Matt Lichtenwalner

Mobile mapper for Ushr - roaming the US and Canada constantly. Maybe a bit of art and/or writing here and there to spice things up.

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I have SO many questions. I'll start at the top:

  • As Seen on TV - Really? Someone paid good money to put this on television? Ever? This was clearly a rack toy - just hanging from a pegboard somewhere. For $0.79. Even when this was in stores, that couldn't have been a big profit margin.
  • Who is the Woman? - I don't recognize the character at all. Now, I know that there are many out there who have an encyclopedic knowledge of the Marvel universe, but I've got a little geek cred. I don't think I've ever seen her before. Is she a villain? Is she working with Cap? Is she at least wearing a bikini bottom that is conveniently covered by the bill of that plastic duck?
  • Pink / Blue Ducks - The only reason to have your targets colored pink and blue that I can come up with is to make them masculine / feminine. That's pretty sexist of me, but "it was a different time" and I can't seem to come up with anything else. Which begs the question: Why in all the holy REDACTED would you care what sex your plastic duck targets are?!
  • 3 4 3 - Why would you 'weight' the targets like this? 1, 2, 3 I could understand. 10, 15, 20 - sure. But 3, 4, 3? Pretty sure these folks were on something, or they're sending a message from the past to a sleeper cell that...
  • Larami Corp of Hong Kong - Larami Corp is familiar. Didn't know they were right here in PHL. Of course, the toy itself was made in... Hong Kong? I'm trying to envision how much they would have to save on the manufacturing to still make a profit after shipping it to the other side of the planet and only charge an end price of $0.79.
  • Oh So Cap or at Least American - Anyone else find it amusing that there is absolutely nothing Captain America about the gun, or the darts, or the targets. Just the cardboard backing which promptly gets thrown out when the kid opens the toy to play with it.
  • 2 Darts / 3 Targets - Just noticed this. Editted the post to add it in. This seems... inefficient. It also makes me think: there are two pink targets, but only one blue. Is there a correlation? But why is the blue more valuable? Is that another sexist thing?

It really was a 'different era'...

Oh, and I originally found this here.

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8/31 '18 5 Comments
Beaten to the punch on the identification of the villain. Yeah, the '70's. It was a strange decade.

http://marvel.wikia.com/wiki/Nightshade
That seemed like a strange name, so I did some research and discovered that it was apparently a comment on the packaging's unusual pigmentation for "Nightshade", an evil scientist in Captain America's world.
Yeah - I did a (very brief) Google search and found nothing on Whiteshade, but also found Nightshade and wondered if that was just a... typo? Well, not exactly, but in that direction.
One of the tumblr notes says that is Whiteshade. Also, I hate trying to decipher tumblr's format. I'm never on there, though, so...
Wow. I'm just impressed that someone actually commented on Tumblr.