RIDERS IN THE STORE

I've always loved rack toys. My two favourite toy shops in Preston when I was a nipper, Thomas Mears and Zodiac, had stacks of toys on racks. They were mostly cheap, knock 'em out quick coloured plastics.

  

I still love rack toys and one of my favourite adult acquisitions was the Ghost Rider by Fleetwood. It came out in the 1970's. Fleetwood did loads of cheapo rack stuff and despite their pocket money origins they are all quite beautiful and now very collectible. Ghost Rider the comic hero was born in Marvel comics in the summer of 1972.

Fleetwood made a later version of the Rider with a different card. The bike came in red with no silver.

Not being one of Marvel's A-listers, Johnny Blaze aka the Ghost Rider has a strong comic following and every now and then he rode out into the toy stores again. Here's another carded rider but the transparent toy remains a mystery to me. I found the image on an old Ebay archive.

Toy Biz re-invigorated many Marvel heroes in the Nineties and Naughties. In 1995 they issued the Flamin' Stunt Cycles including this, Blaze's Dark Cycle.

Ghostie got at least seven incarnations in the Marvel Legends line including this 2004 issue with another red bike.

In 2007 Ghost Rider made his Hollywood debut and came of age. I loved the fact that the rider had his own film but Nic Cage was wooden as the lead. The 2012 sequel was awful. Rider's brush with Tinseltown spawned some cool toys though, like this Ultimate Ghost Rider by Hasbro.

I still prefer my Fleetwood rack toy from 1977. Issued just 5 years after the rider's fiery birth at Marvel it remains true to the comic and untainted by the glitz of Hollywood.

I'll end with another beautiful Rider collectible from the Seventies, equally as cheap as a rack toy at the time but no less cool, the Ghost Rider gumball ring. Blazin'!

Are you keen on rack toys readers? Which ones?

FLEETWOOD RACK

These are so cool. Do you like them?

I have the Fleetwood Ghost Rider motobike toy on card.

http://www.plaidstallions.com/racktoys/fleetwood.html

BONE TO BE WILD

 When I was making my copy Boneshaker below I came across quite a few boney bike toys.

Here's Mattel's glorious 1973 original Boneshaker.

Here's Mattel's Chopcycles Ghost Rider. Chopcycles were a motorcycle version of Sizzlers. I adore the flowing stylised ghost. Those Mattel designers were something else back then.

Further skeletons appeared on Hot Wheel's Scorchin Scooter in their City line.

A much more recent affair, I'm unsure when this City bonehead was released. I'd certainly pick one up if I saw one at a boot sale.

Like most things Hot Wheels, fans mess around and here's a really comical duo of the Rrrumblers Boneshaker with a Scorchin' Scooter rider!

and there's even more rib-tickling adoration in this replica by Hell's Dept I saw online. I'm not certain what this is made of but it looks really neat!

Last but not least in this ossifying outing is the legendary Ghost Rider by Fleetwood toys. Below's a loose one I saw online, which you don't often see, loose.

This basic plastic rack carded toy has attained grail-like status among action figure collectors and I'm amazed to say that I have one tucked away. I bought it at a good price decades ago on Ebay so that I could attract people to my old vintage toy stall at toy fairs in the Noughties!

More often than not this carded rider is encased in plastic with an AFA grading like this one on Hakes in the US. I'm unsure what exactly 60 means and whether mine would cut the mustard. Anyone know about AFA grading?

You can read more about the Fleetwood Ghost Rider on MC as its a bit of a blog legend. just click on the label below.

Have you any boney toys, skeletons in the cupboard or playthings of to-marrow readers?

Pat D's Carded Ghost Rider Racer

Here my Ghost Rider friction toy Woodsy.

The funny thing is mine is different. it's a racer. Not ghost Rider!

You can tell from the helmet and a different color. I bought it about 25 years ago. A corner store going out of business and I picked it up. 

The plastic bubble had fallen off about 15 years ago. I put a few dabs of glue to hold it together. 

