Happy 4th of July!

Today’s the day you get to eat hamburgers AND hot dogs along with all the potato chips and soda you want! Don’t forget to stuff yourself with patriotic cupcakes either!

Oh, and happy 233rd birthday, America.

Mego’s Superhero Dolls

Ah, Mego. How famous you are amongst retro buffs such as myself. I never owned one myself though. I had never even seen one in person until working for the termite division of a pest control company back in 2004. We would do inspections and of course we had to walk the whole house and I was led to a room that was pretty much a collector’s paradise. All along the walls, on shelves, it was nothing but Mego. Spider-Man, Batman, Aquaman, Superman, KISS, Star Trek, Planet of the Apes, Flash Gordon, dolls from their monster line… you name it, this guy had it. It was so awesome.

*sigh* I really wanted to steal those KISS dolls.

Are you man enough for MegaForce?

Well, punk, are ya?

Would ya believe I’ve never seen this movie? In fact, up until about 5 years ago, I had never even heard of it. That’s pretty shocking because I’ve been firmly entrenched in 1980s action cheese since, well… the 1980s! I actively sought out and viewed The Ice Pirates on VHS, I bought the DVD of Krull and enjoyed it, I own a DVD copy of Roger Corman’s Deathsport, I like Solar Babies and yes, I think Hell Comes to Frogtown (starring pro wrestler “Rowdy” Roddy Piper) is an underrated B-movie gem. Running in those circles, you’d think I’d have become aware of MegaForce much earlier than I did. I really love the name “MegaForce” though. It’s 80s awesome.

Corgi Super Heroes Cars

These are pretty nifty looking cars from diecast manufacturer Corgi.

Notice the Joker and Penguin cars. Now, I can understand a super HERO placing their symbol/color scheme onto their transportation mode of choice — it’s advertising to let the people (and criminals) know that they are around. But WHY would the Penguin and Joker want their names and logos on their cars? Why would a villain want to draw the attention of the cops and/or heroes when driving down to 7-11 for a Big Gulp?

Obviously, it’s just to market the toys, but I always found it to be amusing nonetheless, just like when I see that a hero that WHO CAN FLY has a car (or plane!). I guess for when times Superman just really doesn’t feel like dealing with splattered bugs and plane fumes, he can catch a ride in his Space Cruiser. Or drive around in his, um… van.

I have to say, Captain Marvel and Wonder Woman have some sweet pimped out rides though and it’s always good to see the 1960s Batman show getting represented as well.

Game Genie by Galoob

Was this NES add-on a blessing or what? Sure, Nintendo wasn’t too happy that Galoob was making a cartridge that plugs into their game cartridges but the gamers didn’t care. It was a godsend!

FINALLY I could get some serious work done on the various games that plagued me. Many NES games were incredibly tough and it was nice to have the Genie around to help give me the advantage. Invincibility, super jumps, unlimited ammo, infinite lives, level select, one hit kills and so on were the kind codes I was looking for.

That famous screen.

The cartridge came with a book filled with codes to all kinds of games, but because new codes were discovered and new games were released on a continuous basis, you could subscribe to a quarterly newsletter featuring new codes.

Galoob would later make Genies for Sega’s Game Gear & Genesis and the SNES and Game Boy before finally calling it a day, but the spirit of cheating until you win lived on in to the 32-bit era and beyond with Action Replay, GameShark and Code Breaker.