Monday, December 10, 2012

PLANET OF THE APES (1975) Fortress Playset


Here's another great Space: 1970 holiday "wishlist" gift - the Mego Planet Of The Apes Fortress Playset! Who wouldn't have loved to find that under the tree? Personally, I had a couple of the POTA figures, but I never had any of the cool accessories. Usually, I would just concoct backyard scenarios where Captain Kirk somehow ended up on the Ape-dominated world and would get chased by (and fight with) my gorilla soldier.

On a related note, has anyone else ever wondered why Mego (or their ad agency) decided to score most of the Apes toy spots with that weird version of Also sprach Zarathustra...?

8 comments:

  1. Regarding the music, what else do you play when you have sci-fi simians gathered around a towering structure.

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  2. Two suggested theories about the music:

    1) The association with the last really big SF property, 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY

    2) The fact that there were no sync rights demanded by Strauss (the piece is PD) and were using what sounded like a tinny master recording makes the music very affordable

    It's hard to imagine a company like Mego getting Jerry Goldsmith's score tied to their commercial, and this seems to be the most cost-effective way around that...

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  3. You gotta love a toy commercial where the 'heroes' of the line are captured by the 'villains' and don't get away! Says so much about the POTA franchise.

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  4. I like how the apes have a banner that says "Planet of the Apes" on top of their fortress. I also really like the other commercials in this line where the narrator says "I smell an astronaut!" LOL

    As a kid, I always wanted a bunch of the MEGO figures, whether it was the PotA stuff, Star Trek or the World's Greatest Superheroes line. For whatever reason, my parents never bought me any of it. I guess that I was more into G.I. Joe and Evel Knievel during those years.

    And yes, that soundtrack for this commercial is really weird. I'm curious why it has that awful vibrato sound to it.

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  5. lol Get the weapons out and caapture the evil humans I wonder if how the PC police would feel about that these days.

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    Replies
    1. I suspect they'd be fine with it. "Get the weapons out and capture the evil apes", on the other hand, would have them going ape.

      Sorry, couldn't resist the bad pun.

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  6. The only thing that could make this commercial any better is Sean Connery doing the narration.

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  7. I had that playset as a kid, and we used the hell out of it (pretty much the only thing I didn't have was the Forbidden Zone Trap). It got to the point where the cardboard tabs wouldn't stay in the slots, so we used pins as a sort of "cutterpin" to hold them in place. You could also turn the whole thing into two separate buildings by simply putting the top floor room on its own. My friend also had one, and we'd have a fairly descent sized Ape City by the time we were done.

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