Cantina Time

I have really been thinking about Vintage Star Wars lately and going through my vintage toys as well. There is something about these first figures from the Star Wars Saga that really are special. It doesn't help with posts like the Empire Strikes Back Catalog at Yesterville Toy Room or this awesome collection of R2 Units and Original 12 at Doc Atomic's Attic of Astounding Artifacts. To date these two post are among my favorites of any blog on the whole world wide web. I do not know how many times I have revisited and re-read each.

Well, with that I thought I would wrap up my Cantina Buddies with my friend Snaggletooth here. I remember when these guts came out and was ecstatic to learn their names. Of course these are the names we knew them as, Hammerhead, Walrus Man, Snaggletooth and Greedo. I always felt as a kid that they didn't try with Greedo's name. I realize he is mentioned by name in the movie and the others are not. Plus in fact they really didn't try with the others, I just though he needed a different name back then to match his Cantina counterparts. Weird huh?

He may not be blue, but I dig em!

Another thing while I'm on the subject. Vintage weapons were awesome. Plain, simple awesome. Sure I like the ultra detailed stuff we have today, but back then you lost a blaster you could steal one from a Stormtrooper and whoa la! New blaster goodness! I still do this today, Snaggletooth's Blaster was swiped from my Death Squad Commander (you can tell I'm an old schooler, cause I still call him a Death Squad Commander), which was probably swiped from a trooper long ago. You know I need to find an inexpensive source for vintage weapons so I can arm all my old buddies.



So, I just want to thank the master of the toy room from Yesterville and Ol' Doc from that Attic of Awesome for keeping that Vintage Vibe alive and Snaggletooh would like to raise a blaster in your honor!

May the Force Be With You

Heres Ackbar!

"Oh Ackbar, you so crazy!"

Okay since I'm putting up some vintage figures I thought I would post another "find".

"I have a stick too!"

Have you ever been sitting at the computer and get the notion to do a search for an off the wall figure on Ebay, only to find it for cheap? Then you find yourself bidding on said figure and a week or two later it comes in the mail and you are like "What the ???"



No? Never? Well that's the story of Ackbar here. When he arrived I opened the package and my wife said "Really, Ackbar?, you needed that?"



Why of course I do, it's Admiral Ackbar for crying out loud! Of course you know I have plans for this guy, he might be my travel buddy, or welcome wagon to new figures... who knows.

Hammer Time!

"My music hits me so hard, makes me say oh my lord, thank you for giving me a mind to rhyme and two log feet!"



I think this is the last of my Vintage Cantina dwellers, and it's my favorite of the bunch! Hammerhead, or as everyone calls him nowadays, Momaw Nadon. You know, I realize that at some point George Lucas thought, we need to name these characters, or someone did, anyway it seems they put more effort into the original Star Wars characters that the newer ones. Momaw Nadon just sounds cool, Elan Sleazebaggano (from Episode II) just sounds like you couldn't think of anything. Really, this poor guy's name is Sleazebaggano, no kidding, and he is like a sleaze bag, surprising enough, that hangs out in a bar. I would much rather hang out with my man Momaw in a bar.

(ed. I forgot I still have my Snaggletooth, coming soon to a blog near you!)



Okay, back to the toy. No one new the cantina patrons names, except poor Greedo, back in the day so they received names like Snaggletooth, Walrusman, and Hammerhead. Which was cool by me, and to tell you the truth I still refer to him as Hammerhead. What I think is cool is that the vintage figure is pretty close to the build of how he is portrayed in the modern line. Of course he's not wearing screen accurate garb, but no one cared back then, it was just cool to have this freaky looking guy!

"Later player!"

"He don't like you..."

He'll always be Walus Man to me, I know his real name is Ponda Boba, but he didn't go by that until 1989!

"Wally" would get so drunk that he would try to take his flippers off and run across the hot sands of Tatooine. Thank goodness he wore that orange leotard over his pants, making it too difficult to strip down all the way or we would be chasing a walrus looking dude all over the place trying to stop him from making a fool of himself.



We never could figure out why he wore those flipper boots, I mean he had normal feet, he kept telling us "They're hip, man" and "The chick's dig em".



His look never really caught on, he wasn't as dapper as Greedo, he eventually lost the web footed look and went with a really cool jacket, then someone went an lopped his arm off.


"Stay Cool!"

