It's kind of shocking that even after all these years of X-E'ing, I still haven't covered all of my favorite childhood toys. Though the focus of tonight's entry didn't exactly set the world on fire during their short stay on toy shelves in the mid '80s, I've long adored their unbridled goofiness and oddball presentation. Meet the T.H.I.N.G.S.!
Produced by Milton Bradley from 1986-1987, T.H.I.N.G.S. ("Totally Hilarious Incredibly Neat Games of Skill") capitalized on its era's penchant for weird toys in a wacky series of timed, hands-on exercises composed of primary colored plastics and bold stickers. They looked more like "prop toys" than real toys -- the kind of stuff you'd see in a kid's bedroom during a movie, so as to avoid unwarranted product placement with playthings that were actually in stores. There was a simplistic, '60s tin toy vibe about these games, and I can only attribute their relative obscurity to a society too stupid to notice the godsends right under their noses at the tail end of TRU's board game aisle.
There were a number of T.H.I.N.G.S. games, all totally unrelated from each other, save for their size and an overall theme of being completely odd. For me, it was all about the presentation. The wonderfully compact boxes maintained a single size and shape throughout the collection, but they came in all different colors, with each game's package featuring beautiful illustrations and more photographs than the toys inside really deserved.
As a kid, my favorite of the bunch was the one pictured above: Eggzilla! As an adult, I realize that Eggzilla is one of the least inspired of all the T.H.I.N.G.S. games, and that my bias towards it only had to do with the fact that the included Godzilla-esque piece could be snatched away from its base and transformed into a veritable action figure with 100x the replay value.
Most (or maybe all?) of the T.H.I.N.G.S. were timed games where you had to complete an activity before a buzzer sounded, or alternatively, something exploded. This is one of the latter cases. The goal is to build Eggzilla's egg before time runs out, at which point he pops upward, breaks through the shell and maybe hits you in the forehead. It wasn't much fun then, and it isn't much fun now. I can totally see why I turned the Eggzilla figure into a comedic dragon pet for my random action figures and tossed the rest. If you'd like to see Eggzilla work his mojo, you can do so in this terribly grainy YouTube video I just made.
Don't leave yet...I have more T.H.I.N.G.S. to show you.
The beauty of the collection was in its overwhelming variety, and I think you'll get a sense of that when you see just how different this game was. Astro-Nots was fitted with an out-of-this-world science fiction theme, featuring spaceships, astronauts and horrible alien creatures of the H. R. Giger variety.
Looks pretty neat, doesn't it? Even more so when you realize that everything shown above is only about as big as my hand. Astro-Nots works much like those magnetic fishing games, where you cast a magnet-charged line into the spinning fishies' mouths and try to catch as many as possible before the world blows up. The main difference here is that you're catching astronauts instead of fish, and you're doing it with a spaceship instead of a plastic fishing pole. Thematically, I'd give the nod to Astro-Nots over its more famous cousin.
See the blue alien guy? After yanking him, he'll slowly eat his way up the string while the Astro-Nots spin with reckless abandon, praying for rescue. If you gather 'em all up and safely plant them into the holding deck before the alien crashes against the wall, you win! Granted, there's nothing stopping you from continuing to pluck up Astro-Nots after the creature hits the wall. With Milton Bradley's one-player T.H.I.N.G.S. games, the honor system was in full effect.
Also: Astro-Nots make for a slightly more exciting YouTube video than Eggzilla.
Other T.H.I.N.G.S. sets featured everything from medieval knights to mad doctors to giant gorillas, and though they lacked the certain collectable je ne sais quoi that was necessary to stay afloat in such a competitive market, I'm happy to have known and fondled them. I'm also happy to have used je ne sais quoi in a sentence today. I'm hardcore.
Posted by Matt on 01/26/2008. E-mail me!
Chestnuts roasted by 
Uh, I mean trayliners.