Posted By Dan Greenfield on Dec 15, 2024 | 3 comments

TOYHEM! All toy-gether now!

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Welcome to TOYHEM! For the sixth straight holiday season, we’re bringing you a series of features and columns celebrating the toys of our youth, which often made for the best memories this time of year. Click here to check out the complete index of stories — and have a Merry Christmas, a Happy Chanukah and Happy Holidays! — Dan

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By JIM BEARD

I consider myself very fortunate to be able to say I have memories from when the Beatles were still together. I also remember having Beatles merchandise when it was new.

For me, spin-off stuff from the pop culture icons I love makes my world go ’round. As much as I love the core product, I can never get enough of all the ephemera that so often goes with it. The Beatles, my most favorite musical group of all time, is no exception to that.

I was born into a music-loving family in 1965, a banner year for the Fab Four, and though I was most likely rockin’ out to them in my crib, my musical memories of the band don’t really kick in until that dazzling day in late ’69 when my dad came home with Abbey Road. There were already Beatles discs flying around the house before that—my dad has 45s and, of course, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band—but I consider the group’s true final album “my” Beatles record, the one that was often set on the spindle just for me to listen to at the tender age of 4.

Oh, how I loved some of the tracks, especially, no surprise, the kid-oriented tunes of “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” and “Octopus’s Garden.” I honestly believed the “Rose and Valerie” who were heard to scream from the gallery in “Hammer” were my Aunt Rose and my mother Valerie, and the title character had to be Maxwell Smart from Get Smart, right?

I listened to this while I edited Jim’s piece. You should put it on while you read it! — Dan

As I said, the Beatles weren’t exactly strangers to me before that monumental album appeared on my shores because we already had Beatles stuff around, some of it from Yellow Submarine—no surprise there, either.

Today, I’m here not to celebrate Beatles music necessarily, but the incredible legacy of Beatles playthings… and I’m not talking about their multitude of female fans. I’m ready to twist and shout about all the fab and gear merch the band spawned and with a little help from my friend Dan Greenfield, I want to hold your hand as we tour 13 exciting examples of what the boys had to offer beyond the music. (And if you like the Monkees too, click here.)

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Beatles Model Kits (Revell, 1964). I love that in the middle of the heyday of car, tank, ship, and airplane model kits, there were four kits of a group of musicians. These were made even more special with some great box art and design, and those funky, fab box descriptions. “The Great McCartney,” indeed, but John as “The Kookiest One of All”? WTH?

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Flip Your Wig Game (Milton Bradley, 1964). The game play is nothing to speak of (just roll and move, basically), but the choice of photos, the player pieces, and that odd obsession with the lads’ hair make this worthwhile.

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Yeah Yeah Guitar (Mastro Industries, 1964). I doubt anyone wrote anything near to “Yesterday” on one of these plastic axes back in the day, but for what they’re worth now, you wouldn’t have had to.

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Beatles Dolls (Remco, 1964). Are you starting to get the idea that 1964 was a big year for Beatles bounty? As far as Fab Four caricatures go, these little guys are actually not bad compared to others of the time.

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Beatles Drum Set (Japanese, 1967). From what I dig, these were only made for Japanese consumption back in ’67 and go for a king’s ransom today. Rudimentary, sure, but I love the right logo on the bass drum and the cool image on the box it came in.

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Yellow Submarine Model Kit (MPC, 1968). And we finally come to something me and my sibs had back then. Funny thing was, I wasn’t sure who my dad bought it for exactly, or why neither my brother nor sister ever put it together.

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Beatles Halloween Costumes (Ben Cooper, 1964). So Ben Cooper, amiright? There’s just something so garish and grotesque about these that makes them so desirable. And what’s with that “suit jacket” pattern on it? What was BC trying to emulate?

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Yellow Submarine Blue Meanie Costume (Collegeville, 1968). If you have Beatles, you gotta have their baddies. Isn’t this wonderful? And it had a “Flasher Lite”! I don’t think I ever knew anyone anywhere when I was a kid who had a store-bought Halloween costume that had a light on it. So weird.

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Beatles Jigsaw Puzzles (NEMS Enterprises, Ltd., mid-1960s). Looks like there were four of these, as wild and woolly as you can imagine with their original artwork and crazy-ass-odd 340 pieces. Man, these things were so rough, but so gear.

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Go-Go Swingers Plastic Cake Topper Figures (Wilton, mid-1960s). “Is it them? Is it really the Rutles?” Well, no, it’s the Beatles… maybe. Oh, who’s kidding who? Wilton knew what they were doing. They knew they were making the Beatles no matter what name they sold them under. Too much circumstantial evidence. Case closed.

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Beatles Building Set (Mega, 2024). I didn’t want to get out of here without showing off just a few modern items—and it doesn’t get much cooler than this. I mean, the Ed Sullivan “arrows” stage? What? How fab is that?

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Hot Wheels Yellow Submarine (Mattel, 2021). We all live in a Yellow Submarine, and Hot Wheels made sure you always had it in your pocket. Full speed ahead, Mr. Barkley, full speed ahead!

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Magical Mystery Tour Bus (Corgi, 2021). Roll up, roll up to this one! How many actual toys or other merch have we ever seen from the ill-fated TV film? This gets my vote for the very best on this list. Just go with it—it’s waiting to take you away. (And Corgi in 2025 will be re-releasing its original 1960s Yellow Submarine!)

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MORE

— The Complete TOYHEM! Index of Features and Columns. Click here.

— CUDDLY TOYS: 13 Pleasing MONKEES Playthings. Click here.

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When JIM BEARD’s not editing and publishing through his two houses, Flinch Books and Becky Books, he’s pounding out adventure fiction with both original and licensed characters. In fact, he’s put words in the mouths of Luke Skywalker, Superman, Fox Mulder, Carl Kolchak, Peter Venkman and the Green Hornet… and lived to tell about it. His latest book is the newly edited and expanded re-release The Lemon Herberts: World Tour, available here.

MADNESS!

Beat it, Beatles! Move over, Monkees! Roll it up, Rolling Stones! Here comes the greatest, grooviest, gearest rock-and-roll group of all time: The Lemon Herberts!

Hot on the heels of their chart-topping hit album, Redwing Blackbird’s Summer Solstice Tea Party, the Lemon Herberts launch themselves on their very first world tour – and straight into more danger, more peril, more sheer adventure than they ever bargained for!

In seven kicky, pulpy, far-out fables, you’ll meet drummer Ellroy, guitarists Honor and Dilly, bassist Ally, and the gorgeously fab and grooviestly gear Her Majesty—trouble-magnets that even their long-suffering manager, the very proper Brighton Hawks, can’t hope to contain. Just ask the Lemon Herberts’ legion of screaming fans: they’re wild, they’re wonderful, they’re simply the most!

Herberts’ creator Jim Beard leads a band of groovy authors for a kookie collection that will have you tapping your toes and humming along as the Lemon Herberts conquer the world, shining their music into hearts both dark and light around the globe!

First published in 2015 as The Lemon Herberts, the book amazed readers with its pop culture punch. Now it makes its triumphant return in this newly edited and expanded edition, certain to entertain a whole new generation of Herberts fans!

Cover illustration and Design by Jeffrey Ray Hayes of Plasmafire Graphics. Interior Design and Formatting by Maggie Ryel. Edited by Jim Beard and John C. Bruening. Characters and Concept Created by Jim Beard.