The Force is Strong With Playskool

Ever since my oldest daughter saw The Force Awakens she's been a huge Star Wars nut. And I couldn't be prouder! I never thought I'd regret thinning my Star Wars collection down a few years back, but now I really wish I still had all those Force Awakens and prequel action figures for her.

Thank goodness for the Flea Market, where I can still find her all sorts of fun Star Wars goodies from every generation!

This last weekend I scored for her a POTF Hoth Luke, a handful of Playskool Star Wars figures, and a  Sandtrooper from the earlier Super Hero Squad styled Star Wars Playskool line.

I love the little chibi R2-D2, and I'm tempted to keep the general Kenobi figure for myself. But since I've already been giving my daughter all the figures I had from these lines, I probably shouldn't start backpedaling now.

Random Christmas Pic :: Merry Christmas and a Beep Boop Whoooowooooo!

Santa and his helper R2-D2, along with everyone here at Toyriffic, wish everyone out there in internet land a very Merry Christmas!

We hope you got a lot of toys!

Random Toy Pic :: Alfred's Day Off

Of course Bruce Wayne can afford a fully functional R2 unit!

Legoland Mos Eisley

My favorite part of my recent visit to Legoland was 'Mini-Land;' a bunch of displays of cities and people and vehicles (both real and fictional) made out of Legos! But as fun as it is to see New Orleans or New York laid out in little colored bricks, it's a ton more fun to see Star Wars cities and people and vehicles!

Where better to start than Mos Eisley Space Port. You will not find a more wretched hive of scum and brickery!

Sandpeople ride single file to hide their Legos.

My favorite part of all these were the characters, which were larger scale than mere Lego mini-figures, and super cool yet relatively simple looking, tempting me to try and build some of them myself! C3-PO and R2-D2 are particularly fun looking Lego creations.

The Cantina came to life via the touch of a button, with music and motion from the Potatohead Band!

And of course any tour of Mos Eisley is worthless without seeing the Millennium Falcon. This thing was HUGE! These displays weren't your off-the-shelf Lego sets, all this stuff was custom designed and LARGE!

Even baby Darla got in on the act. "Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi. You're my only hope!"

No, seriously, this is NOT the droid you are looking for...

I'm a toy manufacturer in the late seventies, and I'm about to rip off the most successful summer sci-fi flick ever right as a sequel, which is almost certainly destined to be as successful if not moreso, is about to hit theatres. I'm going to be real sly about it though. I'm going to call my toy 'Star-2!' No one will see through that thin veil unless they are a Jedi, I mean a Jed-eye, and wield the awesome power of the force, I mean the powre of the foress!

This is 'Star-2, the Lovable Teaching Robot.' Star-2 was manufactured in 1980 as far as I can tell, I see no specifics detailing his time of origin on the toy or box, but the cards he comes with are all copyright 1980. Yeah, I get the irony.

And exactly how is a dome with lights on it so 'loveable?' Well it isn't unless you know about R2-D2, who is very lovable in the movie Star Wars. But this isn't an R2 rip off. No sirree.

Okay, so the base is orange, and the dome is white with black details painted on. And the lights are red, yellow and blue. None of those colors are very R2-D2ish, right?

U Mad, George?

The toy is actually pretty neat. You place some learning cards on the panel and answer the questions with a metal tipped probe. Similar to how the old Operation game works, if you get a right answer, the dome lights up and Star-2 makes some noise which is similar to an old electronic phone of some sort.

I iz smart!

There are cards for all sorts of subjects and age ranges, and all are equally seventies-ish in their art and details. Ironically, none of them are space themed. I have 74 cards, so I plan on being pretty learned by the time I'm through!

Here's the box. Man I hated that stupid bob haircut people gave their sons back then. Thank God my mom never put me through such torment. You look like Dorothy Hamill, boy!

Star-2 was manufactured by Educational Insights Inc. of Compton CA. Yup, Star-2 is straight outta Compton. I don't remember NWA ever singing about the Lovable Teaching Robot though.

I did some quick research online and it appears a later version was called 'Charlie the Lovable Teaching Robot,' so clearly Lucas got wind of this thing pretty quick and was at least able to get them to stop using the name 'Star-2,' which seems fair enough.

"I got it bad got it bad got it bad, I'm hot for teacher!"