Robot Claw – Page 52 – “Life In The So-Called Space Age”

Retro Wax Packs (Part 4)

September 10, 2024

I’ve got some more retro packs of trading cards to open! Once again these are all from the wax era (the packs are sealed with wax), which means they’re (almost) all over 40 years old. I’ve had these for about a year, so let’s see what’s inside…

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II (Topps, 1991)

These date from the last years of the wax pack era, and by now Topps has abandoned bubble gum. I’ve shown a few other series from this period before, and these cards are similar in design.

The cards all have nice shots from the film, surely of interest to young fans. As you can see the borders and basic design aren’t too different from the Star Wars series from over a decade earlier. Even in 1991 the cards were still printed on non-glossy cardstock, which I still prefer to this day.

The backs contain the usual story synopsis. To this day I’m not sure I’ve even seen this film. I probably should.

The pack includes a single sticker, which unfortunately is not die-cut. The back of the sticker is a puzzle piece, and with only one sticker per pack I imagine completing this puzzle was a costly task.

Overall it’s a decent product, although it’s from the post-80s era with the lesser quality stickers and too early for the flashy chase cards of the mid to late 90s. If you like TMNT, these would have been great.

Magnum (Donruss, 1983)

I watched this show when I was a kid (why?) and I loved trading cards even then. But I don’t remember ever knowing Magnum cards existed, and without any monsters or spaceships I probably wouldn’t have bought a pack even had I known!

The cards are great, and I’m not sure if it’s a coincidence or not but of the eight in my pack more than half featured the ruggedly handsome face of Tom “I was almost Indiana Jones” Selleck himself.

The pack included a stick of gum, which had weirdly puffed up during the 41 years. It had a disturbing smell (of mold?) as well, and had strongly adhered to the card. I discarded both 🙂

The majority of cardbacks are puzzle pieces with just a single card containing a pithy thought from Magnum himself. Did kids enjoy this?

There were no stickers, and while the cards were well printed I doubt they would have appealed to anyone outside of the small group of card-collecting Magnum fans. I’m guessing it didn’t sell well.

Alien (Topps, 1979)

This is a somewhat ‘famous’ card set and I’d been after a pack for years. It wasn’t inexpensive, at about $8, but it was fun to finally open a pack again…

The cards are beautiful! Obviously following the Star Wars design template, these show off the movie extremely well, and would have been a wonderful collection for fans back in 1979. Remember these were the days before VHS, and cards like these would have been one of the only ways for people to see images from the film outside of the cinema.

The gum was rancid and moldy but hadn’t stuck to or damaged any cards. No, I didn’t eat it!

Most of the backs contain tantalizing snippets of puzzle art that I don’t recognize. Did Topps commission art for the puzzles since the movie poster was too simple and since Giger art would have been inappropriate?

The remainder of cardbacks contain a story summary. I like the egg border!

Here’s my die-cast sticker! Certainly not the best from the set, but charming regardless. I wonder if this actor has a copy of one of these to this day?

And one single card has an advert on the back.

These are fantastic. I recall opening one or two packs of this as a child, although I only remember sticking (with glue) a single card into my scrapbook. I wish I still owned that scrapbook; what a blog post it would have made! I’d love to find a box of this for a decent price, and complete the set 🙂

Robo Chan Man

September 8, 2024

While I actively still buy and make model kits, I rarely blog them these days. This one is a bit different though, so let’s look at it:

It’s a Bandai kit from the early 1980s called ‘Robo Chan Man’. I believe this particular kit is based on a kids cartoon of the time, probably forgotten now.

I found this at an antique store in Pennsylvania. It wasn’t very expensive, and I was surprised it was intact and unmade after 40 years.

It’s a small and simple kit, but you can see it includes a screwdriver, screw and a pull-back motor.

The plastic is thicker and more brittle than what Bandai uses today, and it’s almost impossible to easily get rid of the cut lines when the pieces were removed from the runners. As you can see it’s also two-colour only, and while it is snap-together, it obviously needs painting to look ‘good’.

There’s the finished kit. It has very minimal articulation, and the girl (called ‘Patty’ apparently) is just a single solid figure.

With his legs up he can be pulled back and released, at which point he rolls around with surprising speed! I can’t show that here so I’ll illustrate with a photo of the manual:

It’s difficult to find information about this kit online, but it seems it was one of many including some based on larger properties like Gundam. Here’s a photo I found of five of them including the one I made:

I wonder how many of these kits still exist? Mine is made now, so there’s at least one less. It’s simple and unsophisticated but this was a fun look back at the early days of Bandai model kits 🙂

Let’s Forge Narsil!

September 7, 2024

There is a new type of craft toy where you make miniature items out of plastic and sometimes resin. Most of these are food based – and KLS has made a few – but recently one company brought out this Lord Of The Rings version. Inside the blind-packed plastic sphere is a kit to ‘forge’ a weapon from the Lord Of The Rings films.

That’s the contents, which include a few props and the tools and material to make the sword itself. You can see it comes with two hilts, which may be a hint the process isn’t trivial.

The blade is created by putting resin into a silicone mold. First you need to put a very fine opalescent powder in, and the process is a little slapdash. What’s the powder for? We don’t know, but our guess is to either help the blade not stick to the mold, or to give it a metallic texture since the resin is plastic?

The liquid resin comes in a tiny bottle and the kit includes this long nozzle to inject it into the mold.

This step was difficult since the mold is opaque and the resin is clear so it’s difficult to see how well it’s filling the mold, and whether air bubbles have been avoided. We did our best until it slightly overfilled.

Then you put a hilt on top and let it harden in light. The kit says 60 minutes is all that is needed but from experience – a near-failed model jelly kit – KLS decided to leave it for a day.

To be extra sure we put it under a UV lamp overnight!

The next day the blade slid out of the mold easily, but had an air bubble. Kristin did her best to fill it and we let it dry another day!

And after the second drying stage here it is! A tiny toothpick sized legendary blade with a missing tip 🙂

The blade bonded to the hilt well and took the detail of the mold nicely. It was a bit sticky so the final step was to rub it with some alcohol. While imperfect, I’d say overall it was a fair effort.

We attempted to make another one with the remaining material, but it was a fail and no photos were taken.

For an intro into resin molding I think these kits are pretty great, but they’re also messy and difficult and I can’t see the intended audience (children) having much success with them. It was fun for us though!