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Tuesday, October 04, 2005

More Childhood Nostalgia!

Are you between the ages of 20-30? If so you may remember a 6 year fad called ‘Manta Force’!


The basic story behind these BlueBird toys was that a group of intrepid explorers had left the Earth in a massive space ship (pictured) in order to colonize Earths twin planet the inspirationally named ‘New Earth’. However all did not go well, a group of fruitcakes from one of Earths Mars Colonies called The Vipers stow away on the spaceships maiden flight and cause all kinds of un-planned naughtiness.

The ship itself retailed at about £40 in 1985 and broke open to reveal no less than 10, yes count em, 10 smaller ships and about 15-20 small figures that could be used to control the vehicles or if you like, bounced about the house whilst making un-realistic ‘pew-pew-pew’ noises before dying bravely for the people of Earth. It also came with a collection of bright yellow plastic bullets, which either failed to fire spectacularly or ricocheted off every wall in the house before blinding the cat!

The range grew over the years and the evil Vipers got their own less-impressive ship that also split up to form a series of smaller vehicles. Shortly afterwards an evil army of robots was added, along with a fortress from which the good guys could lay waste to their enemies. Another evil army of killer aliens followed along with a staggering collection of medium to small add on toys that ranged from £3.99-£20! A second good guy ship was also released, but I had moved on to Super Mario long ago by that stage (1991). Much to my Mothers relief, she was sick of fetching small plastic men out of the vacuum cleaner.

BlueBird were bought out by Mattel and the range ended. You don’t get value like that anymore!

Do you remember the Manta Force? Do you still have some of the old toys? If so post a comment and let us know.

2 Comments:

  • I'm 20 and I don't remember them...I'm probably just too YOUNG!! ha ha

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at Wednesday, October 05, 2005  

  • I'm 21 and I had the FULL RANGE of manta force toys. I was thinking about them the other day and how my mum and dad got rid of them. Do you know where I could get a full set from?

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at Friday, December 23, 2005  

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