#983 MIGHTY MAX – CONQUERS THE PALACE OF POISON and TERMINATES WOLFSHIP 7 (1992)

These are two Doomstones I bought some years ago at a very low price. I do not collect this toyline, but I thought they were nice. Although they are copyrighted in 1992, they were for sale in Spain in 1993, and so they appear in Toys R’ Us Catalogue from Christmas 1993/94. They were priced at 1.495 pesetas, which is quite accurately 9 Euro, rather expensive considering its size, but not its quality.

The first of the two sets “Mighty Max Conquers the Palace of Poison” is my personal favorite as it involves an Egyptian pyramid, a mummy, and a giant scorpion, together with snakes, skeletons, tombs and treasures. Unlike many other playsets, this one opens in two halves, but has the head of the snake as some kind of tower, and both sides connect by means of a plastic cord.

The base has a small practicable tomb and lots of snakes and skeletons all over the floor, the tower part shows some stairs until up the mouth of the snake where a treasure is hidden. The other side has three floors: a basement dungeon, a first floor with the tomb of the pharaoh (the mummy is hidden inside) and the upper floor with god Anubis in his Throne.

The mummy is nice looking but the scorpion is much more attractive, as it is several times the size of Mighty Max.

The second set “Mighty Max Terminates Wolfship 7” is in principle very attractive as it involves a spaceship, robots and even a smaller spaceship, but personally I find the desing a bit repetitive and boring.

Note that the base represents the interior of a spaceship. It has two platforms that are the ears of the wolf when closed and can be expanded or closed. The central part with those two orange balls could be some kind of power generator, but I don’t know it for sure since I haven’t seen the cartoons. Another practicable part is the cannon that can aim to both sides.

The vertical part shows three floors, but they are all very similar On the upper one there is a throne.

The tip of the base, representing the fangs of the wolf can be detached and used as a personal spaceship. The robots are cool, but again, they only differ on the position of the arms, so I guess they could have done better here.

When closed, both playsets look great, either as a nested snake of a wolf-spaceship (especially with the ears out).

FACTS AND FIGURES:

• Name: MIGHTY MAX CONQUERS THE PALACE OF POISON and TERMINATES WOLFSHIP 7 (Doomstones)
• Toy Line: Mighty Max (wave 1)
• Year: 1992
• Company: Bluebird Toys (Great Britain)
• Size of the Playset: Around 10 cm long
• Size of the figure (Mighty Max): 1 cm

#894 MIGHTY MAX - SHRUNKEN HEADS aka MICRO HEADS (1993)

Some of the smallest Mighty Max sets were the Micro Heads. They are really small, and have space for exactly one Mighty Max figure, although in some cases it is kind of tricky to fit the figure inside the case.

Each head of these micro sets represents one of the well-known monsters or some recognizable horror icon: Dracula, the Mummy, Frankenstein, a skull, a zombie... what makes them very attractive to all horror fans. Each head opens revealing a very small scenery including the moster (casted) in it. The Mighty Max figure that fits each set mostly has some accesory in its hands that fits the theme of the adventure: a stake in the Vampyre set, a spray can in Insect, pliers for Lobotix…

Another interesting feature is that the figure fits almost milimetrically in the case, it took me quite a while to fit all figures in their correct positions, it might be quite challenging. I haven’t found out how to fit the figure in the last set (Insect), if anyone knows…

Here are the eight sets’ interiors. Note also the nice combination of colours in each set and altogether. There is a great production design behind this toyline.

VENOM

LOBOTIX

 MELTY

MUMMY

RAT

VAMPYRE

ROCK MONSTER

INSECT

FACTS and FIGURES:

• Name: Venom, Lobotix, Melty, Mummy, Rat, Vampyre, Rock Monster Insect  (Shrunken Heads or Micro Heads)
• Toy Line: Mighty Max (wave 2)
• Year: 1993
• Company: Bluebird (Great Britain)
• Size of the playset: Around 3,5 cm long
• Size of the figures (Mighty Max): 1 cm

#339 MIGHTY MAX – DREAD HEAD/ HAIRY HEAD KARBON (1994)

 

DREAD HEADS a.k.a. HAIRY HEADS

Since my previous entry (#218) dealing with Mighty Max is so successful, I’ll present a second toy I own from this collection.

This type of playset is the smallest available within the whole Mighty Max toyline. They are basically a head with practicable jaws (they keep shut by means of a spring). Inside the mouth, there is place for a Mighty Max figure (it can be more or less fixed if placed correctly on the footprints), but nothing else: no enemies, no accessories, nothing.

