October 6, 2006: Monster In My Pocket is one of my favorite-ever toy lines, at least in part because of when it came out -- 1990. By then, the toys I'd grown up on were either dead or dying, and not much had sprung up to take the reins. Yes, we had Ninja Turtles, but Donatello cannot fight wars on his own. It's easy to mark the dry toy well when I consider how much I was into the Dick Tracy movie action figures at the time, and frankly, by 1990, I was on the cusp of officially being "too old" for toys anyway.
It was depressing to go to Toys 'R' Us and fear that someone from school would catch me there, but Monster In My Pocket helped me forget all that.
Made by Matchbox, the collection was clearly inspired by Mattel's former success with their M.U.S.C.L.E. series. Kids didn't collect these monsters because of any cartoon or because any particular figure was awesomely awesome -- the thrill was in having a lot of them, and in having enough "doubles" to trade your way into a complete collection.
The collection was successful enough to last through many years and many spinoffs. I wasn't aboard the train for very long, but the line eventually branched off into everything from dinosaurs to giant-sized mutant figures. I much prefer the originals, which were almost exclusively based on "real" monsters -- a vaguely defined scope ranging from figures that looked like Dracula to figures that looked like the Kraken. If you were an enthusiast for things that went bump in the night, the original Monster In My Pocket figures were a nice tribute. Hell, there was even a Bigfoot figure.
The first wave of figures was sold in several different types of packages. Shown above is the classic 4-pack, but my favorite was the original 12-pack. There were 48 figures in the first series, and they were all assigned point values, ranging from "common" 5-pointers to "rare" 25-pointers. 12-packs were guaranteed to come with one 25-point monster, and the remaining eleven were tucked unseen in the cardboard box, meaning there was some element of surprise to buying them.
I admit that these 12-packs were likely my first experience with shoplifting. The boxes were easy to open, and those remaining eleven figures were loosely packed in plastic bags inside. I remember stuffing my pockets with clear bags of monster figures on some long ago TRU trip, and spending the night wondering when the cops would break down the front door. I didn't regret it, though. I could never find that Medusa figure in the 4-packs.
Monster In My Pocket figures were brightly colored, soft and rubbery, and small enough to make good on the franchise's title by actually fitting nicely in one's pocket. The color of the figures was irrelevant; you could find a "Witch" in purple, green, yellow or red, and it wouldn't mean a damn thing.
The point system helped drive the hobby, but I don't think that anyone's favorite figures were based exclusively on their point values. Different figures struck different chords. It depended on what you knew. I'd fought snakelady heads in Castlevania, watched Harry sneeze on the Hendersons and was limitlessly impressed by the sea monster in Clash of the Titans. It only made sense that Medusa, Bigfoot and Kraken were three of my faves. Maybe other people grew up watching phantoms playing pianos and Claude Rains movies. There were figures for those passions, too.
The 4-pack seen in this article brought Witch, Invisible Man, Ghoul and Spring-Heeled Jack into my life. Considering how cool some of the other figures were, I wouldn't call this a tremendously successful 4-pack. When the chips were down and you got stuck with four figures that you either already had or was purely uninterested in on a conceptual level, it was time to turn to the point value system to see if anything could be salvaged.
Ugh -- three five pointers and one ten pointer. What makes Ghoul worth more than Invisible Man escapes me, but he's got a "10" on his back. There's no denying it. The six of the first wave figures with a "25" on their back were not guaranteed to be any cooler than the figures with lesser values, but sometimes, it just worked out that way. Tyrannosaurus Rex and the seven-headed Great Beast had "25" spine markings, and they were way cooler than Witch and Spring-Heeled Jack.
Monsters with large numbers on their backs were always something to hunt for, but at least during the first "season" of the series, a star was even better. According to the back of the packages, one out of every 10,000 figures was branded with a star graphic on its back instead of the number. This wasn't to denote that the particular monster was currently invincible, but rather than the person who found it was now eligible for a Matchbox "Mystery Grab Bag" stuffed with fifty bucks worth of Monster In My Pocket toys. I shouldn't need to tell you that a substantial portion of my life was devoted to finding a monster with a star on its back. Never did, but the thought of Mr. Postman delivering a burlap sack full of M.I.M.P. toys made all of those fifteen-minute daydream sessions so much sweeter.
As the line progressed, it became very gimmicked. Finding a monster worth 25 points used to be cause for celebration, but they began increasing the potential point for every subsequent collection. Ultimately, you could find monsters worth 500 points. These later editions were often larger than the originals, some with actual paint highlights. I kind of felt that the moment had passed by the time those came around, but then, I'm more prone to sell my body for a crude, one color, one inch Bigfoot figure than a three inch green space alien with yellow tentacles.
I've written about the toys on the site before, but never with any negotiable sense of sentence structure. Thematically, they felt like a good fit for the Halloween Countdown. It's also as good of a time as any to tell you that the collection returned in the U.K. this year -- click here to visit the official site. While I love the simple nature of the original line, the new M.I.M.P. figures are very impressive, with crazy precise details, meticulous coloring and no qualms about looking more "creepy" than "cartoony." Then again, I'm not seeing any new Bigfoot figures listed on the website. :(
