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The Crash Test Dummies Oh!

Sorry about the lack of updates lately -- I've got some stuff going on that's eating away at my net time, but hopefully that'll all be figured out soon. I'm vague out of necessity, believe me. Anyways, there's a new article up, finally bringing the infamous Crash Test Dummies to X-E. Vince and Larry began their quest to make everyone on the planet buckle the fuck up nearly two decades ago, eventually branching out into more important avenues like action figures and video games for the Sega Genesis. Tribute includes their history, their pictures, their new toys, and a completely understandable intro about the Sectaurs cartoon. Also, got some new Kinder Eggs. Guess what's inside...

Go on, guess. I'll tell you tonight. Here's two clues:

It's but a letter away from rank
Which is to say foul
It has many eyes on its backside
And I've never heard one howl

You've seen this character before
Battling with whiskerface
Shares a name with the Superman-obsessed
Eating dairy in a tiny spot

I mean, isn't it obvious? Give it a shot, I'll post the results tonight.

Posted by Matt on 06/02/2004. E-mail me!



Discussion Thread: 123 comments

WHAT WHAT WHAT?? i totally forgot about the crash dummy toys and commercials! nice article!

Also, matt mentioned TV spots in about safety, some with michael j fox and crack… but..

Does anybody remember a cartoon against smoking cigarettes? There were the ninja turtles, garfield, alvin and the chipmunks, and a whole other shitload of cartoon characters trying to teach the dangers of smoking?

i remembered watching it from a local library, I cant seem to find anything online about it though… anyone?

Chestnuts roasted by Freud Savage @ 06/03/2004 6:34 PM

Silly Savage, it’s called "Cartoon All-Stars To The Rescue," and I’ve written about it. Search for "all-stars" on the main page search box.

Chestnuts roasted by Matt @ 06/03/2004 6:56 PM

The Crash Dummies were cool. I remember them. They even had a TV special that ran on Saturday morning, completely done in 3d computer animation. Anyone remember it?

Chestnuts roasted by Bert Raccoon @ 06/03/2004 8:57 PM

Scroll up, Bert. Many do.

Chestnuts roasted by Matt @ 06/03/2004 9:04 PM

My brother had the CTD toys (a few), but due to the poor quality (as mentioned by many!), they were not favourites. The sectaurs, on the other hand… I remember many fun times with them, especially seeing if the ones with wings could fly well from his second floor bedroom windows into the yard (nope!). That was how the screen got a big hole in it – and caused the "no throwing toys out the window" rule to take effect. The wings were cool, though, especially the ones that were slightly irridescent. Neat.

Not sure about the timeframe, but seem to remember thinking that the sectaurs were sort of a rip off/spin off of the transformers.

Chestnuts roasted by RainbowBrite @ 06/03/2004 10:26 PM

Wow. This takes me back. I still have a rediculous amount of CTD stuff in my basement, the car, plane, a bike or two, and about a dozen random figures.

And yes, the VHS for the pilot came packed with some of the figures, similar to the new He-Man figures.

Now I’m inspired to go search Ebay again with an empty wallet. I must have Hubcat.

Another thing that wasn’t mentioned so far was that they had a short lived comic book series as well, based on the Junkman storyline.

Personally, I think that any effort to bring back old properties is great, but does anyone else think the new spots look like someone took 5 minutes in Flash to cobble them together?

Chestnuts roasted by Ian, Just Ian @ 06/03/2004 10:54 PM

I too recal vagule the "Incridable Crash Test Dummies" series, it was crude 3-D animation (back when all 3-D animation was pretty crude). I also recall the dummes in the catoon fought "Junkman" a insane prottype dummy who was seeking the "ultimate" indestuctable Dummy chest as the dummy’s main "mission" was to test things and make sure they survived it.

