Category: Catalogs

Catalogs

1987 Mattel Toys Dealer Catalog

Posted on by Adam McCombs

Here is the 1987 Mattel Toys Dealer Catalog. Intended for retailers, Mattel’s dealer catalogs showcased all the latest and greatest releases, along with existing products within its various current (at the time) toy lines. New releases included:

  • King Randor
  • Sorceress
  • Clamp Champ
  • Scare Glow
  • Blast Attak
  • Snake Face
  • Ninjor
  • Sssqueeze
  • Buzz Saw Hordak
  • Mosquitor
  • Blade
  • Saurod
  • Gwildor
  • Rotar
  • Twistoid
  • Beam-Blaster & Artilleray
  • Tower Tools
  • Cliff Climber
  • Scubattack
  • Megator (delayed until 1988)
  • Tytus (delayed until 1988)
  • Tyrantisaurus Rex
  • Bionatops
  • Turbodactyl

Announced but unreleased items included:

  • Cosmic Key
  • Gyrattacker
  • Eldor
  • He-Ro
  • Gigantisaur

Conventional wisdom about the 1987 lineup says that Mattel was putting out a lot of reused parts in the new figures (like Scare Glow, King Randor, Clamp Champ). But really parts reuse existed in every year of the line. Taken altogether, there was quite a lot of new tooling in 1987, and a lot of new ideas to expand the line in new directions. It’s a pity that the line fizzled out before these ideas could be fully explored.

Source: Nathalie NHT

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Catalogs

1984 Mattel Toys Dealer Catalog

Posted on by Adam McCombs

Written by Adam McCombs

Here is the 1984 Mattel Toys Dealer Catalog. Intended for retailers, Mattel’s dealer catalogs showcased all the latest and greatest releases, along with existing products within its various current (at the time) toy lines. New products are highlighted here with a “New For 84” graphic. New releases included:

  • Snake Mountain
  • Dragon Walker
  • Road Ripper
  • Stridor
  • Roton
  • Battle Armor He-Man
  • Battle Armor Skeletor
  • Fisto
  • Buzz-Off
  • Orko
  • Prince Adam
  • Whiplash
  • Clawful
  • Webstor
  • Kobra Khan
  • Jitsu
  • Weapons Pack

Interestingly, Mekanek is not marked as “New For 84”, but he also doesn’t appear in the 1983 catalog. He seems to have been an in-between figure. I tend to think of him as a third wave figure for various reasons, but more about him another time.

(Source: Orange Slime)

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I’m including close-up shots for some of the “new for ’84” items, although the resolution isn’t great. As you can probably tell, Orko is an early prototype, not the final figure. Many of the others seem to be late stage prototypes that are painted by hand. Clawful has Skeletor feet with brown boots (he also showed up like that in the cross sell art). Whiplash has meaner-looking eyes and a purple spear. The gold detail on Jitsu’s boots are is a bit brighter than final. Buzz Off has metallic blue eyes instead of metallic green (again, this showed up in the cross sell art). Battle Armor He-Man’s “H” symbol is colored a dark red. The Weapons Pak weapons are hand-painted. All in all not dramatic differences, but worth noting.

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