Space Ace mini figures revisited

Shortly after I started this site I wrote about Space Ace mini figures from the early 1980s, which--despite having been sold as merchandise tied to the popular video game of the same name--is a line made up of bizarre Masters of the Universe-esque creatures that appear to actually have nothing to do with the game.

As you might have gathered by now, I dig obscure stuff. The stranger and more obscure, the better. So naturally these guys are right up my alley. Since my original post I acquired a handful more of them, so decided it was time to devote more blog space to these weirdos.

My personal favorite is the dude with the trident in the upper left of the photo above who looks like some sort of mollusk/sea creature warrior. But that's not to say I'm not a fan of the ornery-looking horned guy with the big helmet attached to his arm, too, who I believed is a character yanked from Blackstar. Or mister green Mickey Mouse-meets-He-Man. And of course there are the crappy charms of a couple of them in the bottom row whose faces look sort of blobby, with features that look like they didn't make it all the way there. Ah hell, I like 'em all.

As you can see in this photo from DragonsLairFans.com, these figures came packaged on a card marked "Space Ace Robot Playset" with 8 to a set in addition to a few little spaceships. Uh, these guys don't look like robots to me, but I guess kids weren't supposed to notice/care about that fact. Also, while the package artwork actually features characters from the Space Ace video game, as I mentioned above none of those characters are actually reflected in the figures.

photo from nijirain.com

To make the situation even stranger, the Space Ace figures bear a strong resemblance to monochromatic mini figures that were released bagged under the Blackstar name around the same time, even though the Blackstar figures are larger and actually different sculpts when you look close. As noted by LittleRubberGuys.com forum member in this thread:

Space Ace was a video game made by Don Bluth studios, which also made Dragon's Lair. It is completely unrelated to Blackstar, which was a cartoon made by Filmation. Both toys share a release date of 1984, although the Space Ace figure is unmarked. The characters and molds used for both sets of figures is completely different, although I can understand why they are confused. The Blackstar mini-figure set features 6 villains from the series; Overlord, Kadray, Palace Guard, Neptul, Tongo, and Gargo. I don't know if the Space Ace figures have names, but I don't think they do.

Is there any relation between the Space Ace mini figures and Blackstar mini figures? Were they sculpted by the same person? Produced by the same company? Why were these characters used for Space Ace video game merchandise? Does anyone know? Does anyone care? These, my friends, are questions for the ages.

In any case, there you have it. Space Ace mini figures--some of the weirdest of all the little weirdos.

Yucky yellows & petrifying pinks

I love taking these photos of like-colored mini figures. It's a good excuse to dig through my big ol' box of "little rubber guys" to figure out which ones I want to include in the shots! You can check out all of the "by color" photos I've done on my Flickr page here. I'm thinking I'll do blue next.

Here's a list of all the toy lines represented in each of the above photos:

Yellow: Terekoma vending machine bootleg, Ultraman vending machine bootleg, Monster in My Pocket, Mini Boglins, Musclemania, OMFG, Zoids vending machine bootleg, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles action figure companion, Monstruos Mutantes, Diener Space Creatures, Kinnikuman bootleg, Space Ace, Martian Fink

Pink: Vending machine kaiju, vending machine MUSCLE bootleg, Mini Boglins, Diener Space Raiders, Monstruos Mutantes, ZOMBIE, fantasy playset skeleton warrior, OMFG, Galaxy Laser Team, Necros Fortress, Monster in My Pocket, Cosmix

Ornery oranges

There are a lot of moments in my life where I just stop what I'm doing and say to myself, "Damn, I'm a huge geek." One such moment came during the process of taking the above photo, during which I spent way too much time picking out, arranging and shooting a group of orange toys. I had so much fun taking a pic of a bunch of green mini figures together that I wanted to do the same for other colors, starting with orange. See? Huge geek. But if being a toy geek is wrong, I don't wanna be right. Now to figure out which color to do next...

Here are the toy lines featured in this photo: Dragons N Monsters, MUSCLE, Mini Boglins, vending machine knockoff of Marty Toy space creature, Diener Space Creatures, Garbage Pail Kids Cheap Toys, Necros Fortress, Freakies, party favor monster, Space Ace, mini vending machine kaiju, Monster in My Pocket

Space Ace

What: According to this thread on LittleRubberGuys.com, these come from something called the "Space Ace Robot Playset" sold as merchandise tied to the Space Ace video game by Don Bluth Studios (which also created the Dragon's Lair video game). None of them appears to be a robot so the name is a bit misleading, and I'm no expert on Space Ace, but it doesn't seem like these characters can actually be seen in the game (which makes me wonder if they were initially sold as something else or created for another purpose). The guy in orange and red also looks to be a Blackstar character, but he seems to go along with the others so I'm guessing he was offered in the Space Ace set as well. In any case, they're cool little guys with a lot of character. You can check out a picture of this playset carded (which shows some sculpts additional to the ones above) here.

When: Circa 1984

Where: Probably variety stores, toy stores

Who: N/A