Inhumanoids - A Big Coloring Book

Ah, the 80's.  What a wonderful time to be a kid.  There were so many creative and imaginative properties during the time.  One of which was Hasbro's Inhumanoids.  Sadly I never owned any of the toys as a kid.  Guess I was too into G.I. Joe and Transformers for my parents to buy me anything else.  I wasn't able to catch many of the cartoon episodes on Saturday morning television either.  Inhumanoids as a whole was rather short lived so it passed and was mostly forgotten about.  That is until the age of the internet!

One of the good things about my current re-organizing project I'm undertaking at home right now is it's getting my hands on things that have been buried away for a long time.  When I bought the cartoon series on DVD years ago it got me all jazzed up again about Inhumanoids.  I searched the 'net to see what kind of merchandise (i.e. toys) I could find.  The toys can be found, but most of the time they are horribly incomplete or broken.  If you do find any in good condition the asking prices will usually scare you away.  During one of those searches I came across a Golden brand coloring book.  I don't remember what I paid, but I'm sure it was a deal since I don't normally buy coloring books.  I haven't seen this book in a very long time until recently so I wanted to pick out a few pages to share.

This book has a copyright of 1986.  It's rather thin, but still cool none the less.  If you've seen the cartoon and you know about the toys then you'll know there are some differences in the two.  The coloring book actually tells a story of the Inhumanoids and the Earth Corps.  Most of the art in the book seems to be modeled after the toys and not the animation models.  Bummer as the show was way cooler than the toys.  That said I still would love to get my hands on the 3 big monsters.

Metlar was the leader of the Inhumanoids and featured the ability to pull out flaming molten rocks out of his mouth.

D'Compose was the freakiest looking of the 3 as he was some sort of decomposed dinosaur mutant skeleton creature.  This art here is a prime example that it was based more on the toy as the animation model didn't have to stupid pony tail.

D'Compose was voiced by the late great Chris Latta (Cobra Commander, Starscream).  With just one touch he could mutate the living.  Check out this clip from the cartoon to see what I'm talking about.

There is no freakin' way a cartoon like this could air on today's television.  What were my parents thinking letting me watch this as a kid!  You have to track down the DVDs of the show as it is excellent.  Just watching this clip makes me want to pop the DVDs in again.

Tendril was the plant like monster.  In toy form he is the easiest to find in my opinion.

The Earth Corps. was a group of scientists that battled the Inhumanoids.  They were led by Herc Armstrong.

Auger was the hot head of the trio.  I believe he was voiced by Michael Bell (Duke, Prowl) in the cartoon.

Liquidator was the demolitions expert of the Earth Corps.

Dr. Derek Bright was for some reason not shown in his battle suit in the book.

The scientists weren't alone in their battles with Metlar and the Inhumanoids.  Granok was the leader of his race of rock creatures and often aided the Earth Corps.

Redlen was the leader of the Redwoods and often clashed with Tendril.  Do you think Wes Craven took some inspiration for his killer's mask from the look of Redlen?

Magnokor could split himself into two separate pieces.  He controls electromagnetic waves and could imprison Metlar.

As I mentioned earlier most of the artwork here is mediocre since it's based on the toy designs.  These pages here are probably the best of the bunch.  As a kid I don't think I would've cared about how good the drawings were.  Heck, I don't think most kids back in the 1986 would've even noticed or cared that the art wasn't based on the cartoon.

I hope you enjoyed taking a look at this odd ball piece of Inhumanoids merchandise.