Everyone remembers the big toys from the 80’s like the Transformers or G.I. Joe but I have fond memories of some of the lesser known and stranger toys from that era. Over the next few installments of Retro Active I will share my love of some lost treasures from my childhood. First up, the Inhumanoids!!
This was one of my absolute favorite toys from the 80’s. For those of you who do not remember this toy line or the short lived cartoon that was meant to sell the toys, let me educate you. The Inhumanoids are three large monsters (D. Compose, Tendril and Metlar) who lived beneath Earth’s crust. The heroes of the series are the Earth Corps (Herman “Herc” Armstrong, Dr. Derek Bright, Eddie “Auger” Auguter, Jonathon “Liquidator” Slattery) and each member of the Earth Corps had a special exosuit with a stylized attribute. The Earth Corp also had some help in their fight against the Inhumanoids in the Mutors (Redwoods, Granites and Magnakor) who are the elemental beings who cast the Inhumanoids into the depths of the earth. In the cartoon series there were other Inhumanoids as well as Earth Corp allies not listed above, none of them were given representation in the toy line.
Now, the best things about these toys were the size and features. All three of the Inhumanoid figures were 14” tall, the coolest of which was D. Compose who had an exposed rib cage that could open and the Earth Corp figures could be imprisoned inside. All the figures had a “glow in the dark” feature in the head or helmet that would glow when exposed to direct light. I can still see that green glow on the “good guy” figures in my mind. In truth, the red glow feature on the Inhumanoid figures wasn’t very impressive. But that didn’t stop me from wanting to possess all of them!!
Sadly I never did, as a child. But a few years ago I did almost complete my collection via eBay. I only needed one vehicle to complete my collection but a need for money and an overwhelming sense of “why the hell do I have these?” mandated selling my plastic treasures. But from time to time I still peruse the online auction sites to scope out my prospects of re-creating my collection.
As I mentioned earlier the Inhumanoids also had a cartoon. It started out with a five episode mini-series and later was granted eight additional episodes. The cartoon was interesting in that it was pretty gritty for being targeted at children. In the mini-series one of the main characters is turned into a zombie by D. Compose and later in the ongoing series D. Compose turned a crowd of teenagers into a mob of zombies who terrorize San Francisco. That’s pretty heavy gruesome stuff for kids to watch. I can only imagine what might have happened in later adventures.
But alas, the toy line and cartoon never caught on and both were soon discontinued. One interesting point about the mini-series is that it originally ran on a Sunday morning cartoon block called Super Sunday that was a collection of shows which included Jem, Bigfoot and the Muscle Machines and another short lived toy line that I loved, Robotix!! I wonder what my next Retro Active will be about….
For more on Inhumanoids go to http://www.action-figures.ca/inhumanoids.htm