Mini Boglins (revisited)

I've been meaning to do another post on Mini Boglins for a while. It's one of the biggest lines of "little rubber guys" ever released, but it doesn't seem to get nearly as much attention as the likes of Monster in My Pocket and MUSCLE (possibly because they were only released in a few countries). These dudes are pretty collectible, though, with a wide range of sculpts and colors to track down.

Since my original, very brief posts (here and here) on Mini Boglins back in 2012, I've added quite a few more to my collection and finally got around to taking some photos of them. I'm not going after a full set, but I do like these figures a lot and think they look especially awesome when you put a bunch of them together into a brightly-colored horde o' Boglins!

Here's some key facts about the series:

• Mini Boglins were released from 1991-1994 by a company called Ideal. The Boglins characters already existed prior to their release, as Mattel introduced the larger, more well-known Boglins hand puppets in the late-1980s.
• They were only released in a few locations, including the U.K., Italy, and possibly Canada and/or France. Good thing I didn't know about these as a kid when they came out--it would have driven me nuts not being able to get them here in the U.S.!
  
• The figures are made of soft plastic with a rubbery feel kind of like Monster in My Pocket.
• They were released in many different colors, all monochromatic except for some "Scout" figures that are glow-in-the-dark with green or purple paint washes.
• They were sold in multiple ways, including single-packs, three-packs, five-packs and 20-packs.
• The figures were separated into tribes, with each tribe featuring characters designed around a specific theme. The original tribes from 1991 included The Clumsies, The Freaks, The Greedies, The Jokers, The Rude Dudes, and The Tough Guys. In 1992, The Army Guys and The Disgustings were added. Finally, 1994 saw the addition of The Medievals, The Samurai, and The Prehistorics. Also in 1994, a tribe of 8 slightly smaller Mini Boglins called The Cool Dudes was released as a set of premiums in Kellogg's Frosties cereal, in addition to four new "Slime" Mini Boglins that came packaged in slime-filled toilets. Check out scans above of a mini pamphlet showing details of some of the tribes.

Now, let's take a look at a selection of figures from some of the Mini Boglins tribes:

Beastly blues

Mini figure lines in this photo: Panzer World Galient, Villgust, Diener Space Creatures, Gorewad Monsters, MUSCLE/Kinnikuman bootleg, TMNT companion figure, Necros Fortress, Diener Mythology Creatures, vending machine bootleg kaiju, Musclemania, Mini Boglins, Monster in My Pocket, Freakies, Dragons N Monsters

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

Mini Boglins (part 2)

My previously sad group of Mini Boglins recently came into a bunch of friends. The new additions have already made themselves comfortable, lurking around the house being their typical repulsive and unruly selves. Hopefully the horde will grow even larger soon.

Mini Boglins

What: Small, hard rubber spinoffs of the popular larger Boglins hand puppets of the 1980s. There were dozens of different sculpts available in a variety of colors, split up into different "tribes" (such as The Freaks, The Greedies, The Jokers, etc.). MinifiguresXD has a very detailed post that includes the full history of the line.

When: 1991-1994

Where: Sold in the U.K. and Italy

Who: Produced by Ideal