Wednesday, September 11, 2013

Rock Lords retailer's plan-o-gram sheet

A few weeks back I was browsing this old, yet fascinating toy site that came up in a search while I was researching something entirely different.  The site (which it's name escapes me at the moment) was very crude in it's layout, but the husband and wife that ran the site had a good variety of old toys.  I ended up grabbing a few things which I'll share eventually, but the one thing that caught my eye was a retailer's plan-o-gram sheet for Rock Lords!

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I know this may seem like a minor find at best, but I love Rock Lords and I love odd ball items such as this.  I'm guessing this sheet used by Tonka representatives to use when they went to work in the retail stores.

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I can remember bumping into several Hasbro reps back in the day resetting various Hasbro product at stores such as Walmart, but today this seems to be done in house by the retailers.  I remember seeing Rock Lords displays at Kay Bee Toys when I was a kid, but I'm kinda surprised that a relatively small toy line such as this warranted a 4 foot section in any retail store!

When I saw the sheet and it's meager $4 price tag I knew I wanted it...and then I looked closer at the center image and I immediately hit the 'add to cart' button.  I tried to blow up the image as much as I could so you can see why I was so excited.

Rock Lords photo 11983a3d-04fb-4f94-8120-35daaadd15d9_zps48defb9e.jpg

Fossil Puzzler Gift Set!  Just above the gift set are a few of the individual Fossil Lord members.  Look even closer and you'll see several of the regular Rock Lords, Rock Narlies (even the boxed Snarlie Narlie), but look at the bottom rock of carded figures, 2nd one from the left.  That light blue figure is Spearhead.  We know this was a very early image for several reasons.  1) Spearhead was released in a deep blue color, 2) the Fossil Puzzler gift set was not released in the U.S. so by default 3) the Fossil members weren't released individually.  But who cares?!  I find this very fascinating and it's got me itching to do some Rock Lord reviews very soon.

From what I can tell from the rest of the image, the items were released as you see them pictured.  Granted finding a boxed Snarlie Narlie or even the vehicles isn't so easy these days, it's cool to see all of these old toys in their packaged glory.

4 comments:

  1. It is cool to see this side of the merchandising. Wouldn't it be fun to have a book of these to flip through of all the great and not-so-great 80's toy lines.

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    1. I would LOVE to have a binder full of these style sheets. Even if were for toy lines I didn't care for, it's still cool to see as you said, this side of merchandising.

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  2. This is a great find! I love the retail display type stuff. It was such a great line.

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