Since I'm not at work tomorrow--I'll be home most of the day, watching cheap horror films from the 1940s, drinking Red Dog and eating cheese--I've brought in toys most of the week.
Today, I finish with a flourish--a complete set of Mego Monsters. They were released in the mid-1970s, when I was a child enamored with horror films--I watched "Creature Features" on WGN every Saturday night (or Friday, if it was bumped up a day for some reason) and read Famous Monsters of Filmland with the fervor of a religious convert.
My toys reflected my passion. Sure, I had GI Joes, including the Talking GI Joe who was never quite the same after he was accidentally dropped in a bathtub full of water, and I had a respectable number of Mego superheroes. But my shelves were lined with Aurora Glow-in-the-Dark model kits, and my toybox, though full of many different action figures, always had the Monsters, eyes and hands green in the gloom of my tiny bedroom, on top.
I loved the Frankenstein Monster for his stern expression, even if he does look a bit like James Garner. (The Rockford Files was a hit for NBC at the time--maybe somebody at Mego was a fan?) The Mummy looked gaunt yet poewerful, and the lack of pupils in his eyes made him all the more intimidating. I never had Dracula as a kid--even then, I thought his facial expression was more goofy than scary, and his unitard, intended to give the impression of a regal count, instead made him look more like a ballet dancer.
My favorite, though, was the Wolfman. He didn't look like a guy with a facial hair problem--he looked like a wolf that had taken human form. His teeth shined, his eyes blazed away in the dark, and instead of hands, like the other Mego Monsters, the wolfman had claws instead of hands. He not only looked fully capable of dismembering anyone unlucky enough to run across him, but looked like he'd actually enjoy the subsequent bloodshed.
I'm fond of this figure for another, more personal reason: Since I gave away most of my childhood toys to a family with seven kids next door (Mom maintains to this day that I did this voluntarily; Mom is wrong), I lost my Mego Wolfman long ago. However, some years back, my best friend from childhood needed cash and wanted to sell off several of the toys he still had left over, including a couple of GI Joes in reasonable shape...and a Mego Wolfman. He was missing the shirt off his back (faux fur and all), so I had to track one down. (I found one in, of all places, Rockford, where I was wandering through a second-hand book/video shop that also had toys in a glass case. The shirt for the Wolfman was on a Planet of the Apes Zira figure, and the owner wouldn't sell me the shirt alone--had to buy Zira as well. Oh well. The Wolfman got his top on, even if Zira is nekkid to this day.)
So, technically speaking, this Wolfman really is a toy I played with as a child. That makes him extra special, although the Mummy has added significance as well--he was my first purchase on eBay. (There have been many since, but you never forget your first time, do you?)
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