The bottom of the card is also shorter as you can see but this is how I got it from the store. 

Not sure what to think since I've never seen another one like this before. ..thanks Pat D

Anyone got a Fleetwood Ghost Rider toy?

[more Fleetwood Ghost Rider on the blog here]

Hooked on TJ Hooker

 Avoiding watching the TV News (it's always bad!) on a morning I've opted for an old TV cop show on repeat.

TJ. Hooker

Yep, Captain Kirk going where no cop has gone before. 

I really enjoyed it. It reminded me how gritty these US shows were, like the ones I watched as a kid, like Kojak, Canon and Ironside. Too many to name.

Those shows must have seemed incredibly urban and exotic to our UK parents at the time. Maybe even shocking. Full of massive cars, skyscrapers, dope, heroin, triads, pimps, hookers (not the TJ kind either!).

We're these shows really suitable for us kids?

Did they shock American audiences?

TJ came later I think. I didn't watch it. I guess I was older and doing other stuff. But I adored it's cop predecessors and Bill Shatner would have drawn me in. I loved Star Trek in the Sixties.

Surprisingly, for shows that really weren't for kids, like Kojak et al and our gritty British cop drama The Sweeney, there were indeed toys! Lots of 'em! 

TJ Hooker too.

Here's his rack toy patrol car by Fleetwood ( I'm sure it's the same one as their CHiPS car!) as seen on the web.

And the mpc kit version too

And there's a comical look at more TJ toys on Junkman's You Tube

https://youtu.be/W3g-r0enuFg?is=qhYm2kv3af56YtMB

Did you watch TJ Hooker? Which was your fave cop show? Have you got any collectables?

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Fleetwood Toys police car comparison

CHiPs 1978

TJ Hooker 1983

Burning Plastic: The Fleetwood Toy Ghost Rider

And now for something completely different from my toy cabinet. I loved rack toys as a kid. They were always affordable with a little saved-up pocket money. I was too old for rack toys by 1976, having diverted my interests to rock music and the opposite sex, but had I been 9 or 10 I would have snapped this one up, the 1976 Ghost Rider by US plastic rack toy specialists, Fleetwood Toy Corp.

Having always been enthralled by Super Heroes I started to collect comic strip collectables in the early 1990's. To feed my passion I bought various reference books and magazines and in particular Tomarts wonderful guides and Action Figure digests. It was in one such book that I stumbled across the above Ghost Rider and I was hooked. The scarcity of the toy added to its allure and I vowed to own one one day. That day came around 2005, when my friend bid and won one on fleabay on my behalf. I was thrilled to bits. Not perfect but still a fine example of this rare toy. Hakes, the US valuers, describe it as the very first Ghost Rider toy ever made. There is a later variation with a flaming red card title and you can see an example on the mega Mego Museum site.

Anyone else got any interesting Super Hero toys locked away in the cupboard?

SWINGING FOR TARZANS

 Passing the village of Greystoke last week as we wended across Cumbria to Keswick, I had yet to settle on my latest project.

Having decided, its to try to recreate a blog legend I first saw years ago on the cover of a Plastic Warrior Magazine, the fabled Lone Star Tarzan set, with its waving Tarzan figure.

I'll update the blog about this specific project as it swings into action.

Meanwhile here are some further sightings of vintage waving and other Tarzans hiding in the cyber jungle, all of which I would have loved as a young chimp back in the 60's!

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Jungle Set

Dschungel

Zoo animal set

Wentoys Safaratiere

Dulcop Tarzan

Dulcop Zoo

Fleetwood Tarzan Safari

Blue Box Safari Set - is that the same as the Fleetwood Landrover above?

