There was a time in the ’90s where I would wander around carboot sales and find amazing toys from the previous decade that I just could not identify, as in I had no prior knowledge on what toyline some things were from, but I still knew when I was holding something impressive in my hand. This was one of those toys:

 

 

To someone who has never seen this toy before, it might just look like a figure of a faceless character who has a penchant for wearing bones over a scraggly outfit. And that would be partly true, but he is a little more impressive than just that. Look what happens when I take a photo with the flash on!

 

 

Apart from looking filthy and in dire need of a clean (as this was an old figure I picked up second-hand cheaply) a gnarled looking skull appears in the blank space. Creepy huh? His name is Skull, a wholly unoriginal name (but he’s interesting enough that I’ll forgive him that). He comes from the Super Natural line by Tonka, a series of action figures with holographic stickers in place of face and torso sculpts.

Removing his chest armour  (also comprised of skulls) reveals even more of his undead form. Depending on which angle you are viewing Skull, you can either see his rib cage or muscle tissue. Being a thirty year old holograph, it isn’t the easiest thing to capture but you can kind of see both the bones and the flesh in this picture.

 

 

It’s a damn shame that holographs aren’t so much of a thing these days. As a kid, holographs seemed like unworldly, weird and spectral things, but they just don’t seem to exist anywhere in toy form at all now. The last time I remember seeing a holographic toy was a freebie in cereal in the ’90s, promoting the Anastasia animated movie. They were like teeny little compacts that opened up with a holograph in. Cheap crap really, but to me they were portholes to some mystical dimension, just because they were holographs. If anyone would like to correct my assumption that holographic toys are no longer a thing and show me a modern toy featuring an impressive holograph, please take to the comments to do so. I would like to be pleasantly surprised.

 

 

There is nothing particularly impressive about the back of Skull, he definitely puts all of his effort into his front side, which is fair enough I suppose. If you take a look at a carded version of Skull, you will see that he originally came with a holographic accessory which could be seen as a bit of overkill when going down the holographic route. He also came with a very stupid looking elf-like hat, but when you look like you have just climbed out of a grave, I guess people aren’t going to really criticise your choice in headwear.

 

 

Though you can see his holographic accessory is a shield (which is a very un-piratey accessory for a pirate) you can’t really see from that picture what the holograph is. So here’s a crappy picture of his shield:

 

 

Sigh. This is why I hate owning carded action figures. You can’t play with ’em, and you can’t take a decent photo of their ridiculous holographic accessories. You can kind of make out that his shield features a giant eye, which is certainly a bit weird but I’m not sure it really fits the rest of the bone kinda theme he has going. If he was a boss in video game I would automatically think that his giant eye shield would be his weak point.

Oh yeah, he also originally came with a glow-in-the-dark mace. If his deserved place on this Halloween countdown was ever in question (and believe me, there’s every chance some of the things on this list will be) then a glow-in-the-dark mace definitely secures it. Everything’s spookier when it’s glow-in-the-dark.

I don’t actually own any more of the Super Naturals figures these days, but they had a set of good guys as well as bad guys back then, as well as a set of figures that were just torsos lacking legs which just looked a bit silly though I can’t be bothered to find a picture of them.

 

 

I definitely remember owning Eagle Eye as well as Snakebite, but I don’t remember the holographs looking anywhere near as vibrant as the images on the back of the packaging suggest, though they were definitely impressive at the time.

I think that wraps up Day II of the Halloween countdown.  If you haven’t already then please like The Forgotten Starship on Facebook and follow me on Twitter. And if you just want to see pictures of mostly video game related shite I pick up, I’m on Instagram too. If you don’t want to like or follow any of my pages, that’s totally fine but I do hope you are visited in your sleeping hours by a mace-wielding, silly hat-wearing undead pirate who makes you stare into his unblinking X-ray eye which draws your soul deeper and deeper into depths of darkness and insanity until you are naught but a drooling shell, an empty coffin, a soulless husk…So you should probably just give me a follow really!

Come back tomorrow for more Halloween goodness!