STAR PATROL WITH X-WING ROCKET FIGURE SET (GALAXY LASER TEAM)

Tim Mee Toys/Processed Plastic Co. made sets of Star Wars inspired figures sometime during the 70s or 80s (and I've read that they were rereleased in the 90s, though I've yet to see proof). Here's the front of the "STAR PATROL WITH X-WING ROCKET" set.

Below is a back view of the set.

This set has 36 pieces, but there's also a 31 piece set.

The set was made up of eight different army-man-sized figures plus a vehicle. The figures came in four different colors: black, green, pink, and white.

There's a Roman soldier guy with a sword... or could he be Darth Vader with a lightsaber?

There was also a rectangular robot with two legs on its sides who I'm betting was inspired by R2-D2.

Probably my favorite figure in this set is Chewbacca, who is a hairy alien with a gun and a pair of slacks. He has the most hilarious looking facial expression (confused gorilla?), and the antennae don't make it any easier not to laugh at him.

The rest of the characters don't seem to be directly ripping off Star Wars. There's a space adventurer with a drawn gun. A dealer at a toy show once told me that these figures were Buck Rogers characters, so maybe the not so Star Wars-y ones are Rogers and crew.

Here's a guy holding a box in one hand and a tube protruding from the box in his other hand.

A spacewoman standing next to some sort of pedestal.

A waving spaceman whose holding a suitcase/ lunchbox/ toolbox. Or maybe it's an action figure carrying case...

And let's not forget the funkiest of all: Mutant Crab Man! Or at least that's what I call him... I own this guy loose, so I can get some better shots of him. I miraculously found Mutant Crab Man at a yard sale in a pile of random toys. I've read before that this guy is based off of a science fiction comic character, but I haven't been able to confirm or disconfirm this.

There's also an X-Wing Rocket. Isn't that such an original name? How creative of them!

It gets worse, though. The rocket came with some stickers for decking out the rocket. The sticker sheet says "LABELS FOR YOUR X WING FIGHTER". Fighter? The word "rocket" was the only thing trying to cover up the vehicle's relation to Star Wars, and then they outright call it an X-Wing Fighter.

The Star Patrol toys have been packed on other hanger cards. There's one that has a white card with black letters stating "GALAXY LASER TEAM with space monsters", "TIM MEE TOYS", and "MONTGOMERY, ILLINOIS 60538". There's also the Tim Mee Toys logo and colored illustrations of 'Chewbacca' and the spaceman with a blaster drawn (who's half covered by a barcode). I've only seen one example of this version so far, and it only included pink, white, and black figures. I don't know if it's always this way or not.

Another one I've seen is very much like the first one but at the top of the card it warns, "CAUTION: NOT RECOMMENDED FOR CHILDREN UNDER 3 YEARS OLD". At the top right it says "26 PCS." in red. Instead of a barcode, there's a dotted line placed diagonally, forming a right triangle in the corner. In the triangle it says "NO. 0931". I've seen two samples of this version, and they both had all four colored figures.

A different hanger card I've seen has thick, horizontal, colored stripes and the words "VALUE PAC". It's funky looking, but it could really use some silly Star Wars knockoff art.

There's an orange/red hanger card that says "outer space FIGHTERS". It says Tim Mee Toys and shows their logo. This one's a 17 piece set.

I've seen a picture of a large, 66 piece play set that includes purple, green, and blue figures, plus some air and space craft. The set also contains a big mountain and a radio tower among other things. The cardboard box has "STAR BATTLE" written in bold, yellow letters at the top of the box's front, and to the right I believe is the Tim Mee Toys logo.

A reissue set of these figures exists with a hanger card that reads, "GALAXY LASER TEAM with SPACE MONSTERS & STARSHIPS". There's 24 black and 24 light gray figures and 2 ships included. This set was produced using the original molds from Tim Mee Toys.

There's also five inch tall versions of these figures. I've seen these on a few hanger cards, one labeled Star Battle giant size play figures. This five piece set included a silver colored figure.

Star Patrol is one of those funny toys where someone ripped off Star Wars, and then got ripped off themselves! I've seen a Mexican bootlegged set where the toys (which come in red, green, blue, yellow, and white) are packed in a bubble on a light blue card. It shows a guy riding a rocket and says "LINEA COMETA" and "JUGUETIMUNDO.S.A.".

