High Quality Mego Commercial Reels discovered!

[Wee67]

I think the song should have an extended version. There are so many more words that rhyme with Chips!

[palitoy]

I think the song should have an extended version. There are so many more words that rhyme with Chips!

I'll be over around 6 with my keyboard and a six pack of Iron City.

[palitoy]

[Earth 2 Chris]

Just watched the CHiPs ad. Wow. No doubt from the same folks who brought us the 12" Spidey and Hulk commercial. But that one is catchy. This one...WOW.

That Undersea Adventure looks a lot like the sets Matchbox has been making for the past decade or so.

Chris

[Wee67]

I'm assuming this was produced if it has a commercial. Anyone ever see one in person?

[El Hombre Nuclear]

Oh wow, I was desperately hoping this commercial would show up in this set. It looks so much better than the version you posted previously. I really can't thank you enough for sharing it. This one really hits home for me...

The Marx Undersea Adventure playset is, without a doubt, my all-time favorite childhood toy. I got it as a gift in 1979, during the very brief window that it seems to have been available. I remember that the main items I was screaming for at the time were the newly released Micronauts Mega City and Schaper Playmobil pirate ship (both of which I ended up getting that Christmas), but this unsuspecting, low-key playset came to dominate my playtime that year. I like to describe it as a sort of Matchbox M.A.C. meets FP Adventure People hybrid, but with that certain Marx playset flair (they had plans from around '76 to do some of these larger sets with action figures, but this is all that seems to have come of it).

I integrated ALL of my other toys into it. Micronauts, Adventure People and Metal Men were all locked in that orange shark cage (I can still remember the door bulging out when I tried to shove too much into it at once), while the big guys like Adventure Team GI Joe and Steve Austin would end up fighting the giant shark (small fries like M.A.C. and Playmobil were busy contending with those weird yellow-green rubber crustaceans). I played it to death until it basically fell apart sometime in '80, but I remember I still had the tattered old box it came in until sometime in the early '90s, when it was destroyed (along with many other childhood artifacts) in a basement boiler blowout.

Anyway, as you might guess, I've always harbored a deep obsession for this toy, but as the years rolled on and I started getting more into toy history, I was surprised by how rare and obscure it seemed to be. I knew that none of my other friends had it at the time, but later on it became apparent that even in the modern internet collector scene, it was barely known, and rarely ever seen. Much of this is ultimately not too hard to understand. Marx was just about to go under, and it received limited distribution and almost no advertising, and was available for a brief time only in '79, seemingly only in the US. The Mego connection that I learned about later was harder to figure, as I (and I would guess everyone else) have never seen one with a Mego logo (or even just a sticker) on the box, and you'd guess that if Mego actually did produce a second run that it wouldn't be so scarce to begin with. Some of this may have been cleared up recently, as a friend of mine (who knew of my crazed obsession with this thing in particular) asked Joe Ruzzi about it when she saw him selling stuff on eBay, and he seemed to indicate that, unlike a few of the other Marx assets that Mego acquired, they most likely never ended up producing it, and the commercial we see here was probably never aired. Perhaps Mr. Heiler will know more, but it all seems to add up in context.

Which reminds me... I was finally able to come up with the 1979 Marx dealer catalog that features a nice spread for this set, as well as the only two catalog ads for it that I've ever seen. I also have a really cool picture of me receiving it in '79 (wearing a crazy pajamas/cowboy outfit combo that makes it look more like something from Marx's heyday in the '50s/'60s) that I scanned in. I was actually considering posting these scans here for posterity's sake (for the few other '70s kids who might occasionally search for info on this thing), but I was wondering if you might like me to email them to you privately for a possible Plaid Stallions post? I figure it would get a lot more exposure that way, which I'd really like to see. This toy is like the the crystallized essence of my idyllic childhood, but it seems almost lost in time...

P.S. Big ups for the high quality CHiPs commercial, too! Another childhood obsession of mine. "You can pretend that Jon is serious..." may be the single greatest line of advertising ever written.

[palitoy]

Webs! Webs! Webs!

PS Webs!

[cjefferys]

Webs!

This is the best 12" Mego Spidey and the only one I don't have, I really need to get one.

[nvmbrsdoom5]

I still can't get over the amazing quality of these commercials, it's awesome seeing/hearing them so clearly again after all these years.

That CHiPS song is going to be stuck in my head for a while now, unfortunately

[palitoy]

[Nostalgiabuff]

that one is cool. love seeing the prototype versions of the line. the draconian guard would have been so much cooler looking with that paint job

[Earth 2 Chris]

I like how they call the spaceships "planes". Another great, crisp, clear find!

Chris

[MIB41]

What a great picture. You know the Buck Rogers line was the one 3 3/4 inch line I actually grew fond of. This also reminds of Craig's AMAZING ReMego versions which he absolutely KILLED. Incredible figures and ones I prize highly in my collection.

[EmergencyIan]

These really are great to see in such high quality. I wasn't aware of the commercial for the web spinning Spider-Man. Neat figure and commercial.

- Ian

[Wee67]

I wonder how Mego distributed their ad purchases among the television markets. I remember from the early sales reel that Mego bought network ads (covering the entire nation) but alos bought spot ads in a bunch of the top markets. I assume that for more limited production items or as money grew tighter towards the end, Mego would've first ditched the national ads and hit maybe the top 20-25 markets. That would explain why many of us did not see some of these ads. Mego simply wasn't buying spots in some of our markets.