You know how in ’80s toy commercials (after politicians of reagonomy deregulated advertising to children) The BoyTM would exist in contradistinction to The GirlTM? How The Girl, like The MomTM, would just not understand the freckled snaggle-toothed boyneed for carnage and excitement? She’d stand in the door of the room with her hair in curlers and some kind of green face mask, appalled at what The BoyTM and his little chums would be up to, with their hypermasculine toys. She would be like, “Gross!” and the boychilder would exchange the highest of fives at her dismay.
Anyway, if you were once The BoyTM, regardless of your gender du jour, tell me. Battle Beasts were an action figure with a built-in game mechanic. Unusual. Did you ever use that game mechanic, and if so, did you use it for gambling? Like shooting marbles for keeps.
I didn’t know enough other Battle Beast -havers for there to be any element of surprise when their elements were compared. My brother and I knew the lion man was wood and the pangolin man was fire. I think it may have come up in the scenarios we constructed, but not as a real game. But I imagine somewhere some sad kid lost his little animal mans to this system. Was it you?
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I’m 20 years too old for Battle Beasts. I don’t even remember seeing the commercials. But I do remember how so many toys in the ’80s seemed to be locked in perpetual wars. Transformers were fighting Decepticons, He-man was fighting Skeletor, G.l. Joe was fighting Cobra. Maybe I just hit a sweet spot by growing up in the mid ’60s, but my play was almost never about fighting battles. I liked Major Matt Mason exploring the moon, and I liked my geology science kit and my chemistry set. Even G.I. Joe had a Mercury space capsule and equipment for fighting fires, not Cobra hordes. Instead of a set of green plastic army soldiers I had a set of plastic dinosaurs.
@1: I’m more contemporary with you. What sticks out in my mind was any of the “active” toys such as Lincoln Logs, Tinker Toys, Erector Sets, Play-Doh, various non-Lego (which wasn’t a thing yet), lawn darts, block sets etc., the advertising always showed a boy actively playing with the toys while the girls stared on adoringly at the boys. Any toys aimed at girls–Colorforms, Barbie, Easy-bake ovens, housekeeping toys, etc.–were always girl-only ghettos with no motherly or brotherly approval.
Call me suspicious, but it looks like those were copied or ripped off as the “Gorgonites” for the Denis Leary movie “Small Soldiers” (1998).
i did not remember that denis leary was in that, only kirsten dunst and that led zeppelin song.
apparently frank langella was the voice of main gorgonite, i remembered it something in the ballpark of keith david. their voices are pretty similar.
So…electronic rock/paper/scissors? With avatars? Well, I guess it’s not much different from rpg players living and dying by the roll of the 20-sided dice.
chemical rochambeau, actually. the commercial makes the technology look slicker than it is. if you whipped your finger across the heat activated color change sticker like these boys, it would either be insufficient warmth to make the black fade to the symbol, or it would wipe the whole sticker off.
i remembered the song from the commercial even before I saw this video. the line “they grow into an army” amused me with how overt it was in pushing you to buy dozens of the little fuckers, but the director of the commercial didn’t think that was clear enough, so you have a narrator at the end hastily blurting out “collect all 84!”