Indie Squid Kid

Tonight for Action Figure Week we have some toys that I actually played with in my youth—Battle Beasts! Originally produced in the mid-1980’s by Japanese toy company Takara (under the name “BeastFormers”), Battle Beasts were marketed in the US by Hasbro. They are 2″ figures representing various anthropomorphic animals, each decked out in high-tech armor and wielding a unique bladed weapon. Each figure had a heat-activated sticker which depicted one of three “elemental” symbols: fire, water, or wood. The idea was that when you make any two Battle Beats “fight,” you activate the stickers to see which element each animal represents. Water beats fire, fire beats wood, and wood, for some reason, beats water (I think because wood makes it splash?). I never really cared about that, however, I was just into the animals. I divided them up into three armies: land, air and sea, and I assigned them all ranks and military specialties.

There were 76 figures in the original three series. Most of them were mammals and birds, but there were a few fish and invertebrates, including these two cephalopods.

#43 "Cutthroat Cuttlefish"

#36 "Octillion Octopus" (photo from www.toyarchive.com)

Both the squid and the octopus were released in 1987 as part of Series 2. The squid (it’s not a cuttlefish, no matter what they say) is mine, but I seem to have lost the octopus at some point over the years. (I should probably try to pick it up on Ebay one of these days.) The photo here is from the excellent Battle Beast section of ToyArchive.com. The squid (which you might recognize as my blog avatar) is missing its weapon, a small double-tipped spear, but as you can see he can still defend himself with his prosthetic harpoon arm!