1985 Matchbox Catalog and the Parasites
I mentioned the 1985 Matchbox Parasites series way back in 2011 (posted here) and today I thought it would be fun to share pages from the 1985 Matchbox catalog. The four pages featuring Parasites are great fun to look at, with the shown in their vehicle and robot modes.
I’ve got a few of these still packaged and really should share them with you guys, but for now enjoy these scans of the catalog pages and then check the Fruitless Pursuits post for more about the line.
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I have all the toys in the line, and have written some about them in the past. They were the invention of the same team from California R&D that also licensed Microman to Mego as the Micronauts and shared the same designer as the Micronauts-original aliens (“with brains that glow in the dark”) toys, the late Stephen Lee (who also did work on some other Matchbox products such as Roadblasters, the Kenner Aliens line, and Exo-Squad).
Through my conversations with Larry Jones, the owner of Cal R&D, I’ve also seen some of the prototypes for more more toys that would have been in the line had it continued (a set of semi trucks with trailers, with the cabs hosting a mini-parasite and the trailer hosting a big one) and also learned that Matchbox cut a lot of corners on the production, resulting in some the toys not being quite as solidly constructed as the others (I’ve noticed that of the six, three are snap-together construction and sometimes missing some intended articulation, while the other three use rivets and screws and seem more fully realized).
It was pretty silly/short-sighted for them to tie it in with Halley’s comet though…talk about built-in short-term obsolescence!
Personally I love these figures. They are very much in the same style and size range as the Micronauts alien toys (or their concept art) and fit in nicely on the shelf with 3 3/4″ figures, even if they are supposed to be Matchbox car scale. 😉
Some old photos here, I need to take new ones with the full set…
https://www.flickr.com/photos/microbry/sets/72157620980987333/