Bowspearer's Captain Power Collection

[bowspearer]

Ha ha hA! I need no room to edit and rephrase, I hadn't heard of them, they look about the same size of Joes and the name sounds like a KO name, you know, like some dogdy chinese version of Superman, but called 'Capt Powers' instead coz it sounds cool.

Heh all good, just one of those funny quotable quotes was all .

Whole TV show was Live action hey?

Yeah the training tapes were a mix, with the intro being live action and the actual interactive part of them being animated, but the series itself was live action.

The computery graphics looks pretty interesting, with the bird robot flying around the place. Looks a tad camp though ;p

No worse than Tron or The Last Starfighter were . Remember this was the really early days of CG. In fact the cost was so high that they actually had to cut Stingray and Tritor from the show due to budget constraints. The other thing is that we're talking about 80s production values at play with the intro- camp is a given .

Seem to be a pretty cool set of toys jusging by what you could do with them. Do you know how much they were at original retail?

Not sure with Australia- I found out recently that they did get a limited release here, much like C.O.P.S. and Visionaries, but I never owned any of the toys as a kid, just saw a few eps of the show and it stayed with me. I've imported my collection from the USA and France.

In terms of retail price in the US, an old Sears Catalogue has the figures at $3.99, the training tapes at $14.99 each, the Energizer at $19.99 and the Interlocker, Powerjet and Phantom Striker each at $35.99.

Not sure how much the Power Base was, but I imagine it would have been close to the $99.99 mark.

Hmm...

The production values look very akin to Power Rangers except for the CG work, which to me look far superior to Power Rangers!
I'd never heard of this line either, so this has been an interesting read Bowspearer - Cheers for sharing man.

Yeah the whole series was way darker. Like I doubt you'd ever see Power Rangers exploring eugenics or the Holocaust, which the show did (in terms of the setting and larger agenda at play)- right down to there being Dread Youth, whom Pilot was formerly a member of that the team rescued. There's one other thing, but it's a total ending-spoiler if I mention it in terms of the series end. (EDIT: Another great example was when Dread had been breeding people to be carriers of a bio weapon that left them comatose and therefore easy prey for being digitised.)

EDIT: To save double-posting, here's the first episode of the series uploaded on youtube for anyone who is curious, as well as a few toy commercials: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQapMkdIuSs , http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHZ5FTPYuWE , http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oINYNmrPZCg .

[griffin]

I remember talking to Larry DiTillio about 10 years ago about this show, and he was telling me that he was trying to get it brought back, but after a couple years trying, it just wasn't going to happen.
It was a shame, because it had so much potential and was so short lived in the 80s.

I also remember seeing an advertisement in one of the Gen1 TFs comics for the interactive toys for the show. It showed a kid pointing a spaceship toy at a TV, with its cockpit being ejected.

[bowspearer]

I remember talking to Larry DiTillio about 10 years ago about this show, and he was telling me that he was trying to get it brought back, but after a couple years trying, it just wasn't going to happen.
It was a shame, because it had so much potential and was so short lived in the 80s.

I also remember seeing an advertisement in one of the Gen1 TFs comics for the interactive toys for the show. It showed a kid pointing a spaceship toy at a TV, with its cockpit being ejected.

I know he's not the only one. Straczynski's keen to get it back too as he's already got the other 3 seasons planned out for it, with scripts written for season 2 (not to mention that it made him determined with B5 to actually see his story arc make it to the screen for all 4 seasons). Also, it looks like the situation with a relaunch might have changed. At the very least there's the DVD release at the end of the year, and from the rumblings around, quite possibly a new toyline at least, which potentially means new show. It'll be interesting to see what comes of it.

[griffin]

I guess after 10 odd years, they've been able to convince enough people. Larry just sounded so defeated about it back then.

[bowspearer]

Oh there's no question it hit more than its fair share of brick walls, but in that time, it's gained a cult following and it seems to be getting a fair bit of a resurgence.

It used to be that Captain Power stuff was dirt cheap on eBay- now it's getting scarcer and scarcer and costing more and more.

Also my guess is that Landmark have taken a look at the DVD and Blu-Ray sales going through http://www.captainpower.com and have managed to convince someone that it's worth doing officially.

[gekisou]

I remember watching this as a kid. Loved it and was REALLY sad when Scout bought it at the end of the season.
Loved the toys too and I think I still have some of them... Power, Tank... and two of the enemies.
Seeing your collection brings back memories of them.

[bowspearer]

Added pics of my cased Skybike Launcher and Anti-Personnel Patroller

[techx]

Awesome collection there. I only had Lt. Tank Ellis. Loved it to bits but as most toys, I can't remember what happened to it. Good ol days.