I've been digging through early issues of Joe 90 for those comics i mentioned starring The Champions, my old favorite TV Superhero show. Along the way i've been enjoying lots of other little things - like, remember the old '60s TV show, Land Of The Giants? They had a comic that ran in Joe 90, along with the excellent Star Trek series we've seen previously in this blog.
While contemplating how unknown Joe 90 is to most readers in the USA, i also ran into a nice toy ad to help explain. Dinky made some of the best old school TV toys, including their classic Enterprise (NCC-1701) with working shuttle bay and firing Photon Discs. And they made these toys of metal, not plastic.
Well, the photon discs and shuttle craft were plastic. But they were tough, solid toys, made for adventuring.
Here's their beauty version of Joe 90's car:
You'll have to make it bigger if you want to check out the special features.
Though the name Dinky might have sounded "rinky-dinky", the brand was anything but - those old toys lasted through many years of hard play.
Looking at the other toys advertised might give one a fair idea of what Joe 90 was. It was a supermarionation series from Gerry Anderson, like Captain Scarlet and the Thunderbirds.
(Hell, for all i know, it's been revived, like the Thunderbirds)
Joe was actually quite ahead of its time in concept - the series was about a kid who essentially uploaded skills & data into his head as needed to function as a superspy, much like cyberpunk and modern scifi stories, but back in the late 1960s. So, yeah - we'll probably do a feature on him before too long.
But that's another time. For now, it's off to hunt those Champions DVDs and see if we can't grab a few screens to go with the comics...
While contemplating how unknown Joe 90 is to most readers in the USA, i also ran into a nice toy ad to help explain. Dinky made some of the best old school TV toys, including their classic Enterprise (NCC-1701) with working shuttle bay and firing Photon Discs. And they made these toys of metal, not plastic.
Well, the photon discs and shuttle craft were plastic. But they were tough, solid toys, made for adventuring.
Here's their beauty version of Joe 90's car:
You'll have to make it bigger if you want to check out the special features.
Though the name Dinky might have sounded "rinky-dinky", the brand was anything but - those old toys lasted through many years of hard play.
Looking at the other toys advertised might give one a fair idea of what Joe 90 was. It was a supermarionation series from Gerry Anderson, like Captain Scarlet and the Thunderbirds.
(Hell, for all i know, it's been revived, like the Thunderbirds)
Joe was actually quite ahead of its time in concept - the series was about a kid who essentially uploaded skills & data into his head as needed to function as a superspy, much like cyberpunk and modern scifi stories, but back in the late 1960s. So, yeah - we'll probably do a feature on him before too long.
But that's another time. For now, it's off to hunt those Champions DVDs and see if we can't grab a few screens to go with the comics...
Dinky advert from Joe 90 #1 (1969)
Joe 90 was probably the least popular Anderson puppet show after Secret Service, and this was reflected by the fact that the comic based on the show didn't last too long before being merged with TV21. Dinky Toys made some great Anderson-based toys, but not without (in my estimation) their design problems. For example, the SPV (from Captain Scarlet) was so heavy that the missile hatch on the front, which was meant to be operated by pressing down the front wheels, often opened just from merely putting the toy (even gently) on the carpet. Also, the push-'buttons' (for lack of a better word) on the side of Thunderbird 2 which released the underside legs, were positioned in such a way that one couldn't help but inadvertently press them when simply picking up the toy. The legs in the first version were also too frail and often broke when kids pushed the pod out while the legs were distended. Plus, it wasn't a very accurate representation of the actual craft on the show. That aside, they were great.
ReplyDeleteMeant to say that Vivid Imaginations released their version of Joe's car sometime in the '90s, which was very similar to Dinky's version. They probably wouldn't be immediately distinguishable from a casual glance at them side-by-side, and I wonder if Vivid made their mould (with small revisions) from an actual Dinky toy.
DeleteI never saw Joe 90 on television - i don't think it made it across the Atlantic. It was through the comics that i discovered the show, though i picked them up for the other features - Star Trek, The Champions, Land Of The Giants. But i did have an appreciation for the concepts.
ReplyDeleteWe didn't get much of the Dinky Anderson toys, either. As noted above, my primary experience with them came through Star Trek toys.
Never saw Vivid Imaginations toys, but obviously i had Revoltech's Thunderbird echoing in my head from your post when i ran into this ad.