Amazing Playsets: Chapter 2

Still more amazing playset goodness!
On
September 03, 2008
As we jump back into more Amazing Playsets, I am pleased to report that I found some great photos of these, I wouldn't say "lost" treasures, but perhaps more "forgotten". Also, please forgive me if I stray away from playsets specifically. I found some great action figure goodness to throw in as well.

Lets get to it.

1. Jurassic Park Compound Playset




I had this monstrous hunk of greatness waiting for me on Christmas morning 1994. This thing was HUGE. The pictures don't really do it justice, the box it came in practically dwarfed me. Granted I wasn't the biggest kid on the block.





Basically you had a mock up of the visitors center seen in the film, a generic fence to hold your dinosaurs and even the sweet King Kong-esque gate from the movie . The command center was very large and featured a fancy talking computer with a blinking red alarm, a missile launcher and every 10-year-olds favorite, AN EGG INCUBATION CHAMBER. It also featured a staple of the JP toy line, "Dino-Damage".







Jurassic park was an insanely huge hit in the toy department. With many vehicles, figures and really awesome dinosaur toys. The T-rex was the fan favorite and probably one of the best of the toys released. (Hard to tell from the picture, but this was appropriately proportional to the human action figures)




2. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Sewer Playset.




I'm sure somewhere in the archives of retrojunk, this appears multiple times. But it belongs here. And you know it does.

Christmas 1989...oh man. The TMNT Sewer was a staple of the mania that was the late-eighties Ninja Turtle craze.

Everyone has something; the Star Wars phenomenon, GI Joe, He-Man, The A-Team...I remember The Ninja Turtles. It was everywhere. Kids were coming to school with purple bandanas, you couldn't go into a store with out something branded with the TMNT seal. Kids would come over simply to compare new TMNT toys...it was amazing.

The Sewer playset is up there with the greats in the playset hierarchy. You had a multi-level representation of a street,(with appropriate telephone poles to swing from), and the underground lair of our favorite guys in green. The sewer level features a punching bag, periscope, (ingeniously attached to the fire hydrant), and elevator, sewer pipes and strangely enough, a window.

The sewer pipes were interesting, not shown here is the spiked ball that you could drop into the pipes to pummel your enemies. The manhole cover is also missing from these pictures.





Also, despite my not owning one, here is the Technodrome.




To all of you lucky kids that actually had one, please have a sandwich made of my envy.

The Technodrome was another playset idol. It included multiple booby traps and even a dungeon for the Turtles. I have to say my favorite part of this toy was not the toy itself, but the box art. The turtles are all mangled and defeated. Sadly, I can't find a good picture to show you all. But scower the internet! It's worth a look if you don't remember!


3. Police Academy 'Police Headquarters'





I'm going to be honest, I did not own this. I had nearly everything else in the Police Academy line but not this.

For those of you who don't remember, the Police Academy movies were insanely popular in the eighties, and in the late eighties/very early nineties there was an animated spinoff and an accompanying toy line.





Most of them had humorous gags and props. I wasn't a huge fan of the cartoon, but I loved the movies as a kid.

My only reason for adding the Police Headquarters is because I have never seen one. These toys weren't insanely popular and a lot of the line was never produced. But I always thought this looked very cool, albeit very similar to the Ghostbuster Firehouse. If anyone out there has one and is willing to part with it, hit me up!


4. Pee Wee's 'Playhouse Playset'



Before Pee Wee was a punch-line, he was practically Elvis to kids who grew up in the late eighties. And a relatively decent toy line was produced.





The play house itself was a carrying case that folded out into the play house. It didn't really come with that much if I remember correctly, you pretty much had to have the other characters. But It did come with the cool cracked front door and the escape door for when Pee Wee would ride his scooter away.













That's it for now, stay tuned for Chapter 3!
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