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Art by • Adam Burke

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Art by Lidia Goryachewa

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GIRLS NIGHT!

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Javert who?

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"don't listen to her - she's just a cat in a coat"

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Be-Holder Dice Stand // Alex Terziev on Etsy

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This Dean Ellis cover art for Larry Niven’s Protector was used for a number of 1970s editions of the title, starting in 1973. To my knowledge, it hasn’t been republished since, with one exception: My own upcoming 2023 art book, Worlds Beyond Time.

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First drawing of the 2023 lol Happy New Year

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Strange new worlds shitposting

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Picard Big Naturals

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CRAPPY STAR TREK TOYS

Actually, this one’s not so crappy it terms of form and function.  However, price wise?  This was practically a non-starter.

Presenting: Mego’s Star Trek Tricorder toy!

As I’ve mentioned before, Star Trek toys just plain ole stank until the mid-1970s, thanks mostly to Mego.

Mego had something of a not-so-great reputation - much of it deserved - amongst toy manufacturers.   For years it had made cheap, crappy toys for sale in bargain stores.  And it was, after all, the company that blatantly copied Hasbro’s G.I. Joe.

However. when Mego lucked onto the very inexpensive ($5,000) Star Trek toy license it actually made toys that resembled people and items from the television series. 

I could wax poetic for days about Mego’s 8-inch Star Trek action figures, and the U.S.S. Enterprise play set!  But I’m talking about the tricorder now.

“Get the tricordah!”

The tricorder was an actual cassette player/recorder, but dressed up with lights and dials to make it appear like its TV namesake.  It also had a nifty flip-up cover. 

It came with one cassette tape.  Side-A of the tape contained a 30 minute compilation of the two-part episode The Menagerie.  The flip side, depending on which source you consult, was either blank so you could record your own stuff, or contained “space sounds.”

Tape recorders/players of this type were relatively new at the time this was released in 1976.  Heck, people then still were putting 8-track tape players in their cars.

Therefore, the tricorder was an expensive toy for the time.  I haven’t been able to track down the exact price, but similar electronic Star Trek toys from Mego ran $20-$25 a piece.  That was enough for a down payment on a new car back then!

For perspective: the individual Star Trek action figures were less than $3 a piece then, compared to $15-$20 now.

The tricorder also required four C batteries (”batteries not included”), which would’ve cost dang near as much as the tricorder itself!

This very high cost resulted in not many of these tricorders flying off the store shelves.  A great deal of these were returned from department stores to Mego’s warehouse in Bohemia, NY (which was just down the street from my grandmas house; had I known this back then I would’ve made a little excursion there).

The story goes that 20 or so years ago close to two hundred of these tricorders, as well as other Mego Star Trek toys, were found inside an abandoned house that was getting renovated.  All the toys were department store returns, and thus - except for some aging on the boxes - in pretty darn good condition.

Whoever found those toys had a small fortune.  The tricorder is now going for around $250 on eBay.

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The crawling claw – Ed Greenwood’s full page “Dragon Bestiary” entry in Dragon magazine 32, December 1979, introduces stats and explains how this necromantic servant is created and controlled, how it fights, and what tasks it can perform.  If I’m reading the initials in the corner correctly, Ed may have illustrated this himself.  The crawling claw still appears in the 5e Monster Manual with minor changes.

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they are so fucking dumb i love it

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Always sunny on Deep Space 9

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