Indie Squid Kid

Welcome to the 1st Annual Indie Squid Kid Holiday Shopping Guide!

Every day this week I will feature the best new products for the cephalopod enthusiast in your life. In most cases, these will be products that I don’t own (yet…hint, hint) and haven’t previously reviewed. To kick the week off, we start with one of my favorite subjects…TOYS!

Imaginext®

Ocean Squid

Part of Imaginext’s new Ocean line, and of course it’s the one piece I haven’t been able to find yet.

List Price: $6.00 — Buy on Amazon.com (but it will be cheaper if you can find it in a retail store.)

Ocean Mega Playset

This set combines four different pieces that are usually sold separately. It not only includes the Ocean Squid (see above), but it also comes with a green plastic ammonite (one of the Ocean Boat’s accessories).

List Price: $74.99 — Buy on ToysRUs.com

3-Headed Dragon Gift Set

Spotted at my local Target store, this set includes not only an awesome three-headed sea dragon, but a Tylosaurus (from Imaginext’s discontinued Dinosaur line) and a repaint of Sea Blade the Octopus from their Pirate line.

List Price: $29.99 — Target in-store exclusive.

Safari Ltd.®

Incredible Creatures Giant Pacific Octopus

This is yet another example of something I haven’t been able to track down in the store. Safari’s Incredible Creatures are larger scale (and more detailed) than the Wild Safari line, but are made of softer plastic and are comparable in price.

List Price: $10.99 — Buy on SafariLtd.com

Also still available: Wild Safari Sea Life Octopus and Giant Squid.

Matchbox®

Mega Rig Pirate Ship!

There’s a lot of talk about pirates versus ninjas, but if we learned anything from the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, the pirate’s natural enemy is actually the cephalopod.

List Price $39.99 — Buy on Amazon.com

Also still available: Mega Rig Squid Sub

Playmobil® Pirates

Giant Octopus

List Price: $19.99 — Buy on PlaymobilUSA.com

Pirate Raft

List Price: $10.99 — Buy on PlaymobilUSA.com

LEGO® Pirates

Kraken Attack

List Price: $10.99 — Buy on Amazon.com

Welcome to Toy Week!

I might as well come clean. I own a lot of toys, and this will be the first of several theme weeks dedicated to toy cephalopods, both vintage and modern.

We begin with the Squid Sub from the Mega Rig® Building System by Matchbox.

The packaging here pretty much says it all. The submarine consists of a primary hull with modular accessories that can be attached in a number of different configurations. It has a working motor and launching harpoon, and it comes with a cute little diver man. The most important part, of course, is the “Squirting Squid.” In my customary nit-picky analysis, this large purple cephalopod more closely resembles an octopus than a squid. It has eight arms, each tipped with a single large sucker. (There is a strange slit in the middle of each arm, and I suspect this has something to do with maximizing the toy’s flexibility.) Its head resembles a cross between the bulbous head of an octopus and the pointy, finned mantle of a squid, but ultimately, it is not nearly long enough to be accurately called a squid.

Did I mention the sub was motorized? Because the screaming octo-squid really wants you to know that it is motorized.

The Mega Rig Squid Sub doesn’t seem to be in stores any more (I got mine a year or two ago on clearance at Wal-Mart), but you can still  buy it on Amazon.com.

Although I’ve never seen it anywhere, Amazon also has the Mega Ocean Adventure, which combines the Mega Rig Squid Sub with the Mega Rig Shark Adventure into a single über-Mega playset.

Previously on ISK: Matchbox Monsters: Kraken vs. Hovercraft!

You shouldn’t have looked behind you…, originally uploaded by Cryptonaut.

Please remain calm.

Mattel’s Matchbox Monsters was a 2006 toy line that paired diecast vehicles with plastic cryptids (well, sorta). There was a snow plow with a yeti, a pickup truck with a giant bear, a van with a reptoid/swamp monster, a Jeep with a “T-rex bone monster,” and the best of all, a hovercraft with a Kraken. (You can see photos of the entire set here.)

Now it has been well established that hovercraft are awesome. This one claims to be a “Nautical Research Vessel”, yet it has a massive harpoon cannon on the foredeck. That’s pretty awesome, I guess, but it begs the question, what kind of research requires a harpoon? (Other than “What can we harpoon today?”) I suppose it could be used to defend their hovercraft from the deadly Kraken…

This particular Kraken (which seems to be officially called the “Black Kraken Monster”) resembles a cross between an octopus and a squid. Its head and tentacles are arrayed in a very octopus-like pose, but it’s head extends into a long squid-like mantle. It appears to have only seven arms, and each ends in pointy club. The mantle ends in a similar arrowhead point, so it almost seems as though it might have been intended to be an eighth tentacle. It has malevolent red and yellow eyes, purple spots OF PURE EVIL.

More recently, the Kraken figure has shown up in the Matchbox Hitch ‘N Haul series, specifically the Wild Water™  set. The Kraken is now being called a Giant Squid, and it is joined by a shark and scuba diver. The hovercraft has been replaced with an (infinitely less interesting) SUV pulling a jet ski on a trailer. The squid has been repainted a sort of purpley-blue and, in case you were wondering, the SUV is a Chevy Suburban.

There is also this variant version with a powder blue squid, shark, and diver, a red jet ski, and a Land Rover Freelander.