Taking It Back... Way Back Vol #3 by Joe Esq

Hiya kids! Your boy JoeyEsq is here with Volume 3 of “Takin It Back… Way Back”, the article where I highlight for you some of the forgotten toy lines of that most magical of decades, the 1980’s! Unlike the previous two articles (which you can check out here and here) today’s has a theme – He-Man knockoffs. Now with the exception of maybe Star Wars, He-Man was probably the most important and influential toy line of the 80’s, and I’m not only saying that because both properties were copiously ripped off by less creative minds in the toy industry.

Back in the 60’s and 70’s the FCC had all kinds of rules in place about the amount of advertising that could be run during children’s programming. Why this was any of the government’s business in the first place I’ll never understand, but the bottom line was you couldn’t use kid’s programming to try to sell stuff to kids. ABC and Mattel found this out the hard way in 1968 when the FCC decided that the Saturday morning cartoon Hot Wheels was just an extended commercial for the toy cars (never mind that the show was about a racing team and specific cars were never actually featured).

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Takin' It Back... Way Back!!! With Joey Esq

Hey kids, its time for another installment of Takin’ it Back... Way, Back with your Deity of all things 80’s, JoeyESQ (that’s me). Which means its time once again to talk about more of the forgotten toy lines of that particular decade. As I discussed last time , I’ve always felt that the 80’s were the “golden age” of boys toys, especially compared today when everything on the Toys R Us shelves is unoriginal, derivative, uninspired and boring. Speaking of which, remember when TRU was set up like a real store, and not some OCD obstacle course? I miss aisle 7C. Anyway, let’s get started...

THE SAGA OF CRYSTAR: Released by Remco in late 1982, Crystar, along with Mantech (which I discussed in the last article) were among the first action figures I can remember owning. I have semi-vivid half memories of Christmas 1982 and being almost 4 years old and getting a bunch of Crystar stuff that year. The entire line consisted of only 7 figures, a few vehicles and a playset. Looking at pictures on the ‘net the only ones I didn’t have were the Crystal Dragon, the Castle and the two Shatterpults (which is a cool fuckin name for a vehicle, I must say). I still have the Lava Dragon in fact, as it ended up in my He-Man box long after the Crystar toys were lost or thrown away. Now that I think about it, that might be the toy I’ve owned longer than any other.

Unfortunately, just like Mantech, Crystar didn’t have a cartoon or movie to support it, and just like Mantech it was crushed by the absolute dominance of Star Wars and He-Man, and there was never a second wave of figures beyond the initial release. Marvel Comics did release a 12 issue mini-series, and from what I read about it, the storyline did seem pretty original. I couldn’t even find anything Crystar related on Youtube (I KNOW there was a commercial because I can still hear it in my head), which definitely speaks to how obscure Crystar really is, because lets face it, EVERYTHING is on Youtube.

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