Toy Talk
Volume XXXVI
By Mark Patraw
Posted on 4/14/14
Alas, this was another one of those weeks where I couldn't find any toys at the thrift stores worth buying. The closest I came was a 6" Hasbro Spider-man 3 Sandman figure who's action feature didn't work (had he been functional, I probably would have purchased him). So, that means I had to dig through my bags of past acquisitions to find five items to write about (I've pretty much given up on typing several weeks of reviews in advance).
In this installment of Toy Talk, moving left-to-right, we have: a 2012 Victoria Kann/Burger King Pinkalicious Ring Comb Pinkalicious doll (twenty-five cents "girls" grab bag on 1/18/14); a 1997 Burger King Kids Club: Planet Patrol Space Commander Jaws figure (twenty-five cents "boys dudes" grab bag on 3/19/14); a 2008 Hasbro Time For Us: Candy Land board game (twenty-five cents "girls" grab bag on 11/26/13); a Fisher Price 2004 Imaginext: Dinosaurs Caveman figure (twenty-five cents "boys dudes" grab bag on 3/19/14); and, finally, a 1994 Swibco Puffkins Violet the Bear plush (twenty-five cents "girls" grab bag on 3/14/14). I purchased everything from the Ishpeming St. Vincent de Paul Society thrift store on the dates noted above. If anyone reading this knows more information about any of these items, that I haven't already discussed below, and would like to share, or just chat about toys, feel free to e-mail me and let me know!
Here we have a 2012 Victoria Kann/Burger King Pinkalicious Ring Comb Pinkalicious doll. She's a popular children's book character that's obsessed with the color pink. In addition to this figure, the six piece assortment also included Pinkalicious Tiara, Pinkalicious Hair Play (a couple of barrettes with pink hair extensions), Pinkalicious Star-Bright Wand, Pinkalicious Friendship Bracelets, and a Princess Journal. I find the barrettes oddly compelling (my buzzcut hair is way too short to put a barrette in, but I think they'd look nice on some of my larger dolls), but, if I had to choose only one Burger King Pinkalicious toy, I definitely would have went with this doll. A young girl would probably get a lot of enjoyment out of the larger jewelry/roleplay items though. Obviously, mine is lacking the ring comb accessory--normally, I wouldn't mind the absence of a hair styling implement, but, a comb that's also a ring strikes me as a neat design choice, and that item also serves double duty as angel wings for the doll (the ring's loop clips around Pinkalicious' waist), so, I'm definitely missing out this time (on the upside, the bags of girls toys that I often buy frequently contain one, or more, doll combs/brushes, so, I'd give myself good odds on getting that Pinkalicious ring comb someday).
I own a lot of dolls, but none of them look quite like this one. While her limbs and head are fairly cartoon-ish and simple, there are a lot of details molded on her dress and tiara. Her childish facial features are particularly warm and inviting. Interestingly, the blush marks on her cheeks have been done with heat-sensitive paint; if you rub one of them with your fingertip for a bit, it will fade and almost disappear, only to reappear again once it returns to room temperature [I didn't figure that out on my own, I was looking at a MIB (mint-in-bag) photo of this toy and noticed that the package had a diagram printed on it depicting a finger being rubbed across her cheeks and gave it a try to see what would happen].
Pinkalicious has five points of articulation, all of them rotating cut joints, at the neck, biceps, and thighs. The neck is a bit wobbly, but all of the joints hold poses fine and she can stand on her own unassisted. Her pig tails are rooted, but the rest of her hair is simply sculpted onto her head. I don't think that they're supposed to look like that, but I find it amusing that one of the pig tails on mine points up and the other down, which is a zany look that just seems to fit the character (it also makes me think of Pippi Longstockings). Considering how short her locks are, I'm guessing that the previously mentioned ring comb was probably intended more for the owner than the doll. At the top of her tiara, she stands 4.3" (10.9 cm) tall.
While I don't have Pinkalicious' original ring comb, I do have this similar hair brush in my collection.
I have no idea what toy it originally belonged to though (there aren't any copyright markings on it).
Pinkalicious probably isn't the type of figure that I'd normally buy, but her wholesome, child-like qualities have grown on me. Sometimes it's nice to have a doll that's different from the usual fashion model template.
Yes, I actually brought the doll all the way to the library just so that I could shoot this photo.
And, yes, I did it right in front of the librarians and other patrons--I have no shame.
