The remake of the M.A.S.K. line by The Loyal Subjects got me thinking of my old group of....I don't know that I'd call them "favorite" toys, but the ones that I came back to most often. Kind of like how in Toy Story Andy had his crew of Woody, Buzz, Rex, Potato Head, and Hamm, I had a group of mostly M.A.S.K. toys that I repurposed as a group of super heroes that were almost constantly going on adventures in my bedroom. I grew up reading my dad's old childhood Silver Age comic books, so a lot of the ideas for my group were lifted straight from those.
Here's a group shot I hastily assembled in Paint from a bunch of pictures stolen off the internet:
The group I call The Avengers (because I guess, as a kid, I was wildly unoriginal). Left to right, they were:
Chameleon- A shape shifter who could turn into anything (accomplished by hiding the toy and using a different toy as his new form). Backstory-wise, he was the sole surviving member of a previous group of superheroes. He formed the new group and served in a mentor style role instead of directly leading the team.
Iron Man - Again, I wasn't creative. Backstory was he was a cross between Stephen Hawking and Darth Vader. Basically, genius professor who was dying from a degenerative disease. He designed a suit that acted as an iron lung / powered exoskeleton, and was then sealed inside of it (the helmet was the only portion that was removable). Over time, he continued to tinker with the suit and turn it into a full superhero type suit with all the bells and whistles that one would expect. He was the official team leader.
Goliath - He started out as an A.I. in a self-driving vehicle that the professor who would become Iron man had built. The A.I. ended up being more self-aware than the professor had expected, and ended up saving the professor's life during a crash that destroyed the vehicle. He built the A.I. a new humanoid robotic body, though it was huge due to the size of the necessary components.
Mask - Think of a good-guy version of the idea behind Serpentor. Scientists combined DNA from a bunch of various heroic archetypes into a single individual. They then used a "ray" to accelerate it's growth to adult form, but the ray also unexpectedly imbued him with super speed as well, which was his main power. Pretty much The Flash but with a more complicated backstory.
Electroman - The result of another experiment by the same scientists that created Mask, he was a clone of the original but made out of pure electricity. Had all the various electricity superpowers that I could come up with.
Starboy - Only an occasional member of the team. He was a teenager from the future that had psychic powers (which were 100% inspired by the fact that the toy's eyes were bright blue and I had seen the old Dune movie several times on TNT).
I played with these guys pretty much all the time. There were a whole bevy of reoccurring villains and allies that they would face off against. Their super-team vehicle was an old Cobra Wolf that I got at a garage sale:
Two guys could ride in the cockpits, two guys would straddle the "ski torpedoes" and use them as detachable mini-vehicles. Goliath just flew behind them with his built-in jetpack.
So, who were your most commonly played with group of toys?
Here's a group shot I hastily assembled in Paint from a bunch of pictures stolen off the internet:
The group I call The Avengers (because I guess, as a kid, I was wildly unoriginal). Left to right, they were:
Chameleon- A shape shifter who could turn into anything (accomplished by hiding the toy and using a different toy as his new form). Backstory-wise, he was the sole surviving member of a previous group of superheroes. He formed the new group and served in a mentor style role instead of directly leading the team.
Iron Man - Again, I wasn't creative. Backstory was he was a cross between Stephen Hawking and Darth Vader. Basically, genius professor who was dying from a degenerative disease. He designed a suit that acted as an iron lung / powered exoskeleton, and was then sealed inside of it (the helmet was the only portion that was removable). Over time, he continued to tinker with the suit and turn it into a full superhero type suit with all the bells and whistles that one would expect. He was the official team leader.
Goliath - He started out as an A.I. in a self-driving vehicle that the professor who would become Iron man had built. The A.I. ended up being more self-aware than the professor had expected, and ended up saving the professor's life during a crash that destroyed the vehicle. He built the A.I. a new humanoid robotic body, though it was huge due to the size of the necessary components.
Mask - Think of a good-guy version of the idea behind Serpentor. Scientists combined DNA from a bunch of various heroic archetypes into a single individual. They then used a "ray" to accelerate it's growth to adult form, but the ray also unexpectedly imbued him with super speed as well, which was his main power. Pretty much The Flash but with a more complicated backstory.
Electroman - The result of another experiment by the same scientists that created Mask, he was a clone of the original but made out of pure electricity. Had all the various electricity superpowers that I could come up with.
Starboy - Only an occasional member of the team. He was a teenager from the future that had psychic powers (which were 100% inspired by the fact that the toy's eyes were bright blue and I had seen the old Dune movie several times on TNT).
I played with these guys pretty much all the time. There were a whole bevy of reoccurring villains and allies that they would face off against. Their super-team vehicle was an old Cobra Wolf that I got at a garage sale:
Two guys could ride in the cockpits, two guys would straddle the "ski torpedoes" and use them as detachable mini-vehicles. Goliath just flew behind them with his built-in jetpack.
So, who were your most commonly played with group of toys?
