Marx Monsters

[Mord]

Bottle collectors are also heavily into digs.

I'll trade any & all of my empty beer bottles for one Marx figure. Any takers?

[frankenstein73]

I'll trade any & all of my empty beer bottles for one Marx figure. Any takers?

How many trucks would it take to ship them?? 

[Mord]

How many trucks would it take to ship them?? 

Well, it's my empties for the last two weeks...three trucks should do.

[Tommyregan]

is it possible that your phantom was leftover green from casting the 6" green army guys and the mummy was from casting the 6" Japanese soldiers of the same era which were a tan color?

[Hepcat]

here is my green Phantom of the Opera with dated bottom. the plastic seems like the old figures, has the same "old" plastic smell, and is  a good molding.

Well it certainly is a vile green.

[Hepcat]

is it possible that your phantom was leftover green from casting the 6" green army guys and the mummy was from casting the 6" Japanese soldiers of the same era which were a tan color?

Hmmmmm, interesting. From collecting plastic Hockey, Baseball, Space, etc. coins, I know for a fact that the quality control to ensure consistency of colour for plastics was not very stringent back in the sixties. Employees were often free to be "imaginative".

[horrorhunter]

Hmmmmm, interesting. From collecting plastic Hockey, Baseball, Space, etc. coins, I know for a fact that the quality control to ensure consistency of colour for plastics was not very stringent back in the sixties. Employees were often free to be "imaginative".

True, Hep. It was like "the wild west" with most toy companies. As long as the product got cranked out they weren't too picky. Marx probably had some of the best quality control but a few things still slipped through the cracks (as opposed to landing in the Marx dump).

Also, I don't think it likely that F73's Phantom had anything to do with the large Marx soldier figures, even though it is a darker green like the Marx American soldiers. Maybe they were just trying different mixes to arrive at a particular shade of green and nothing really worked so it was back to teal and, later, orange. This is all just speculation on my part. It would be wonderful if info from a Marx worker surfaced at some point.

If these speculations about being unable to mix certain colors are correct then it does make me wonder why they had so much trouble with it. Consider all of the varied colors Marx used for other figures- brown for Cavemen; orange, red, and turquoise for Weird-Ohs; dark green, red, and tan for soldiers; all manner of colors for Nutty Mads. They never had trouble with all of those. If they wanted yellow, green, and rose Monsters it looks like it would have been feasible just like all of the other colors they made. I'm probably overthinking this because it's more important to the collector than the manufacturer. It was probably something really simple like they changed their minds after advertising the weird colors because they thought the Monsters might be confused with multi colored Nutty Mads by unthinking store employees and not displayed properly which might hurt sales. Or maybe Universal demanded limiting the Monsters to certain colors after the weird colors were advertised. I'm pretty sure Uni wasn't so lawyered up in the '60s, but maybe Louis Marx just did it to cooperate. We may never know for sure, but it's fun to speculate.

We do know a few of these weird colored original Marx Monsters escaped into the world (thanks again, F73), so that gives us something else cool to be on the hunt for. We enjoy our collections, but we live for the hunt.

[Hepcat]

If these speculations about being unable to mix certain colors are correct then it does make me wonder why they had so much trouble with it. Consider all of the varied colors Marx used for other figures- brown for Cavemen; orange, red, and turquoise for Weird-Ohs; dark green, red, and tan for soldiers; all manner of colors for Nutty Mads. They never had trouble with all of those. If they wanted yellow, green, and rose Monsters it looks like it would have been feasible just like all of the other colors they made.

I agree. I don't see why mixing up any particular colour would have posed a challenge for Marx or any company working in plastics.

[Monsters For Sale]

I always wondered if they didn't run a couple throw-aways through the machine between color runs - just to flush the works.

It might be faster and easier than cleaning the thing out after each run.  Plastic is cheap - employee time is expensive.

Same thing with some swirly plastic gumball charms.

That, and if bubbles and missing extremities might not be caused from operating the machine before it was completely warmed up.

[horrorhunter]

Man, it would really be great if some old-timer who worked at Marx (or MPC) would answer some of these toy questions. That dude could write one helluva book, and I couldn't get my money out fast enough for a copy.

