GIGANTIC INSECTS AND ARMAGEDDON!
In 1964, Remco’s Hamilton’s Invaders — an amazing series of gigantic monster insects, soldiers and vehicles — were released. Remco came up with these toys to create havoc and FUN at home like the movies that were all the rage on TV at the time.
As a child, I was both scared and amazed by these movies but absolutely loved this toy line that was handed down to me! I couldn’t get enough giant insects! Later of course they created the Starship Troopers movies that were also inspired by the early gigantic insect trend….
The insects could attack the toy soldiers with a pull of a string while the soldiers would fight back with a laundry list of heavy machinery just like in the movies. This created for me an exciting monster toy. I would later take my imagination outdoors for more army against the monsters FUN with the bug-eyed helmet and pistol that you could wear to become a part of the warfare!
These toys were unfortunately only produced for a very short time as moms didn’t love having giant insects at war or complete armageddon at home.
As a Christmas gift to the readers, a second series of toys will be highlighted this week!
Dark Shadows and Barnabas Collins Games
Barnabas Collins from the Dark Shadows TV show was a killer vampire with a penchant for drinking blood! What kid wouldn’t want merchandise from the show!?
Dark Shadows, the 1960s supernatural soap opera, featured a couple of vampire themed board games. The first was by Whitman in 1968 with great illustrations of Barnabas Collins and The Collinwood Mansion on the box cover.
The second was released in 1969 by Milton Bradley with awesome artwork on this one as well.
The game board on the first game was a giant paper mat. I remember it was soooooo large to me when I was a kid it felt like it took up the whole room! My friends and I would hunker around it, fascinated with the graphics of our after school hero and TV show.
The Dark Shadows game was a card and board game. A cool path runs though the game with spiders bats, daggers and skull mugs printed in the squares that for us begged us to play it like a vampire putting its spell over us. There were also super swell representations of Collinwood and its grounds. Players could be a gravestone, howling wolf, dripping candle, or grandfather clock! SPOOKY! We played this game until it literally was shreds and fell apart.
Barnabas Collins Game
The Barnabas Collins game was a KILLER variation of Hangman played with plastic glowing skeletons. Turn off the lights and get to it! Back in the day anything that glowed had that extra added MUST HAVE factor built right in!
I LOVED this game! This was my favorite one of the Dark Shadows games! My friends and I would play with the skeleton parts and the coffin long after the game was over….. and…….. THE FANGS so amazing! The winner of the game would get to wear the plastic vampire teeth that also would Glow In The Dark! It doesn’t get any better than that….ALTHOUGH we were all sharing the same spit with those fangs….LOL!
Players got to spin the spinner to get the bones they needed to complete their skeleton hanging from a wooden looking scaffold. The bones were kept in an AMAZING plastic and cardboard coffin with the name Barnabas Collins engraved on the lid. CREEPY! This was just so cool to us! We all wanted to hold the coffin! Also in the coffin with the bones were a bunch of wooden stakes. The stakes were a bummer, once you had three stakes, you had to return a bone, but….the first player to finish their hanging 
skeleton WON the game!
The BEST part was always after the game was over we would run around with the coffin and glowing fangs and skeletons. Awesome Awesome Awesome! GREAT GLOWING FUN!