Tarzan in the Valley of the Dinosaurs [image: Plaidstallions.com]

Original Tarzan Figuren with monkey alphabets by Bildschriftenverlag or BSV.

see also https://www.bsv-archiv.de/pages/sonstige-publikationen/tarzan-figurenset-blister.php

Ador Arte Tarzan bag from Argentina

Primitivos by JC of Spain

African Hunting for Wild Animals bags

The waving Tarzan repainted as The Phantom in his Jungle Play Set by Larami

and finally, a 12 inch Tarzan cheapo, which may well be a future knockoff chest beater of mine.

Which set do you like?

Do you like Tarzan in any of his media?

Has Tarzan had his day?

Have you any collectables?

Riders On the Cheap

Like many baby boomers and space race babies I've been a fan of comics and comic heroes all my life. In particular I always loved those characters who dwelled in that grey area between good and evil. Were they hero or villain? A rogues' gallery would include Morbius, Silver Surfer, Swamp Thing, Werewolf By Night, Man Thing and Moon Knight. But the king of them all was Ghost Rider, he of the flaming skull and hell-fire bike.

Ghost first appeared in the 70's but very few toys came out. The most well-known amongst collectors is the Fleetwood plastic action figure pictured below, which I was lucky enough to get hold of a few years back.

Ghost Rider had a welcome come-back with Nicholas Cage's first film a couple of years ago, which I thoroughly enjoyed. So you can imagine how excited I was last night when I went to see the second Rider film, Spirit of Vengeance. I needn't have been. It was absolutely awful!

[This next bit contains Spoilers!] What's wrong with it? Were can I start! Doesn't really matter so I'll kick off with Nic Cage's acting. Well it's really the lack of it that's the issue. He's as wooden as a milk-stool and he desperately needs his thinning hair styling. He's meagre dialogue is seemingly dragged out of him by an outside force to reveal itself in a tedious drawl. It matters not as no-one else around him could act either as they'd all been rounded up from a Budapest boxing club. Which segways neatly to location. Ghost Rider is an all-American flaming skull, with his comic roots in the Wild Western past. This new film is set in Eastern Europe!


This fact alone explains many of the film's myriad flaws as the Rider should not be there. Made by a largely Eastern European team, the already paltry budget I suspect was largely blown on the Rider's flaming head, bike and chains, leaving precious little for set design. Located in a quarry, the colour scheme is that God-awful silvery-browny mess seen in countless straight-to-DVD-B-Movies, which occasionally cut to vaseline-smeared shots of zero budget big holes and piles of spoil. Even the main event of the film, a blazing Mining machine, is a big yellow mess. Comparing this shameful Marvel effort to say the recent Iron Man movie is like comparing a fag end with a solar flare. I can't believe that Stan Lee put his name to this garbage. Jonny Blaze should have ridden straight over it to DVD hell.

MARVEL AND DC'S LESSER MOVIES

I have always been a fan of Ghost Rider. The combination of horror and super hero is a no brainer for someone like me.

When I had some spare dosh in the mid 00's I invested in a neat Ghost Rider carded action figure toy, by Fleetwood which really appealed to me. Amazingly I haven't sold it and its still riding round the attic looking for the contract.

I'm also a huge super hero film fan and naturally I was excited about Ghost Rider blazing a trail onto the big screen. I went to see it, with leading man Nick Cage in the title role, at the local flicks.

I caught it again last night on UK TV and realised that there is something different about certain Marvel movies like Ghost Rider.

Some don't have the flickering Marvel comics pages device at the start and there is clearly a smaller budget being spent.

There may also be something about the lighting, a sort of vaseliney haze across these movies but that could just be me.

These Marvel 'B-movies' I would say include Ghost Rider, Ghost Rider 2, The Punisher, Man Thing and the recent Venom to name a few.

These are clearly 'lesser' movies in the eyes of Marvel I'd say and seem to be secondary to the big hitters like Captan America, Iron Man, Spidey and the Avengers.

I suppose the same could be argued about DC. There are many DC 'B-movies' like Swamp Thing, the early Superman films and Supergirl.

Maybe its just a timing thing. More recent films get bigger budgets?

What do you think about these 'lesser'movies from Marvel and DC?