[Hepcat]

I always wondered if they didn't run a couple throw-aways through the machine between color runs - just to flush the works.

It might be faster and easier than cleaning the thing out after each run.  Plastic is cheap - employee time is expensive.

Yes, that could be.

While I think Frankenstein73's Phantom figure is indeed vintage Marx production from the sixties, I don't believe it's an example of a Marx Vile Green figure. I think it was a straight forward test of a mold, or just a case of an employee playing around or simply an error due to carelessness on a worker's part. After all, Marx had no problem casting the Nutty Mads in a plethora of wild colours.

I suspect that the reason the Bilious Rose, Vile Green and Creepy Yellow colours were advertised but not produced in any kind of numbers was because somebody in the marketing department dreamed up some advertising copy after Marx issued the Nutty Mads in various wild colours. But Marx' licence to produce the Universal figures may have expired, and Marx company executives didn't think it made sense to pay whatever fee to extend the licence upon the premise that they still had a huge quantity of the teal and the orange ones in inventory that they could use to fill market demand for another year or three.

[RedKing]

Man, it would really be great if some old-timer who worked at Marx (or MPC) would answer some of these toy questions. That dude could write one helluva book, and I couldn't get my money out fast enough for a copy.

Geez-you and me both brother!

I always wondered if they didn't run a couple throw-aways through the machine between color runs - just to flush the works.

It might be faster and easier than cleaning the thing out after each run.  Plastic is cheap - employee time is expensive.

Same thing with some swirly plastic gumball charms.

That, and if bubbles and missing extremities might not be caused from operating the machine before it was completely warmed up.

I work for a candle manufacturing company and I know wax and plastci aren't the same, I would think there are similarities, and we do indeed run through some test shots to clear the lines of any remaining fragrance oil ( the wax is the same). I also would have to agree with your idea of bubbles and missing extremities cause by the machine and/or plastic not being warmed up enough. We can not pour the candles unless the wax is at a specific temperature or else it will not set right, I can see plastic being the same way.

[Hepcat]

And lastly a picture I posted earlier of my lime green Frankenstein that I thought was a reissue even though the Ebay seller listed it with an original Phantom saying both figures were from 1964.  But now after seeing and discussing this with you as well as Playset magazine I now present as an original

1964 MARX FRANKENSTEIN IN VILE GREEN

So does your "Vile Green" Frankenstein smell like the original Marx issued Teal and Orange figures?

[horrorhunter]

So does your "Vile Green" Frankenstein smell like the original Marx issued Teal and Orange figures?

That's actually one of the Mexican PlastiMarx reissues from the '80s/'90s that we have recently been posting about in this very thread. You can even see the excess plastic flashing in the pic as compared to the original Teal one from 1963 behind it.

[zombiehorror]

That's actually one of the Mexican PlastiMarx reissues from the '80s/'90s that we have recently been posting about in this very thread. You can even see the excess plastic flashing in the pic as compared to the original Teal one from 1963 behind it.

Any flashing on that Frankenstein is no worse than any other teal or orange Marx that I have and certainly not as excessive as the Mexican reissues I have.  I bought that Frank, along with an orange Phantom, 7+ years ago from a guy in Pa.   I questioned the falidity of him saying they were vintage/original and he said he had got them both as a child in the 60's.  When I recieved them the Frankenstein had a small rectangular 19 cent sticker on his base that had "Meijers" on it (The Phantom did not, by the way.), not sure when the sticker fell off (Wished I'd have taken a pic.) but only the residue from it is left on the figures base.  Could this guy have taken a Meijers sticker off an original Marx and place it on a Mexican repop?  Or produced the sticker himself?  Sure but there would have been little point as it did nothing to raise the value at the time.  I have little doubt that this is not an original Marx monster.....unless you don't consider anything after Marx's initial run as original Marx.  At the very least, I've little doubt that this was not produced by Marx.

As for the smell?  I've never noticed that any of them had a certain scent....then again it never dawned on me to smell tham in the first place!?