Secret Wars
Ep. 232 is live!
Welcome to August! I seriously can’t believe we are headed into the end of summer. Frankly, I couldn’t be happier. Fall and cooler weather can’t get here soon enough. But, loathsome as the hot and humid months can be, we won’t be stopped from bringing you sweet strolls down memory lane. This week sees me and the boys revisiting Mattel and Marvel’s Secret Wars from 1984. This is a line that has the same origin point as Kenner’s Super Powers Collection, but with much different results. Where Kenner delivered and iconic line with a defining play gimmick, all tied in to the existing Super Friends series of cartoon, Secret Wars took a different approach. Both Super Powers and Secret Wars were born of DC and Marvel ending their relationship with MEGO, bringing the World’s Greatest Super Heroes line to an end. Both companies set out to have figured in the 3.75-4 inch scale…Mattel, however, seemed to approach the idea of a line with Marvel with little to no enthusiasm. Famously, the name Secret Wars came about due to the words “secret” and “war” testing well in focus groups. From here, Mattel would task Jim Shooter and Marvel Comics to craft a comic to coincide with the toy line. The comic would have long lasting changes in the Marvel Universe, such as the introduction of Spiderman’s black suit, which eventually became Venom. The toy line…would be in the shelves for a hot minute and then have its last three figures dumped in Europe. Which is a shame, really. I think a major difference between Marvel and DCs offerings in the toy aisle for 84 was your play gimmick. Both lines make great efforts to deliver some really great representations of these comic book characters. The Spiderman figures and Wolverine stand out me as some of the best representations we’d see for these characters until Marvel Legends. The playsets were quite awesome as well, in general the line had some great offerings. The problem seems to stem from Mattel just not really putting much effort into pushing this line, let alone making sure the characters and toy “lore” lined up with the comic book miniseries. Both Super Powers and Secret Wars were in the same scale and feature similar articulation. However, Super Powers had those amazing action features, while Secret Wars were fairly static and featured Identity Disc Shields. Still, all in all, I think was a fairly cool line, it checks a lot of boxes I have for what makes a toyline pop, and should I see these on my collecting journey I’m probably going to snatch them up. If you’re not familiar with the line, take a solid look at some of the offerings below, as well as the lunchbox! Sadly, no tv trays were found and I couldn’t even find a picture of the elusive beach towel that one Dan Larson still hunts for to this day.
That is going to wrap things up for Yesterdaze this week, but please join us next week with special guest Grace of Radio Rewind as we discuss ten iconic cars of the 1980s, it should be fun! In the meantime thanks, and enjoy! -Derek
