Friday 21 December 2012

SUPER POWERS! GALAXY WARRIORS! MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE! IMPERIAL BEASTS? THE VERY FIRST HOARD WORLD PHOTO!

From left to right: Hawkman and Green Lantern leaning on Panthor. The Flash and Wonder Woman leaning on a two-headed (Imperial?) dinosaur being ridden by Galaxy Warrior Dragoon. Aquaman and Batman leaning on another two-headed (Imperial?) dinosaur being ridden by Superman.  

On the blah-blah day of Hoardsmas* my pal Hoardax showed to me:

A scanned-in photo of the distant past!

Welcome BACK to the Virtual Toy Chest Of Hoardsmas Past.

For Those Who Came In Late...........

.............we have done this particular sort of blog post two times already now. You can see them here and here if you haven't already.

And now for the final time (we sadly have no more 80s Christmas Photos after this!) we present to you a Hoardsmas: 1980s Fable - featuring the very first photo-documented mash-up of toy lines on Hoard World and a child-like Hoardax's actual Christmas Past!


I need only look back at a photo like this to realise that I was always going to end up the way I am today.



It almost seems folly to have tried to ignore it as long as I have.

While this is a photo that was taken at Christmas, none of the toys in that photo were Christmas presents. None of them.

You see, while Hoardax Snr. had his camera out for Christmas day, why wouldn't Hoardax Jnr. take this great opportunity to get some pics of some of the toys he loved?

And I look damn happy about it.

That's probably because I remember having to fight to get pics like that taken.

And that's because even though my father had no qualms about hoarding plastic of any kind, spare parts and every piece of wood he ever came across, he didn't really relate to my childhood hoarding of Awesome Stuff That Actually Mattered. 

I realise this is subjective but find me a child anywhere in the world that is going to understand the benefit of timber offcuts over Batman?

Batman.

A Bunch Of Wood.

Mind you, with the imagination of a child, old bits of wood like those used to come in handy when you needed tables for a He-man Tavern, makeshift walls for vehicles to crash through and all sorts of other stuff. I found saw dust particularly useful to create aerial explosions. Am I the only one who played with saw dust as a kid? Let's  move on.

It's funny now to look back on my family. Each one of them hoarded in their own way.

My grandpa hoarded western & sci-fi novels, various fabrics (he was an upholsterer by trade) and had a working garage full of the biggest collection of tools and nick knacks you'd ever seen.

Even better, while working on lounge suites he would find things down the sides of them that he would re-gift to me, further fueling my own hoarding nature. I remember getting a cool Superman pendant once.

He also hoarded animals. In his lifetime he had multiple German Shepherds, Chihuahuas, cats and birds. There's black and white photos of one of my uncles as a baby in a pram surrounded by dogs.

My grandma hoarded fake plastic flowers (there's some behind me in the photo), china/glass ornaments and weird K-mart paintings. She hoarded much more than that but she'd go in phases. I remember a period where she was obsessed with hermit crabs, for instance, so then we had a bunch of hermit crabs until they all died.

My uncle collected rifles and 80s action movie VHS tapes. Hey, give him a break! He was surrounded by large dogs as a baby!

I think my mother was the only person who didn't hoard.

We all lived in the same house. Maybe she hoarded Hoarders.

Comic book advertisement for what many agree is one of the greatest action figure toy lines of all time.

So, it's Christmas morning some time in the 80s. We have a young Hoardax who is super excited that his dad is going to take photos of his toys. 

And what does he grab?

He grabs all of the first wave of Super Powers heroes except Robin and leans them up against a Masters Of The Universe Panthor and a couple of Imperial Toys Beasts (probably). And he throws in Dragoon from the MOTU Knock-off line Galaxy Warriors for good measure.

Me thinks if Hoardax had a camera way back when, he would have spent the time that he wasn't playing with his toys, attempting photos like this piece of high art................

This photo recently turned up at the excellent 80s Toy Collectors Facey B page. A big thanks to them and also obviously a big thanks to the unknown genius at Toys, Hobbies and Crafts magazine who crafted this photo cover back in 1983.

To be honest, I'm not sure that TODAY I could recreate a photo that would be as good as this one from Toys, Hobbies and Crafts magazine - I don't have half of them. And I don't own a smoke machine.

Searching through the photographic archives of my past, the three pictures that I have been blogging about (Power Lords, Grayskull, Super Powers & Friends) are the only ones that I found where it was obviously Christmas Day and I was pictured with toys.

When I look at these photos I feel like I would give anything to jump back inside them and live in that moment again, just for a bit.

That's nostalgia for ya! Stupid nostalgia!

This sadly brings us to the end of this saga. If I had known in the 80s that more than 25 years later it would have been cool to have more photos of me and my toys on Christmas, maybe I would've played hard ball with Hoardax Snr.

Maybe I could have more strongly debated the argument of taking photos of inanimate mass produced plastic versus real living people on Christmas day?

I remember it being extremely difficult convincing anyone to take photos of toys without any humans posing in them!! 

I made do with what I could.

As it happens, I do have more photos of me and my toys as a kid. 

It's just not Christmas in any of them.

I seemed to have had developed a rare talent for sneaking into photos being taken of my baby brother with whatever action figure, comic or colouring book I happened to have on hand at the time.  

Don't worry, they'll all turn up at some point in Hoard World's future.

But with the photo you have seen today, so began a tradition.

A tradition that wouldn't entirely take hold again until my 30s.

This Christmas photo is the template for sharing a moment in time where I wanted to show others the things that I loved. And by the look on my face, it made me ridiculously happy to do so.

That's what Hoard World is about.

And that's why this is the first Hoard World photo.

It's about a kid taking pleasure from sharing a love of something with others.

Even if that kid is now all growns up.

Seasons Greetings everybody.

yr pal,

Hoardax.

Your pal Hoardax and Battle Bones. Doing what they love.
Also Nanna The Hermit Crab Hoarder.

Can you identify the plastic dinosaurs in the first photo? Or any of theseAre they Imperial?
Did Battle Bones really love being a transport carrier for both heroic and evil warriors?
Did Eternia invent car pooling? 

*We have no idea which day of Christmas it is any more. There's been something very wrong with our counting method from day one.


3 comments:

  1. Awesome first post. Just found this accidently by looking for Super Powers! congrads.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Hobgoblin! That's not only the best way to find new things, but also the one of the best things you could ever be looking up!

      Thanks for reading.

      yr pal,

      Hoardax.

      Delete
  2. Hey add me to your blogroll list. I´ll do the same!

    ReplyDelete