Mighty Men & Monster Maker

2006-09-25 00:34:00

I spent part of this afternoon showing my oldest boy (he's four) how to use my old Mighty Men & Monster Maker set. I just got the thing back from my older brother, who had taken it from my mom's place years ago to play with it with his kids (okay, maybe just to play with it). He did a really good job of keeping all the pieces together and keeping it in good shape.

You choose a combination of head, torso, and leg plates, and stack them in this little tray together. Then put a piece of paper on top and rub over it with this black crayon thing to give you a nice comic-book-looking line drawing of your creation, which you can color appropriately.

I had totally forgotten how cool this thing is. My boy and I had a blast making superheroes, monsters, and freaky combinations of both. I loved listening to him think out loud while he decided which head he'd stick with which body and legs.

His best one used the three-eyed alien head with the Frankenstein-monster's torso, and the spindly little alien legs with the tail. It's on a planetscape background with one of those old-style upright sci-fi rockets parked behind it. He still has problems coloring in the lines, but does pretty well for his age I guess -- he used mostly greens and purple. He wanted some help coloring in the eyes, so I made them a bright yellow. The thing looks great now up on the wall in his room, staring back at you with those three big ol' lamplike eyes.

Man, they just don't make toys like that anymore.

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