[4/15/14 Addendum] Yesterday, after I had finished uploading this volume of Toy Talk to my Angelfire account, I decided to do some more research and read all of my local library's Pinkalicious books (for the "full" experience, I even did it sitting in a child's chair at a kid-sized reading table). I wanted to examine the original story, but they only had a couple of the later books, Goldilicious and Silverlicious. I liked Silverlicious, which involved a series of various holiday mascots "standing in" for the Tooth Fairy when Pinkalicious literally lost her sweet tooth. Goldilicious, on the other hand, which followed Pinkalicious' adventures with an imaginary unicorn friend, didn't do much for me. Anyway, it was good to get some hands-on experience with the character, in her original paper medium, so that I could acquire a better understanding of what Victoria Kann's creation is all about.
Saddle up, we're going to the moon to get some green cheese for our burgers! This is a 1997 Burger King Kids Club: Planet Patrol Space Commander Jaws action figure. In addition to Jaws, the outer-space-themed toy assortment also included I.Q.'s Planet Pacer, Boomer's Lightspeed Spacetop, Kid Vid's Glo Chopper, and J.D.'s Shuttle Launch.
Burger King introduced the multi-ethnic (although, predictably, the vast majority of the characters are Caucasian) Kids Club Gang in 1989 to promote their children's menu. As such, many of their fast food toy promotions from that era featured the Kids Club Gang, the obvious advantage being that, as Burger King completely owned the characters, they didn't have to pay any licensing fees to use them.
If you press the button on Jaws' left thigh, which is cleverly disguised as a pocket, his head-and-chest assembly snaps upwards, which also reveals a third wheel (you can also manually swivel his noggin into place if you prefer). Provided his arms are orientated in the up or down position, you can then place Jaws on a flat surface, pull him back, release the figure, and he'll race across the floor. Both action features work well, although the pop-up head does seem a bit unnecessary to me, considering that you could just as easily do that by hand, but, if Burger King wanted to spend the extra time and money on engineering that, more power to them.
Jaws sculpt and paint are solid work. His head closely resembles illustrations of the character and the space suit sports quite a bit of molded detail (his name, pockets, zippers, planet Saturn insignia, etc.) The predominately red/yellow color scheme of his costume contrasts well (perhaps meant to figuratively represent ketchup and mustard?) and the silver/green embellishments add some flair. I think it would have been neat if they had encased Jaws' head in a transparent space helmet (we all know that there's no atmosphere out there to breathe after all). Jaws has seven points of articulation: rotating cut joints at the neck and shoulders, three spinning wheels, and a pivoting head/chest assembly. In his normal standing pose, Jaws is 4" (10.2 cm) tall.
Yes, I know that I have two top buns on that hamburger (I don't have any bottoms right now).
Strangely, those "tomatoes" are actually pickles, whomever made them goofed up and used red plastic instead of green.
I can remember them from the television advertisements that aired when I was younger, but I never had much interest in the Burger King Kids Club Gang characters (in my opinion, it's hard to top Ronald McDonald and his menagerie of monstrous buddies over at Mickey D's). When it comes to BK mascots, I much prefer the modern, creepy-looking Burger King himself. That said, this is a nice rendition of Jaws with some solid action features. The thrift store had a couple of copies of him languishing in their toy bins (come to think of it, I believe the other one is still there), so, I figured I'd probably end up with Planet Patrol Jaws sooner or later, via one of the grab bags I regularly buy, and I was right.
Dang, I just got sent back to the Peppermint Forest! This is a 2008 Hasbro Time For Us miniature Candy Land board game. It measures 4.4" (11.2 cm) wide by 3" (7.6 cm) tall by 0.4" (0.9 cm) deep. My sample is missing the cards and the red, candy-cane-shaped tool used to manipulate the magnetic gingerbread men playing pieces (any small magnet makes a good substitute though), as such, I can't play with this item properly, but, even so, it's still an interesting curiosity. I spent quite a bit of time with Candy Land as a child, and it was also a favorite of my nieces/nephews, so I've logged in a lot of hours over the years guiding those little plastic men across that sugary landscape.
The concept is neat, and it's an attractive looking piece, but I'm more than a little skeptical about how well this would actually work with multiple people playing. First, the red, blue, yellow, and green gingerbread men markers are significantly larger than the squares on the colored path that you follow to reach the goal, which makes it tricky to tell which spot your character is actually resting on (and that's something a cheater could use to their advantage to sneak ahead one more space than they should); further, there's no way that you could ever fit two, or more, of the playing pieces on the same square, and that's an event that occurs relatively frequently during gameplay in my experience. Second, the board itself isn't magnetic, just the pieces, so, if you bump or tilt the game, the markers may move, which is bound to lead to frustration and arguments. Finally, magnetic attraction being less-than-precise, it's easy to move someone else's piece, along with your own, when they're in close proximity to one another, and, again, that's a recipe for causing conflict between the players.
