Random Retro: Issue 2

I'm going to look at a few more random things I have collecting dust around here. These are all things I love and no matter how good or bad they might have been I don't want to forget them.


In the 1980's a toy company called Worlds of Wonder was responsible for many great items of RetroJunk. Their two most famous products were Teddy Ruxpin and Lazer Tag while their least famous probably goes to their video game system called Action Max.




Worlds of Wonder was no stranger to video games. They had actually distributed the NES in America for Nintendo until the system was popular enough to sell itself.




You can see that the Action Max was a simple looking system which may have borrowed slightly from the color scheme of the NES.
The console had an internal speaker as well as a headphone jack and something unique among video game consoles, a battery compartment. Yes, this thing could either be plugged into a standard outlet or could run off of 4 "C" batteries.

The one thing you might notice by looking at the Action Max is that there is no cartridge slot. The system actually used VHS tapes, played through your VCR, instead of the standard cartridges of the time. The idea seems cool and actually is if you only plan on playing for a few minutes.




Sonic Fury was the pack in game and like every other game on Action Max it was a shooting game using a light gun similar to Nintendo's Zapper. The games weren't any worse than any other light gun games of the time but they were the downfall of the system because the way it was designed, light gun games would be all the Action Max could support.



With the gun being the only focus of control for the system you might think that it would be a very cool looking controller but you would be wrong. It is a poor man's Zapper at best but that doesn't mean the system should be forgotten forever. It was unique and could provide some simple fun even if the fun did only last a short time.



In the mid to late 1980's you could get anything with holograms on it. The shiny 3D-ish pictures were on notebooks, stickers, buttons, clothes and even action figures.
Tonka produced one line of awesome holographic action figures that they called Super Naturals.



Super Naturals brought you a cool looking action figure even without the holograms. They were colorful, fairly detailed for the time and they were a decent size. The holograms though added so much more, making your cool figure into an awesome figure.



Each figure in the line has two looks thanks to the holograms and as an added bonus they came packed with holographic shields as well.



The holograms Tonka used weren't the standard holographic stickers that you'd slap on the cover of your math book back in the day. These holograms were actually very good and still look great over twenty years later.



Tonka really put out a great line with their Super Naturals though sadly it is not always remembered these days. The figures were great though and they are one of the 80's series that I will always love.



Cereal has always been a mainstay in any child's diet and a few decades ago Ralston was the king of licensed kid's cereals. They printed cereal boxes with licenses from Batman, Nintendo, Bill & Ted, and many more. One of the other cereals produced by Ralston in that period was WWF Superstars.



WWF Superstars cereal featured different WWF wrestlers on the front from time to time and was perfect eating material for a Saturday morning watching the hugely fun and sometimes silly shows put on by the WWF in the 80's.



This particular box contains a WWF flip book and may even still contain a winning book to get into Wrestlemania 8 but I have a feeling that it might be a little too late for that.



Ralston had a good thing going in the 80's and 90's with their different lines of cereal. They didn't even have to produce anything that tasted good, the licenses sold themselves to any kid walking down the cereal aisle and Ralston sure produced plenty of fun cereals just like their WWF Superstars cereal.