Battletech Toys . . . Again

I went in search of the old Tyco Battletech (Amazon.com search*) toys again and found out something a little frustrating about the internet: when you run a toy site and write about toys there’s a chance that Google will start pointing you at your own posts when you search for information. I wrote about the 1994 Tyco Battletech toys back in 2009 (post here), and it looks like since I first wrote that no new information has made its way online.

The Battletech Toy Archive

The Battletech Toy Archive, according to the front page of the archive, was last updated about a year ago and remains the best place I’ve found online for information about the Battletech toys. Fortunately, it looks like the ads, catalog, and toy pages are still there — as well as the images — so that archive hasn’t been lost, but it’s always a sad day when a website dies and takes down some of the only info on the web about a toy line. Fingers crossed there that this stays up and working!

The Toys Seem Easier to Find

I notice today that the Tyco Battletech toys seem to be a little easier to find today than they were when I last really started looking into the series. eBay seems to have a good number of toys available and even Amazon lists Battletech toys* for sale; not many of them, but there are some up there and ready to buy. But they’re kinda pricey, which shouldn’t surprise me all that much for a line that turns two decades old next year.

I Love Catalogs

It was only a few days ago in my Gabriel Lone Rangers toys post (posted here) that I mentioned how much I miss printed catalogs and the Tyco Battletech toys catalog at the Battletech Toy Archive just reinforces that statement. The images hosted at the site are smaller than I would like — if I ever get my hands on this catalog I’ll have to post larger scans to the web — but they’re big enough for us to read the text and see the photos.

Browsing through the catalog I worry that I’ll never get lucky and stumble across several of these toys in the wild. I mentioned in my 2009 Battletech toys post that I’m such a Battletech geek that my essay in Hobby Games: The 100 Best* was about the Battletech game; I’ve even re-read some of the old novels over the last few years and wrote about the BattleTech: 25 Years of Art and Fiction* book back in 2011 (reading post here). Owning a collection of these Tyco Battletech toys would be fun and they’d make an awesome addition to my office at Steve Jackson Games. (The only thing that would be even cooler would be Car Wars toys, but there was never a Car Wars toy line for me to drool over.)

Repaints

One of the coolest details to me is that the line at least did well enough that Tyco released a second wave of repaints, taking the mechs and vehicles (and even the action figures) from the first wave of toys and releasing them in new colors. The Toad, shown at right, is just one example of the repaints and is actually one of the weaker examples; see the Battletech Toy Archive and look at the Mauler V2 for what may be my favorite of the repaints.

A Lucky Find

I did happen to run across good deals on both the Hunchback and Infiltrator and should see those at home in the next few weeks. I’ll have to bust them open and review them when they arrive, because it’s always fun to write reviews of older toys that many of us have probably forgotten. And it’s even more fun to rip open an older MIB toy and see just what’s hiding inside all of that packaging.

So expect more Battletech soonish, but for now don’t miss the Battletech Toy Archive and Virtual Toy Chest if you want to start looking through the old Battletech toys today.