Another Buddy from the Bin

I've been sorting through my toy bins, it's time to really thin out the collection, and came across another old buddy. Greedo was one of my old drinking buddies back in the day, he always new how to dress to impress.



Dig his color coordination, those greens really bring out his skin tones. I ran across a few of my other bar room buddies from back in the day on Tatooine and will be posting them in the future.



It's good to see these guys come out in the daylight every once in a while instead of our usual hangout. Going to seem weird, but when I was a kid I had the 45 record of the Cantina Band Song and I played it non stop on a little record player I kept out back of a card board Star Wars bar I fashioned out of an old box and some scrap. My drinking buddies and I would hang out and swap stories of smugglers, starships and the Kessel Run, 12 parsecs! Paaaaalease, we were talking about doing it in half that time.

Ebony and Ivory live together in perfect harmony...

Okay, maybe not perfect harmony according to the episode Let That Be Your Last Battlefield, of course in this situation we are talking about the "half blacks" and the "half whites" of the Planet Cheron. One of my more favorite episodes of Star Trek for the following three reasons: The story seemed well done, Frank Gorshin's performance as Bele, and Spock's play by play at the end of the episode.

The story in a nutshell is The Enterprise intercepts two travelers that are bent on destroying each other, see one is black on the right side, the ruling class of Cheron, and the other is white on the right side making him an outcast. Kirk is on a mission to save another planet, Ariannus from a plague when Bele, Frank Gorshin, takes control of the ship so he can return Lokai, played by Lou Antonio, back to Cheron to stand trial. Kirk threatens to destroy the Enterprise to re gain control which works, upon finishing their primary mission to decontaminate the planet of Ariannus, Bele once again takes control and propels them forward to Cheron, where it turns out that the two factions have destroyed each other years ago, both Bele and Lokai blame the other and take their battle to the planet surface where the Enterprise leaves them to their life long battle, the last two members of their society.

So, with that of the way we have a reproduction again produced by EMCE of the classic Mego action figure called Cheron. Obviously Mego took some artistic license with the character, the whole head is black and white, no brown hair as is the body suit, plus the name is the name of the planet and not something like Bele or Lokai. I think these differences between the toy and the actual show can easily be overlooked. I always thought this was an interesting figure so I couldn't wait to get one in hand. I'm not entirely sure, but most of the original Megos have what is called "Cheron Rot" or "Cheron Mold" where the white part of the body suit has had a reaction with the plastic used for the body, cast in black, and has started to stain the body suit. To find one without this is a pretty big deal and could cost a pretty penny, so I was glad that this figure made the list of being reproduced. The plastics used today should be far better and prevent this color change from happening again, so little Cheron here should be safe for as long as I live.



Playmates Toys released a more accurate version in their 9 inch scale and of the character Bele, they can still be found on Ebay at good prices, matter if fact I'm thinking of picking one up soon. I wonder why neither company chose to make the reverse character, that of Lokai? Did Bele when the final confrontation and is now the last citizen of Cheron standing?

This is all sorts of wrong...

But that's why I love it so! EMCE/Mego Mugatu is like the cousin from the city that comes to visit the country Mugatu, all dressed in his fancy, space disco attire. What else can I say about this Mugatu that countless others haven't? Maybe just this, he is now one of my top favs from the re-releases.



I will also go on record as saying "dig those crazy feet, man!" Did Mego use those feet anywhere else? If they didn't use those on the POTA merchandise, they missed the boat, those are some sweet feet there, from a sculpting point of view, not that I have a space ape foot fetish or anything.



I think the only thing this guy is missing is some cool Elvis sunglasses, don't worry little guy, I'll find you some cool shades! Then it will be, "look out ladies here comes Space Disco Mugatu!"


You can dance, you can dance, everyone look at my pants!

Space the Tiny Frontier...

More smallness this week with Tiny Trek Ships! Actually these were from the Galoob Micro Machines Space line of the early nineties. Galoob known for it's tiny Micro Machine cars branched out by taking on Star Trek and Star Wars in this tiny scale. These were both a welcome sight in my home back then. This meant a fleet of ships could be displayed on top of computers, shelves, toothbrush holders, you get the picture. While I amassed a large set of Star Wars ships, we'll only be checking out the first set of Trek stuff today.



