South America has a long history of lucha libre programs aimed at kids – less violent, driven by comic-booky characters and storylines, and full of super heroes, evil wizards, rasslin’ monsters and yes, martial artists. Here’s some cheapo He-Man knock-off … Continued
The much-missed masters of cheap toy lines Remco released a He-Man-sized line of martial arts action figures from 1984-86 called Secret of the Ninja. Three sets were done in ’86 that included VHS tapes to ‘play along to’ – and … Continued
I’m of two minds about the classic Kaiketsu Lion Maru tokusatsu series. I basically love everything about it… except for the heroes. The character designs of the lead and his rival Tiger Joe sort of creep me out. Tiger I … Continued
This one is probably late 80’s, but you still see generic wind-up and battery-op toys like this, crudely shinobi-fied, at Southern California swap meets, Florida flea markets, dirt mall dealers and curbside vendors in NYC all the time.
Card-back art, courtesy of Geek Orthodox, from the Ninja Warriors: Enemies of Evil 80’s toyline.
Scored a weird little trio of plastic or low-grade modeller’s resin castings of shinobi a few years back, no manufacturer details alas. I’m guessing the 2.5″ ninja were scoped up from some much smaller lead gaming figure original, as the … Continued
Fooling around with some sixth-scale stuff last weekend, put together this Tonbei the Mist-like kitbash: I have all sorts of 1:6 shinobi cluttering my place, but I always wanted to do an elder suppa figure, a crafty old spy. And … Continued
I’m not a video game guy in the least, but man do I love the elevated place lady ninja have in that realm. If only movies followed suit more often… Taki is a twin short-sword wielding kunoichi from Soul Calibur, … Continued
More VHS clamshell art, via DRILLPOP: Formal from an Onmitsu Doshin wedding or the Demon Spies prom? A baffling image via the amazing Black and WTF photoblog: A review of this nifty capsule figure of Sega video game kunoichi Hibana over … Continued
We’ll wrap-up a month of toys and merch with a look at some nameless, non-property-based ninja toys from the 80’s. Wind-up toys sold in subway stops or off swap-meet blankets, supermarket tchotchkes, vending capsule minatures, even cake-toppers – these are … Continued