The Other World was out of this World

Are you sure that's not a Halloween decoration?

When I was talking Shogun Warriors I mentioned discount stores and Arco toys. Arco Toys was a toy company (in case the name wasn't obvious enough) based in Hong Kong that made a lot of (guess what) toys that were generally in discount stores and other non-traditional places like drug and grocery stores. Hasbro didn't make Authentics back then, so maybe you'd find some close out older name brand toy... but more often it'd be one of these off brand lines. But that's not a dig, there's gold in those weird brands.

The Other World was such gold, a weird fantasy line when fantasy was all the rage thanks to He-Man and Star Wars. With packaging that looked like a heavy metal album and toys that looked like Halloween decorations mixed with just enough neat factor... The Other World was pretty great.

If you noticed from the picture of Castle Zendo, the figures are all standing with their arms outstretched. That's because they literally had no articulation as you traditionally know it. They were rubber bendy figures, the kind with a wire skeleton. Which of course resulted in eventual wire snaps creating arms in permanent 'gimme a hug' poses. A small inconvenience then the lizard man figure came with hell yeah awesome glow in the dark accessories. My love of glow in the dark stuff knows no bounds and in fact could be other worldly no damn pun intended. I lied, I totally intended it.

Figures came in a variety of ways. Solo figures with two of those little rubber weirdos. Extra weapon packs with rubber weirdos. Double figure packs with maybe one rubber weirdo. Monsters with a rubber weirdo. Big gift sets full of figures and monsters with rubber weirdos. No matter how you bought it, you were getting those little rubber weirdos and damn well like it. The orange weirdos are Jipps, basically little good guys to give your heroes support. The purple weirdos are Mogs, little jerks that work for the bad guys.

The Other World was a weird and wonderful toy line that didn't cost much. That's a recipe for sucess that doesn't come around as often as it should. The next time you're at that odd discount store picking up some random thing you need check out the toys. Sometimes there's a little rubber Halloween decoration trying to pass itself off as an action figure. How can you possibly ignore that?

Shogun Warriors are pretty metal

Earlier when talking about the Shogun Warriors kaiju, I mentioned the smaller die cast figures. Those are the Shogun Warriors toys I had as a kid. Sure the moment for the line had past, but being from those working class roots meant I often got toys from a discount store. These days discount stores usually have a specific version of mainline toys made particularly for that market with a little peppering of off brand goods. Then, however, you had a ton of off brand goods and a smattering of close out buys. So here I was in that preschool (I initially misspelled that and the spelling suggestion was pee school) age at some random shopping trip in between holidays and birthdays either going home with something made by Arco or one fateful day... Shogun Warriors.

I had no clue who Dragun or Poseidon was, but dude they were neat! They soon joined the forces of Darth Vader who now had whoopass robots to fight Luke Skywalker and The Hulk in battle. Super 7 has a cool line of Shogun Warriors in their ReAction series. I should get some of those.