The first series, besides having a more generic packaging featured what could be considered Trek's big three as far as ships go. The U.S.S. Enterprise leading the pack here is a pretty close representation of the ship from the classic series. I was surprised when these hit stores that it was as detailed as it was for a mass produced miniature. I think I bought an extra set so I could hang one from my rearview mirror in the Chunky Mobile... I know super geek.



Another surprise was the detail on the bottom of the Romulan Bird of Prey, but I guess if you are going to do this ship you kinda have to go all out with the bird on the bottom or it would look kind of boring. I know I've mentioned this before, but the AMT model version of this ship was one of my nemesis back in the day. I had more problems with that damn bird decal...



Last but not least, the Klingon D-7 Battle Cruiser. Probably my second next to the Enterprise of favorite ships from the original series. If the Enterprise was hanging from the rearview, that meant that extra D-7 was converted to a key chain!

Not that I'm an army builder, but I thought at one time I would get a few of these and maybe make a fleet of D-7's for my Enterprise to take on. Then I could take all the Enterprises and re paint them to make the other ships in Star Fleet. Man I'm glad I didn't take this project on or I would probably be single right now.

Space Suit Spock

This is the Playmates Toys 9" Spock in Space (or Environmental) Suit form that classic episode "The Tholian Web". If you are not familiar with the episode here's a link to a short synopsis from Startrek.com. Basically Kirk gets trapped in "Interphase", between his space and another time and space, when investigating another starship that was left drifting. The Enterprise stays to help Kirk, but is in turn trapped in a web of energy generated by Tholian ships.

The Environmental Suits were worn by the Crew when they had beamed over to the other starship (the U.S.S. Defiant) in the beginning of the episode. These 9" figures were released as Target exclusives, this one was picked up at that time. The set would have included Chekov, Spock, and Kirk; but the times were tight and I decided to only get one, Kirk not being on the shelf it was between Spock and Chekov, so Spock it was.



At the time I didn't even think twice about setting this figure free, the space suit was just too damn cool to keep packaged, plus it reminded me of the silver firefighter suit from the old 12" GI Joe days. So this could be considered the first of the open 9" Spock's in the Spocklection.



Another cool thing about this episode was that we got to see a cool head shot of a Tholian, now I always thought tit would be cool to see a Mego style figure with the Tholian head, even a custom, but then Enterprise came along and tied into this episode and reveled the Tholians to have crystal like spider bodies...WTF, that just ruined it for me. I still like to believe they have these funky heads and humanoid bodies, like the good people at Mego would have done it! Maybe I'll make a custom figure, never tried it, but it would be worth some sculpty to see if I could pull it off.

I bring you love...

I was going to call this post “It’s a Keeper” but my son’s comment when I unpacked this figure was “it looks like Mr. Burns from the episode when everyone thought he was an alien.”



I know that originally this was a made up character for the toy line, I believe it is supposed to be a cross between a Talosian and Balok’s puppet . Still funny as all get out though.

I think to date this one has to be one of my favorites from EMCE (originally a Mego release), see this guy sports a robe, that’s it, so all sorts of blue naked comedy ensues. Ah the Keeper is comedy gold. My only question, and I guess this would be to the original Mego guys, is why couldn’t he have some space boots or slippers or something? Slippers would be hilarious, hilarious I tells ya!


"not the face!"

EMCE Andorian: Why so blue?

Okay finally the EMCE Andorian! I jumped ahead to the Romulan last time cause I was pretty excited to get him, but the Andorian is a pretty cool figure as well.

The thing I remember about the Andorians in the original series was they were always with a crazy villain or they were sort of spineless. I guess that last one was because the ambassador Andorian came off that way to a young mind. It wasn't till I saw some episodes of Enterprise that I appreciated the Andorians on a whole new level.



So this Andorian, while weaponless, will be part of the proud warrior race and not the spineless one of episodes past. I really dig the gloves on this figure, not like the usual Mego style mittens, more like hard little plastic boxing gloves. Perfect for smacking some Starfleet personnel around!

I know I've raved about these EMCE reproductions of Megos before, but I'm really glad these are making a comeback. It gives me a chance to get some of the characters I didn't pick up when I was younger (mainly because of a lack of interest, if it wasn't Kirk and Spock, I wasn't having it!) and It gives Star Trek and Mego collectors alike a chance to get some newer figures. It wasn't long ago I had a post where I had some comments about future characters, now EMCE is releasing a revision of the Gorn and Khan! Plus a couple of other never before seen figures, Sulu and Chekov, Space Lincoln are you just around the corner?