And lo-and-behold the Dummies are back, now called just the "Incredable Crash Dummies" they have a new action figure line with distructable veichels and all. Pluse on Saterday morning they start in skits shown on Foxbox, it 2-d animation and usualy involved the dummies testing some new crash device or some such with a humorous out come. Ie, Testing the dangers to parked cars the testing dummy complains "parked cars aren’t in any danger" and he finds out he’s parked inside a car crushed, or one dummy tricks the others into a cannon telling them it won’t fire, and seconds before he shoots them out one mentions it wouldn’t fire empty(thus the reason they got tricked inside). Vice and Larry aren’t the dummies nor are "Slick and Spin" instead thier are 4 dummies Crash, Crunch, Gyro and Splice. I’ve actualy fund the skits quite clever and well thier not trying to be anything but throw away gags.

Chestnuts roasted by James Cole @ 06/03/2004 11:19 PM

The best ever crash test dummies spot was the one where they rapped back in like 1987. They were old skool b-boyz from the hood, yo.

Chestnuts roasted by phunqsauce @ 06/04/2004 3:07 AM

man i just crammed a 2 headed king dong up my tailpipe…mmm hmmm it is smooth sailing the rest of the night!

about time we got an update around here

Chestnuts roasted by Romeo Jones @ 06/04/2004 5:33 AM

I had a ton of Attack Pack toys back in the day, and I’ve actually been trying to remember the name of the line for weeks. Thanks guys! Maybe you can help me out some more. I had a few more of the car-based toys of the time, including the battery-operated, partially-morphable Carzillas. But there were these things….they looked like hideous monsters from the deepest pits of hell, but they rolled along on wheels with legs attatched to the wheels so they looked like they were really crawling around. Any ideas?

Chestnuts roasted by Darc_Humor @ 06/04/2004 12:33 PM

But yeah, the Crash Dummies rocked. I remember my family was on vacation once, and we stopped at a Citgo, and my brother and I recieved CTD Adventure Packs, each consisting of an activity book filled with awful puns, and an exclusive Citgo-uniform CTD figure! Sweet! Oh yeah, and Sectaurs rocked. As a kid, I had the bee-puppet with rider, and the green-and-black dude who was apparently the head guard at Spidrax’s stronghold. And a firefly and fruit fly, with flappy wings, that clipped onto their backs.

Chestnuts roasted by Darc_humor @ 06/04/2004 12:39 PM

Hey MUPPET BABY thank god I’m not alone. Word to the wise…don’t try and relate it to any of the newer generation because they replaced that psa with a really lame computer anitmation version of it! they’ll just laugh and call you a wuss. Trust me, I know from experience.

Chestnuts roasted by Bitsy&Roary @ 06/04/2004 12:41 PM

I still have my favorite Sectaur, the evil guardsman, his antennae long since reduced to a triangular stump, his rifle and bandolier undoubtably not originally his, his arms replaced with some other Sectaur’s purpley mitts, which I colored black because the purple looked ridiculous on his still-lustruos dark green body. It sucked, too…I was trying to wash the guy out after a tough battle in the sandbox, and one of his arms popped off as they often do, only it went down the drain! Gah! I had to cannibalize my next Sectaur find years later to repair him. Dammit. I actually still have his remaining original arm in a drawer somewhere.

Chestnuts roasted by Darc_humor @ 06/04/2004 12:47 PM

I think I’ll shut up now. People are probably getting sick of my rambling, and I should get back to what I was doing. Betcha can’t guess what that is! Go on, guess. but first, answer my question! What were the crawling, wheeled beasts of my youth? Mine was bronze-colored with a really big mouth and hideous little shriveled limbs, if that helps. It died years later, grinning its creepy grin even as I lit the Flasher Button within its cavernous jaws.

Chestnuts roasted by Darc_humor @ 06/04/2004 12:58 PM

Those fuckers used to be at the State Fair waving and posing next to a wrecked car! …those fuckers…

Chestnuts roasted by MalevolentMogwai @ 06/04/2004 3:58 PM

If anyone is interested in the action figures, let me know. I have a whole box of six different ones (from the first series, NOT the later "Junkyard Wars" ones) that are in sealed baggies. I’m located close to the old Tyco factory in Mt. Laurel, NJ. In fact, Mattel bought out Tyco, so they’ve always had the rights to do the figures. Anyway, drop me a line through my webpage.

Chestnuts roasted by Darth Monkey @ 06/04/2004 6:50 PM

what no commertial download? Come on Matt,pleeeeease. I dont wanna sleep no more,I want Larry and Vince to haunt me again.