My siblings and I owned several magnetic miniature board games when we were kids, like chess, checkers, and backgammon, but they were larger (about twice the size of this one, but they folded in half for easy, compact storage) and the components weren't encased in a transparent plastic frame. The individual playing pieces on those older models were loose elements that adhered to the magnetic board and that you moved with your hands, not a tool, which I feel worked a whole lot better. I think that's the approach that Hasbro should have taken with this item. While I doubt that it was the designer(s) intent, because of the plastic walls/guides within the frame, and the fact that the pieces aren't anchored to the board by magnetic attraction, you can also sort of use this item like one of those puzzles that you tilt to guide a marble through a maze. I'm fond of miniatures in general, but, in this case, I'd recommend getting the normal, full-sized version of the game instead.
This is a 2004 Fisher Price Imaginext: Dinosaurs caveman action figure. With this toy line, the manufacturer deliberately chose to ignore the fact that dinosaurs and prehistoric man did not exist at the same time, and, thus, never interacted with one another, but, that's nothing new, and, besides, the dinosaurs are probably what moved the sets off the shelves, not the humans. I may be wrong, but I don't believe that the individual cavemen toys had names, but the dinosaurs and prehistoric mammals did (for example, Shreds the Raptor and Blade the Sabretooth Tiger). I'm not sure which creature, if any, this particular caveman was originally packaged with, but all of the MOC (mint-on-card) samples I looked at online included a large dinosaur/mammal, a smaller organism, a caveman, and an accessory or two (bone clubs, stone axes, animal skin clothing, stuff like that). He's 2.4" (6.0 cm) tall and has pin-and-disc ball-jointed shoulders and pivoting hips (they move as one unit, not individually). It isn't terrible or anything, but I'm not crazy about the sculpt--his outfit just doesn't seem like something that a prehistoric man would wear to me (some of the other Imaginext cavemen have much better, albeit stereotypical, attire). When I first laid eyes on him, and before I identified what the figure was, he struck me as more of a pirate, martial artist, or peasant (although, to be fair, there were several pirates in the bag of toys that I got this caveman from, so, that probably influenced my perception of him). I do like his shaggy fur pants, as that's a look you rarely see on an action figure. The paint work, while decent, is fairly bland, although the tattoos, medallion, and green jewelry do add some pizzazz.
The Stegosaurus figure pictured is just a generic one from my collection; I don't think it's an Imaginext product.
Whenever I get a random dinosaur toy, it almost always turns out to be Stegosaurus.
I like Imaginext figures, but I find the design of this particular one to be mediocre at best. I've always loved dinosaurs, but I've never been a big fan of cavemen (giant reptiles will always trump our shaggy ancestors in my book), and this one hasn't done anything to change my mind.
This is a 1994 Swibco Puffkins Violet the Bear magnetic plush toy. While their generally rotund body shape sets them apart, Puffkins were pretty much an attempt to cash in on the Ty Beanie Babies craze of the mid-90s. This item should have a heart-shaped swing tag attached to her ear, but that's missing on my sample (the plastic tab that would hold it in place was still there though, but I cut it off). Here's the poem that would have appeared on said tag:
A sweeter bear you'll never find.
Violet the bear is very kind.
She looks like a flower on a spring day,
and you can be sure she's ready to play.
Those verses aren't going to win any awards, but then, I probably couldn't do any better. Go read the awful poem I wrote in the introductory paragraph for the Mattel/McDonald's Barbie in the Pink Shoes Rose Compact in Toy Talk Vol. XXIV and judge for yourself.
Violet is made out of polyester fibers and stuffed with PVC (polyvinyl chloride) pellets. Her eyes and nose are hard plastic, which I generally prefer to embroidered features. The animal's fabric and stitching are good quality and I like the purple color scheme. At the tips of her fuzzy ears, Violet stands 3" (7.5 cm) tall. A roly-poly bear with only two feet may not be anatomically accurate, but she sure is cute!
I like the inclusion of the magnet on the figure's back (this item wouldn't be nearly as appealing to me without it). Even at my age, sticking toys to the refrigerator, and other metal surfaces, is still fun, and it gives you additional display options. They even covered the magnet with a soft, darker-purple fabric, which, aside from looking nice, also serves to protect whatever you stick the bear to from getting scratched up. An army of these things bunched up on a freezer door would be an impressive sight.
There's no shortage of stuffed bears in my toy collection, but the coloration, simplified form, and magnetic capabilities of this Puffkins one make Violet more desirable and fun than a stereotypical teddy bear in my eyes.
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