Reading – Totally Tubular ’80s Toys
Here’s one for the toy collectors and eighties fanatics in the audience. Totally Tubular ’80s Toys*, just released last week, is a 256-page hardcover collection of great toy photos and fun information. Written by Mark Bellomo (see his other toy books at Amazon*), I snagged this book the instant I saw it because of both the subject matter and because I own (and have enjoyed) some of Mark’s other books.
Rather than completely overload this post with photos I’ve created a Flickr set for the book and stocked it with 29 photos of pages inside the book. If you’re at all a fan of the eighties toys that we sometimes look at here at battlegrip.com then you need this book. Trust me, guys, the level of fun inside is higher than I had hoped.
But, as always, there are a few problems.
Minor Mistakes and Poor Choices
One of the expectations I have of any book is that it be error free and a perfect resource for the subject. Unfortunately, a few minor errors make this a resource one I cannot completely rely on; an example is a photo of Voltron toys that is obviously wrong. The photo right here says that the lion combiner breaks into 15 vehicles and that’s wrong. Even a Voltron-ignorant geek like me knows that is wrong.
Another issue is that the book isn’t actually limited to eighties toys. A discussion of some 1990/1991 toys closes out the book and I find that annoying. Those are pages that could have been devoted to other eighties toys; a section of Masters of the Universe-inspired toys would have been a very welcome addition.
Neither of these issues keep me from recommending the book, though, because the photos and information inside is just so much fun.
What’s Inside?
Inside the book is divided by year, starting with 1980 and ending with 1989. Each chapter includes information on toys and games that were launched that year (though it’s a bit of a confusing organization since most lines — Transformers, Masters of the Universe, and G.I. Joe for example — appear in only one chapter while Star Wars appears in three different chapters).
Each toy line and/or game gets one to four pages in the book, and the photos range from loose toys on display to MOC shots. It’s a decent organization, and the table of contents helps, but I would have rather seen the major toy lines’ yearly releases presented by year instead of everything lumped into one chapter.
Closing Thoughts
Totally Tubular ’80s Toys* may not be perfect, but at $30 it’s a great buy for anyone who loves eighties toys (and even trivia, since each chapter includes info on top movies, television, and music for each year). The book was a fun read and has tons of great photos, and like all books about toys it makes me think that I should write a book about some corner of toy collecting.
Highly recommended, and a fantastic gift for any toy collector in your circle of friends.
I had the Fortress of Fangs playset. It’s badassery knew no bounds. It was every villains lair from the time I got it, until I stopped playing with toys.
Well, that’s a lie. That last part never really happened I guess.
I always like to respond to criticisms AND complaints about all my books; in my opinion–if you’ve purchased the tome, you’re ABSOLUTELY entitled to kvetch.
So then, I’ll address your VALID complaints:
AAAARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGHHHHH!!!! Ugh. Ugh. Ugh. Even AFTER I pointed out the mistake in the Voltron captions (Krause reversed the “15-vehicle dissembly” caption on Voltron III [the Lion Force Voltron] with the “5-lion dissembly” caption for “Voltron I”), my book editor missed it… egregious mistake. Sorry about that. VERY tragic. The caption should read: “the lion combiner separates into 5 component parts,” while “the vehicle team Voltron should separate into 15 component parts.”
Regarding your concerns that the book “isn’t actually limited to eighties toys. A discussion of some 1990/1991 toys closes out the book and I find that annoying.” Unfortunately, I wanted to look forward a bit at the early Toy Biz stuff…
A few smaller 80’s entries were cut at the 11th hour: Mego’s Official World’s Greatest Super-Heroes, Warrior Beasts (and other MOTU-derivative lines) in lieu of more mainline-popular toy lines.
As much as I would have loved to satisfy all collectors (and myself with a pic of Mikola, Arak, warlord, Machiste, etc.), it was not in the cards…
They’ll all be on my new website VERY, VERY soon.
Wink, wink.
Again, thanks for the kind review!
— Mark Bellomo
@Mark – Thanks for stopping by, Mark. My complaints were minor, and in the end I definitely stand behind my recommendation that eighties toy fans grab this book. It’s very fun, and you’re welcome. I’m always happy to point people at cool things and this book qualifies as cool.
Good luck with it. I hope it does well enough that you can put together a book on 90s (or even 70s) toys.