Packed in a box of Screaming Yellow Zonkers!, a popcorn snack, was one of eight different creature figures. One of them, whose name is Zip, greatly resembles Mutant Crab Man! He came in at least two different colors.

There's one last thing I want to show you; he's a friend of mine that I'd like you to meet... His name's Ugly Spidey.

When I found the loose Mutant Crab Man at a garage sale, he was hangin' with this bootleg Spider-man figure. He has nothing to do with Star Wars, but he's cool nonetheless. I think he stole the Hulk's pants, though...

SUPER JOYSTICK POWER PLAYER VIDEO GAME SET (Part 1)

I found this at a mall one time for twenty dollars (or at least I think it was twenty...) and was intrigued, but I passed. Later on, as my interest in strange Star Wars collectibles grew, I wished I had purchased it. Then, in April 2011, I found it at a garage sale for five bucks! It's a Super Joystick Power Player video game set. It's the kind that has a bunch of games built in and the controller plugs directly into your TV, requiring no console or game cartridges/ discs.

As you may have noticed, there's a photo on the box's front of Qui-Gon Jinn, Darth Maul, and Obi-Wan Kenobi from The Phantom Menace.

I'll go ahead and warn you now that that's where the Star Wars connection ends, but this thing's still worth looking at further.

The bottom right of the box's front has a Super Joystick logo.

I'm not sure how many games are built in, but I know some of the other Super Joystick Power Player sets have a lot. This one has a shiny, gold sticker that says "12000" on it, so maybe that's how many.

Now let's take a look at the back. In the lower left it says "THE ORIGINAL" and then directly under that adds "NEW EDITION". Almost sounds like a contradiction, but I guess it could be the newest edition of the original Power Player series or something.

There's some pictures of a car, a helicopter, a spaceship or something, and a few airplanes.

The side of the box suggests that there's also a black set, a gray set, and a blue set.

I didn't see tape or anything sealing the box, so I assumed it had been opened before. I slid the styrofoam shell out to find that it was completely wrapped in a thin film of clear plastic. I always leave my stuff sealed, but in this case I was fooled into thinking it had already been opened before. I didn't really want to open it any more than I already had, but you can still get a better look at the product. There's a Nintendo 64 rip off controller, then a Sega Genesis one. Between the two is a chunk of plastic that can screw onto the Genesis controller's d-pad to create a joystick. Below and to the left is an AC adaptor, and the audio/video wires. Lastly is the gun peripheral.

On the back of the styrofoam case was a hole for the back of the Nintendo 64 style controller to stick out of. In the controller's slot there was some sort of pack which I believe holds a few AA batteries that powers the game when you're not using the AC adaptor.

Here's two close ups. The first one is the Nintendo 64 like controller. Its print reads "SUPER JOYSTICK TV GAME" and then has a Super Joy III logo, so I guess that's what it is.

Here's the Sega Genesis style controller's closeup.

I have an opened Super Joy III, a black one, so here it is. This'll give you an idea of what the Star Wars one would be like loose.

Here's some good 'ol comparison photos.

There's more Power Player sets out there, though I don't know of any others that rip-off Star Wars, though.

Be sure to check out SUPER JOYSTICK POWER

PLAYER VIDEO GAME SET (Part 2) to see the Super Joy III in action!

SUPER JOYSTICK POWER PLAYER VIDEO GAME SET (Part 2)

This post is Part 2 of my Super Joystick Power Player game set. Part 1 (which you can see by clicking here) showed a Super Joy III video game set in its box, which featured images of Star Wars characters. Here in part 2 I'll be showing you what it's like actually playing these Power Player video game sets. Keep in mind that my set is still sealed and I don't plan on opening it. But luckily, I have a loose Super Joy III! I'm hoping the two are identical products with the same games, disregarding their different colors, but even if they're not, this'll still give you an idea of what these sets are like.

See that joystick? That joystick on the Super Joystick Power Player? Well, it's there purely for show because it doesn't even move! It serves no purpose except to make the controller look good. I own a different Power Player controller model that does have a functioning joystick, unlike this one.

Anyways, all you have to do is plug the controller directly into your TV and you're ready for some fun. No console or game cartridges/ discs are required, although I own a cartridge that you can plug into the back of the controller to play additional games. Well, first is the title screen...

