Marx Playsets

January 2, 2005 4:43 PM

Marx Playsets at the Official Marx Toy Museum. Anybody remember them? [much more inside].
posted by marxchivist (18 comments total)

My favorite was always the Civil War set, but you can't forget the classic Battleground. These were some of my favorite toys as a kid, and guilty pleasure and big money pit about five years ago. Do any members remember having these things, or better, still have them?
Another Marx Toy Museum here, but not as many playset photos.

There is also a magazine and videos.

Barzso Playsets and Conte seem to be trying to get the spirit alive.

Courtesy of myself, I posted the same links to Monkeyfilter awhile back. I figured you folks had better taste and thought I'd try it here.
posted by marxchivist at 4:47 PM on January 2, 2005

When I saw the headline I was sure this was about socialism. :-)
posted by nathanrudy at 4:58 PM on January 2, 2005

Wow. I do have two of the horses (but they're about twice as old as I am). A bay with the flexible neck as on the palomino here, and a palomino with a fixed neck, like the two other horses on the right. Any idea what they were originally with? Or did the horses ever come separately?
posted by whatzit at 5:17 PM on January 2, 2005

Any idea what they were originally with?

The horses came with the Johnny West line of figures (horses at the bottom of page).
posted by marxchivist at 5:40 PM on January 2, 2005

When I saw the headline I was sure this was about socialism.

Me too... I was looking forward to Glorious Revolution dioramas ...
posted by Steve_at_Linnwood at 5:54 PM on January 2, 2005

We all know William of Orange was a pinko....
posted by Steve_at_Linnwood at 6:41 PM on January 2, 2005

I'd heard Metafitler was full of lefties...
posted by marxchivist at 6:50 PM on January 2, 2005

An older brother of mine had the Civil War set. We still have most of it down the basement somewhere.
posted by pmurray63 at 7:31 PM on January 2, 2005

Boring. I'd much prefer a Gilbert U-238 Atomic Energy Lab (last two links point to geocities tripod sites, respectively.)
posted by The White Hat at 7:57 PM on January 2, 2005

Yeah, sorry Marxchivist, but this was a big disappointment to me too. I was hoping for the leonine bearded action figure who would kick some capitalist butt. Maybe a Ninja Blastin' Engels to go with him or something...
posted by ramakrishna at 8:13 PM on January 2, 2005

Man, I was hoping for an old-toy nostalgia fest. You guys wanted some little plastic proletariat figures storming the Winter Palace or something. Buy now and get free Lenin and Trotsky figures! Better luck next time (for me I mean)...
posted by marxchivist at 9:05 PM on January 2, 2005

I'm still looking for an old Operation Orbit. Anyone remeber that one?
posted by humannature at 9:38 PM on January 2, 2005

I had about half the Johnny West dolls- My parents still speak in horror of the day I learned to disassemble them and exchange the heads and arms. "They never got put back together correctly after that, and we spent so much money on them..."

Sam Cobra was my introduction to dressing in black, and that con men have cooler stuff than cowboys. And as a Massachusetts boy happily relocated in North Carolina, it provided me with my first carpetbag.
posted by bendybendy at 5:12 AM on January 3, 2005

We must have had almost every one of these toys at some point. The Johnny West dolls lived on well past whatever interest we had in them -- I think my mother still has the Geronimo figure (missing one lower leg) in the toybox at home that her grandchildren ransack whenever the family gets together.
posted by briank at 7:05 AM on January 3, 2005

I seem to remember having something like this back in the day, and the teepees look familiar too.

How cool is this though?
posted by SisterHavana at 8:46 AM on January 3, 2005

One of my favorite childhood xmas gifts was a set of toys in the same style as these playsets, but taken from the Rankin-Bass "King Kong" cartoon. I don't recall if Marx made this or not. Tried to Google this toy set, and I couldn't even find a 60s catalog listing for it. Like the thing itself, all memory of it has apparently been scattered to the wind.
posted by bshock at 9:40 AM on January 3, 2005

I had the Marx Prehistoric Playset when I was a kid, which not only mixed dinosaurs and cavemen, but had pretty much every random dinosaur and prehistoric mammal from every epoch, whether they could have co-existed or not. (Being a huge dinosaur nerd when I was about five years old made this painfully obvious to me back then.) Of course, it made up for the historical inaccuracy with a badass plastic stone arch that went from one mountain to another. It was probably my favorite toy as a kid, but it was sadly lost during one move or another.

Last year, my lady friend tracked down the exact same Marx playset that I had back then, and bought it for me for my birthday. This officially earns her the title of Best Girl Ever.
posted by majcher at 10:50 AM on January 3, 2005

I approve this post!
posted by mr.marx at 12:20 PM on January 3, 2005