Two more features of this head are the colourful hair (which was a trend those years, mostly because of those troll dolls), and a hook on the back side, that allowed the playset to be attached to any trousers, making it portable in a very comfortable way.

There were 8 of them made. In Europe they were available as individual sets: the smallest and cheapest in the whole range. In America they were offered as a gift with larger playsets. These playsets were:

• Hemlock
• Karbon
• Anthrax 9
• Razorback (a.k.a. Razor)
• Garrotid
• Skull Crusher (a.k.a. Crusher)
• Eruptus (a.k.a. Ruptus)
• Berserker (a.k.a. Serker)

As a personal note, I would say these playset have a very bad playability. There’s no enemies, and when combined with Doom Zones or larger playsets, then, you’ll find yourself with two Mighty Max figures. The concepts with the hook and the hair are nice, but it could have also applied to the Horror Heads.

In this website you can see some original artwork of the Dread Heads, and how do they attach to trousers.

FACTS and FIGURES:

• Name: Karbon (Dread Head or Hairy Head)
• Toy Line: Mighty Max (wave 3)
• Year: 1994
• Company: Bluebird (Great Britain)
• Size of the playset: Around 3,5 cm long
• Size of the figures (Mighty Max): 1 cm

#218 MIGHTY MAX – BLOWS UP DINO LAB (1993)

A new line comes to TFTP. I recently found a Mighty Max complete playset, and I bought it. I had also seen other playsets, but I was not sure if they were complete, so this is the first and only playset I own.

Buying this toy has given me the chance to learn more about this great toyline. I knew it in the toy shelves by the mid-90s, but at that time, I had not much interest in toys anymore. Now as a “toy reviewer”, I regard them in a different way: they’re amazing toys! I’m glad I have bought this one.

Figures included in "Blows Up Dino Lab" playset

The name of the playset/adventure is “Mighty Max blows the Dino Lab”, and comes with Mighty Max, the Dr. Zygote and two dinosaurs: a velociraptor and a pterodactyl. These toys are playsets in form of a shell that, when closed, have very cool forms, always related to what’s on the interior. This one is a Triceratops, where two horns are actually parts of the pterodactyl and the raptor. When opened, it reveals two parts: One of them is placed horizontally, and the second is intended to be placed vertical.

Most sets are based on the TV cartoons, in which Mighty Max is transportated to some magical or ancient place where he has to fight against monsters and fierce animals. I have never seen the show, but it was intended to promote the toys. This playset is based on episode “Zigote’s Rhythm”.

Dr. Zygote in the laboratory

Mighty Max on the cannon

Dinosaurs scape!

  

There were three waves of toys ever made, although in all of them the products were very similar. The “Doom Zones” (also “Doomstones”) were the most common toys, together with the “Horror Heads”, “Hairy Heads” and “Monster Heads”, which were smaller in size and included only 2 figures (intead of 4). There seems to be even smaller sets than the “Horror Heads”, with only one figure included, but these seem to be extremely rare to find. These are called “Shrunken Heads”. There are also promotional playsets from McDonalds, and other that could be attached to the wrist, as a watch.

Apart from these, there were bigger playsets, for example, 6 “Battle Warriors” (See “Magus” in the catalogue picture) or 5 large playsets (among them “Dragon Island”).

Bluebird logo and copyright at the bottom of the plastic "shell"

The toys were created by Bluebird Toys (the same company that did Polly Pocket) and were distributed by Mattel in Italy and by Ideal in France and Spain. Here are a couple of pictures from catalogues that show the prices that those toys had in 1994. In one of the catalogues is even this exact playset depicted, and it had a price of 1595 pesetas, that’s 9,60 Eur.

Christmas catalogue 1994. Showing a similar toy with Ninja Turtles instead of Mighty Max.

Toys 'r' Us Christmas Catalogue 1994

Also interesting to mention, is that this playset came with a different Mighty Max figure in the U.S.A. as it came in Europe, or at least, that is what I could get from a few images I have found in different websites. Maybe I am wrong and some experienced collector can tell me that.

Italian carded playset - incl. the figure in this article and not the one with the monkeywrench.

Find more about Mighty Max HERE!

FACTS and FIGURES:

• Name: Mighty Max blows up Dino Lab (Doom Zone)
• Toy Line: Mighty Max (wave 2)
• Year: 1993
• Company: Bluebird (Great Britain)
• Size of the playset: Around 10 cm long
• Size of the figures (Mighty Max): 1 cm