from the Arfons Green Monster jet car.

Here's a full boxed set of the Swap Mobiles I saw online showing the different attachments, which all look very cool indeed.

Have you any of these toys?

*

PS. Bill B has his own personal rocket car story,  the Corgi Jet Car, which he posted on the blog 5 years ago

http://projectswordtoys.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/corgi-jet-dragster.html

I lugged my mighty mike camelback skyway to my car

One of the most exciting toys I ever found at a car boot sale has to be the Remco Mighty Mike Camelback Skyway set from 1967 - like this one pictured on Ebay.

I'd never seen one before and was blown away when I looked inside the box on the seller's stall. This will have been around 1998.

The box was HUGE, easily one of the biggest I ever schlepped home. It was a swine to get to the car!

Once home I had a good look at all the zillion parts. There was track, yellow bases and supports, a white jeep and about four or five separate and quite gorgeous boxes inside the main box like these pictured on Ebay:

These boxes contained lovely snap-on plastic vehicle bodies, which attached to the detachable chassis of the jeep! Talk about neat!

When set-up the whole toy set was ginormous and spanned the floor like behemoth! The powerful hill-climbing action of the jeep-trucks made easy work of the rickety skyway and it trundled up and along it as if on an expedition in the Amazon.

When I sold my set on Ebay around 2001 it was the biggest thing I'd ever had to parcel up and ship. I can't remember where it went but the postage was astronomical!

[the biggest thing I ever shipped eventually became a vintage butchers pushbike, which I had to wrap and post to Spain!]

For a detailed look at the Mighty Mike set in action check out this video by a fellow fan on You Tube. Its long so turn off when you've had enough!

Did you have a Mighty Mike camelback?

remco hamiltons invaders home movie

I saw this on You Tube and just had to re-post it here on MC.

Its basically a home movie of an American Sixties family Christmas. The fabulous thing for me is the utter toy carnage going on! There's fabulous toys like Remco Hamilton Invaders, everywhere!

The movie is the property of spinsandneedles on You Tube.

Check yourself for more home movies full of classic toys!

REMCO CRICKET SQUAD

Remco's 3 'crickets': the green Mosquito Jeep, the white Tiger Jeep [not pictured] and the yellow Star Trek Astrocruiser, were all deployed in space and faced giant bugs a plenty. 

Here's a 1964 ad.

A 1964 boxed set.

A 1969 Star trek Astrocruiser

I liked this piccy on Etsy showing a SpaceX Cricket facing a very different kind of Bug!

pics: etsy, hakes, l&l collectables

MO WHEELS

Before Christmas I had fun finding some vehicles with the same wheels as the Project SWORD Scramble Bug, pictured. Bitten by this particular bug I thought I'd share a few more toys I've found with similar big wheels. No more identical ones this time.

First up is the Mighty Mo Canon. It was released by Deluxe Reading in 1963 and was huge! In this You Tube clip it looks like a fully working life-size canon! Did any of you have one of these babies?

https://youtu.be/9GeGvOazzLs?t=2m37s

Here's a shot of the canon and a better look at those massive wheels.

[pic: www.playsetmagazine.com]

Next up we have the Astro Train by Remco from 1968, one of their amazing Skyway contraptions. It does look fabulous. 

I found this old TV ad footage on You Tube https://youtu.be/6TtLBPaEKnk?t=57m22s.  Does anyone have one?

REMCO ASTRO TRAIN TV COMMERCIAL

Remco Astro Train - brilliant short TV commercial on You Tube. I never had one of these but I wish I had!

https://youtu.be/6TtLBPaEKnk?t=57m22s

Anyone have one readers?

REMCO SKY DIVER

This Remco Sky Diver jet looks mega cool and pretty darn big too, but I could be wrong on that. I'd love to see it in action. I'm assuming that the parachutist is ejected from the plane. This toy wouldn't look too bad in a SWORD fleet would it? Anyone got one readers? [picture: www.gijoeinformation.com ]