This is a very promising sign. FUN TIME. That's exactly what I want when I play video games, a fun time! So anyways, you're then taken to the game select screen.

Did you notice the top of that screen shot...? "76000 IN 1"! There's suppose to be 76,000 games on this! I say "suppose to" because every game is just duplicated repeatedly to create the illusion that there's 76,000 games. Of the first 2,840 games shown, I counted Mario Bros. listed at least 42 times! In the above photo Slalom is repeated twice... right in a row! There's still a lot of games on this thing, though, just not that many. Most of them (if not all of them) are taken from the game library of the classic Japanese console the Famicom, or its American version, the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). Sometimes things get ugly, though... Look what happened in Monkey, AKA Donkey Kong Jr.!

What the--!?! Donkey Kong is a pink blob, and Junior looks a bit under the weather. Here's a comparison shot of what it looks like and what it should be.

I experienced some typos, too. The game Circus Charlie has been misspelt as Circus Chablie. And check out 1942's game over screen. I don't think that happens in 1942's official release.

They meant, "SHOOTING DOWN", "PERCENTAGE", and the E's bailed from "PLAYER" and "GAME OVER".

In the game Sky Destroyer, there's this song on the title screen that reminds me of the Indiana Jones theme music. Meanwhile, in Star Gate there's a tune that sounds like a knockoff of the Star Wars theme. That second game is horrible; if you touch an enemy or the portal (and that's all there really is to do), it sends you back to the game's title screen. In Super Dynamix, sometimes all you get when you select the game is a black screen. Some of these things may have been like this on their original, official release for all I know, so I can't really put all the blame on the Power Player.

Well, that's all I've got to say about the Super Joy III... but let's take a gander at a different Power Player set. It's the one with the knockoff Sega Dreamcast controller that I introduced in Part 1, and it's weird.

Here's the title screen...

It shows a few Digimon, Pikachu, and Buzz Lightyear below the title "DIGIMON ADVENTURE". When you reach the game selection screens, you hear an 8-bit (the kind of music you hear in those old, classic video games) version of Do Wah Diddy Diddy, that song Manfred Mann did.

Most of the game titles are wrong. There's typos, such as Circus Chablie again. Many games are on this thing more than once, probably just to build up the game count, and then they gave the game multiple names. For example, there's Burger Time and Mc Donalds, which are both essentially the same game. Many times they've replaced the main character with a new one. The game Digi Veemon is just Mario Bros. with Mario replaced by a Digimon. Teletubbies is also Mario Bros. but with a Teletubby. This kind of thing is done a lot.

This Power Player offers more than just laughs, believe it or not. Check out this title screen.

It's the Japanese version of Super C, the sequel to the game Contra (which I highly recommend). But it gets better, just take a look...

It's the game "Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers: Mystery of Convoy", although it's called Key Kong on the Power Player. Mystery of Convoy wasn't released on the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), it was only available in Japan on the Famicom (the Japanese NES), so it's a special treat for Americans.

Here's another exiting feature: Harry Tour!

There was a game on the NES called Magic Carpet 1001 (which I believe can be found on a Power Player). It was later hacked and renamed Harry Tour sometime in 2001 or later, well past the last licensed NES game was released in 1994 (which was Wario's Woods, another game I highly recommend... Man, what a fantastic puzzle game!).

The Power Player sets are excellent examples of the good, the bad, and the ugly. For anyone wondering, Key Kong is "the ugly". That game's impossible!

STRANGE STAR WARS COMICS!

I love to spend time with my bootlegs and knockoffs; give them the attention that many others wouldn't dare. Well... here's the result of that. I'll post more as time goes by!

No. 6- Posted March 15, 2012. I wondered what would happen if a Hasbro figure met a bootleg figure. Now I know.

No. 5- Posted January 15, 2012. I found this skeleton toy that's really similar to the super-deformed Star Wars knockoff ones, so I wanted to write it into a comic... and I did!

No. 4- Posted December 3, 2011. This one's the knockoff version of Lando Calrissian's greeting to Chewbacca in the Empire Strikes Back. The name "Chew-wobba", of course, came from my experience of buying the Future Flash poster...

No. 3- Posted December 3, 2011. Inspired by John Williams' song "Duel of the Fates" from the Phantom Menace.

No. 2- Posted October 23, 2011.

No. 1- Posted October 23, 2011.