MPC Pop Tops , anyone have pics.

[Toy Ranch]

This is my Dragon Crest set. 

[poseablemonster]

Kind'a nifty (though crude), here's a pic showing original MPC design drawings of the smaller monsters... they came directly from MPC's archives (what survived is now part of the Toy Memories archives).

Wow, please share some more information!  This is a very interesting discovery.  I have not heard of any pre-production MPC material surfacing, either.  Nice find, thanks for sharing pics.

[Hepcat]

Heres a monster playset called DRAGON CREST with glow in the dark MPC figures, It came with 2 full glow sets (16 monsters)! and tons of knights to attack the monsters castle. I think this was released in the early 80's?

I don't see MPC anywhere on the box. Was the set made by Multiple Plastics Corporation?

It seems the glow in the dark MPC figures, or ones from the same molds used to produce the 2 1/2" MPC figures, have been marketed over the years in different ways. Are some of the figures unauthorized Mexican repros/recasts? Are there telltale indications of unauthorized repros?

[frankenstein73]

The monsters all have The MPC stamp on their bases, the castle is also marked mpc multiple products Inc. And is dated 1963, the two red trebuches are also marked MPC. The horses knights and vinyl mat have No markings except numbers stamped on the base of the knights. The box has the company name MINER in the upper left corner and on the side it's says  " Enjoy all these MINER action packed players. " and has other sets names on it- UNDERSEA ADVENTURE -WORLD PATROL FORCES - THE BLUE AND THE GREY - AND DRAGON CREST. And on the other bottom side of the box it states MADE IN USA- MINER INDUSTRIES.NEW YORK N.Y. 10010 THE PART NO. IS 3327 that's pretty much it.

[frankenstein73]

I was reading online at a plastic soldiers site that mentioned Mpc was a division of MINER INDUSTRIES, and in 1980 changed it's name from mpc to MINER. I'll post a link to that site later tonight gotta go pick up the better half!

[frankenstein73]

heres the site i found some info on MPC and them changing their name to Miner in 1976. I added the paragraphs that i found pertinent to this post.
http://www.angelfire.com/biz/toysoldierhq/reviews.html

MULTIPLE TOYMAKERS Beyond Tomorrow Lunar Space Station Playset
Made in 1976 by which time MPC (Multiple Products Corporation) had changed it's name to Multiple Toymakers a Division of Miner Industries. Set number 49/59885 the set comes in a small litho box and it was a big surprise to see it packed full of cool stuff. The contents listing on the front is not totally accurate but the box was packed full. It lists three hand painted space commanders and the set includes three Star Trek looking figures. MPC also put hard plastic hand painted figures in their King Kong and Planet of the Apes playsets.

Miner Prehistoric Sets from 1981



MPC (Multiple Product Corp) was sometimes listed as being a division of Miner Industries. By the 1980s the MPC name was eliminated and toys were sold only under the Miner Industries name. The playsets usually had MPC items but sometimes they had other stuff as well as can be seen by the three Prehistoric sets (#1758) from 1981. The photo on the box shows the MPC dinosaurs and cavemen but the contents were pretty much different. The boxes do say "Contents may vary".

The boxes were still shrink wrapped until opened for this article. The boxes state over 70 pieces and half of those are cardboard punch outs and three vacuform terrain pieces. The dinosaurs & cavemen are a mix of pieces from former; Marx, Ajax, Nabisco, Dimensions For Children and MPC molds!

[ToyMemories]

You're very welcome, thanks; glad people like them!   
We bought the surviving original Multiple archive material years back (took a lot of time and work, and of course money), and I was so happy to be able to save the history.  I've been hoping to do an MPC book eventually.
I had hundreds (maybe thousands) of pictures on the site when I had the MultipleToymakers.com site as an independant site, then aol obliterated their hosting, and now just a little of it is in the combined ToyMemories/MarxFiles/MultipleToymakers site.  Hopefully I can get a bunch of it back together as time allows.
I know I had pics of Haunted Hulk test-shot/first-shot parts (one might be on my site now, I forget), monster design drawings, Weird Figures test-shots and pre-first-shots (made when they were building the mold), catalog images, first shot of the monster viewer thing, I THINK I even had a pic of some pop-top design drawings, probably a mold sheet or two... it stinks, but as time goes by it seems like there is ever so much less of it!
Also, of interest (some I had on the MarxFiles site before it folded into ToyMemories.com) I had Garloo stuff (assembly line instructions, early concept drawing, design drawings, etc.), Big Loo design/technical drawings and other documents, the Monster Mansion factory photo, Nutty Mad/Weird-oh and related design drawings, and other cool stuff...
One day if I can sort out the sites I'll do my best to get it back in place.

[Hepcat]

The little ones are great. I've never seen those before, only the Pop-Tops and the Unbreakable Weird Monsters.

By the "little ones", do you mean ones the size of the white witch?

Were the 2 1/2" MPC figures marketed originally as Unbreakable Weird Monsters in carded bags or something? Or were they first issued in Frito Corn Chips?

[ToyMemories]

Pop-Top Horrors from the 1965 MPC catalog:

Some of the smaller (regular) guys in creepy yellow...

[Hepcat]

But when and how were the small 2 1/2" first issued? As Frito Corn Chip premiums or otherwise?

[poseablemonster]

Thanks for those pics, ToyMemories.  Are the yellow ones test shots?

[raycastile]

Man, I love the Pop-Tops set all on one card.  I would do some serious trading for that.  Thanks for the pics ToyMemories!  From the catalog text, it seems they were not offering the Pop-Tops in the bagged two-packs in 1965.  It reads as if the carded set is the only way to get them.  Do you have a catalog entry for the bagged versions?

[jimm]

Those yellows are extra cool!

[ToyMemories]

Thanks for those pics, ToyMemories.  Are the yellow ones test shots?

You're very welcome, glad to share, PM!
Yes, they're original test-shots in yellow, though only a few are visibly floating around the pile here (the brain-eaters must have gotten to me in my sleep, as I completely forgot where their box is with the rest of them), and I know my feral cat ran off with a skeleton a while back (not sure if I ever recovered that one...)
I found a couple more pics so you can see all the yellow, and then a pic of a couple test-shots they were trying to do something with (notice no bases); the other stuff in their original storage box didn't give me enough to make any conclusion.

For some reason the pics got reduced in the upload, I'll try and restore their proper size.

Here are the baseless

[ToyMemories]

...Thanks for the pics ToyMemories!  From the catalog text, it seems they were not offering the Pop-Tops in the bagged two-packs in 1965.  It reads as if the carded set is the only way to get them.  Do you have a catalog entry for the bagged versions?

You're very welcome; nope, they offered both in '65 (the catalogs are... to be honest, I forget where    but I had scanned a bunch of the pages years back, and my photo program "preview" screen is kind of small, but I found the 2-packs on another page (see below):
(sorry, same issue here, pic got shrunk in upload... I'll try and restore size and fix it shortly)

And here are some test-shots (one pic shrunk, other didn't... strange...):

(notice lots of flash on the Reaper; likely that mold cavity needed adjusting, and such is a reason for test-shots)