Manky Toy Monday: A homage (on Saturday)

Sorry…
Originally uploaded by Editor_Tupp.

In honour of Fustar’s brilliant Manky Toy Monday, I thought I’d add my contribution to the canon of toys only a parent could love. This is part of an unplanned exchange, following Fustar’s contribution to the Paper Round.

As befits the rules of the game, my purchase cost €2. It is the mighty big-boxed “Beast Warriors”. Or one of them at least. The box assures us that these fearsome manimals come in a range of different forms. My own choice went with some kind of Thundercat derived Cat-Man. The crown on this Schmundercat’s head might suggest that he is a lion- king of the jungle, and so on.

Frankly, the Schumdercat figure is the least interesting portion of the Beast Warriors set. More important is the Dragon and the Beast Warrior unique contribution to imaginative play- its own mise en scene in the form of a rather Romantic-era ruin or folly and a plastic rock, into which you stick a plastic tree, bearing a sinister plastic owl.

The use of two kinds of plastic, a hard one in shades of grey and brown and a more jelly like one in more lurid yellows and oranges is counterproductive. So attractive is the coloured material that it highlights the drabness of the rest of the set.

The range of khaki and mud colours in this set lends a strangely melancholy feel to the entire scene. As though this is all that’s left of a dead world- torn apart by an endless war between Schmundercats and Dragons. Only a broken down wall and a dead tree remains of whatever civilisation once lived here. The dragon isn’t big enough to have wrought this kind of damage on its own- perhaps its the last baby beast found in its cold nest. The only colours left in the world are weapons. A vulture-owl waits to feed on the losers.

Sorry about that. These are the kinds of stories toys provoke in me. See Hugh’s Adventures for more of this kind of thing.

Beast Warrior’s box promises us a whole range of ‘anthropomorphic monster fighting less humanoid monster’. Each with the ability to move their arms up and down.

After playing with it for a while, I’m not sure that this falls into the Manky Toy category. It has a rather cool dragon. And as the stick that holds his fire in his mouth is the same size as the stick that holds the tree in the rock, you could have him breathing out a tree, while fire gushes from the ground. Which seems like a scene from a lost, but very exciting, Greek myth.

Also, as discussed on fustar, Manky Toys tend to favour quality over quantity. Here we get one scene- albeit boxed in a misleadingly large container. Costing €2 has its price, of course. The wall is rubbish and would be thrown away after taking the time to balance it once. It keeps falling over, and just isn’t worth the effort. To make it stand for the pictures, I had to prop it up with a shield. And when I turned the Schmundercat’s head to take the picture above, I heard a loud crack inside and it went very loose. Clearly Schumdercats never evolved the ability to look left or right- a weakness which may metaphorically explain the demise of their civilisation.

All together now-

“Schumdercats are on the move, Schumdercats are loose…”