Chestnuts roasted by Dolph Lundgren @ 06/04/2004 7:57 PM

I was rather sure Kamala had become a pig farmer, actually…

Chestnuts roasted by Creature SH @ 06/04/2004 10:28 PM

I’m a huge Crash Dummy nut. The only new stuff I can mention is…

-The old line had plush dolls of Slick, Spin, Hubcat, and the dog (I could never find his toy as a kid, so I dont know his name) with velco limbs. They were the best because you could totally perform Mortal Kombat fatalities on them.
-The new Crash Dummy figures’ actions:
Crash (blue, red (variant))- Classic falling apart, but entirely plastic (the old figures had cheap plastic nubs held in place with sharp metal wire. They broke very easily).
Splice (red, orange (variant)) - Splits in half (You can make two different dummies by combining the halves between the two color variations. Even though Splice is obviously supposed to be ‘the crazy dummy’, he’s the mechanic in the cartoon shorts.)
Crunch (yellow)- Head retracts into neck (though if you try to do it the way they do it on the commercial, you’ll break the damn thing. Despite blatantly being ‘the cowardly mechanic dummy’, he’s a happy-go-lucky masochist in the animated shorts.)
Gyro (gray)- head and legs spin (He does it really fast, so it totally sucks. His prankster-asshole personality on the animated shorts really fits).
Nameless dummies included with vehicles Head pops up.
-The new toys are actually quite inexpensive given other toy prices today:
(in US dollars)
Single figures/pets: $5
Small vehicles: $10
Large vehicles: $20 (I’ve seen them as low as $14 though…)
-The new dog figure (SpeedBump) is the only pet figure who can lift his back leg up seperatly from his front (so he can pee on stuff)

Chestnuts roasted by RewolfJ @ 06/04/2004 10:33 PM

Oh. My. God. When the hell was the last time I saw these. I had like the entire frikkin collection of these. My favorite was the baby who would fly out of the carriage when it hit into the wall, and it also turned into a carseat that fit in the cars if ya wanted to launch a little baby through a windshield. Like me. Sweet, sweet memories…

Chestnuts roasted by MasterGracey @ 06/04/2004 10:40 PM

Okay, Im still waiting for the end to the Chia Plot…I’ve yet to give up hope…

Chestnuts roasted by Tree @ 06/05/2004 5:27 AM

There used to be a time where I couldn’t watch cartoons on a Fox afiliate without seeing the Dummies.
Hey, maybe they’re writing "Car Mechanics for Dummies" or something!
My sense of humor sucks.

Chestnuts roasted by AngeFaitore @ 06/05/2004 7:21 AM

Everything that can be said about the Crash Dummies already has, so let me add…there was a Sectaurs cartoon? I remember comic, toys (didn’t collect either), and the Bijou-style serial commercials using the toys, but not a cartoon.

"I Love the 80′s" raped my childhood! How can you call He-Man gay when it was obvious to everyone that there was tension between him and Teela. Haven’t fans said that for years? Alf is "ribbed for your pleasure"? Man, I hate that Hal Sparks guy. First he ruined Talk Soup, then this! And I still want to find the dope who said Transformers should have been called Transexuals and smack him upside the head with that badly transformed Ultra Magnus!

Sorry, I’ve been wanting to vent that for a while. "Strikes Back" and "…the 70′s" were better, but they actually found people who were kids at the time, and showed less Hal Sparks! (Who for the record ranks only slightly above Carrot Top.)

Chestnuts roasted by ShadowWing the Technorganic Autobot @ 06/05/2004 9:26 AM

yea i loved those things used to play with them all the time.Though the old ones are much better whats fun abou a head poppoing out?Legs and arms flying everywhere now thats real fun:D

Chestnuts roasted by Mr.Fun @ 06/05/2004 4:51 PM

I have the video somewhere around here. Although in my later days with using VHS, I had a bad habit of taping over everything. I really regret ever doing that now because I used to have some great shit.

Chestnuts roasted by Tim-E @ 06/05/2004 5:00 PM

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 2nd, 2004 at 6:39 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.