Hello and welcome to another edition of Toys on a Tuesday, where members of The Outerhaven share their love of toys from and past, present, and future.
In this edition of Toys on a Tuesday, we go back once again into the nostalgic and toy/cartoon central 1980s, where the company FILMATION brought out 65 episodes of a cartoon that has long since been relegated to quiet legend. Today we talk about that semi-forgotten Indian Spirit Warrior from New Texas (deep in space) Marshall Bravestarr and the toys that come with one of my biggest regrets as a kid and an adult.
For those of you unfamiliar with Bravestarr, here are the basics. The year is 1987 and running on a high from their very successful He-Man and the Masters of the Universe and She-Ra: Princess of Power cartoon series and toy lines, the cartoon company FILMATION bring in a new property to make a cartoon out of and also market a series of toys with. The concept was a simple mix of Science Fiction Space Adventure and a Western Action Series. Those two aspects combined to create Bravestarr: A Space Marshall of the city of Fort Kerium on the planet of New Texas, somewhere around about 1957 million light years from Earth. The Planet of New Texas is mostly barren desert, with only a few tribes of native people living on the land as well as a bunch of mole-people called Prairie People who mine the planet’s most valuable resource: Kerium, a red rock that is used as both currency and as fuel for machines and space ships.
New Texas is a booming mining planet, and of course, that brings about people who don’t want to work hard and just want to steal from people from profit aka Outlaws. The leader of the toughest gang in New Texas is Tex-Hex, a wisp almost skeleton type man with a lot of white hair. He commands his gang to do anything they can to disrupt the town of Fort Kerium and also steal the precious rocks for themselves.
Luckily Marshall Bravestarr is there to protect the town and the planet with his mystical native powers. Bravestarr has the “eye of a hawk” that allow him to see great distances easily, the “ears of a wolf” allow him to hear cries for help from the other side of the planet, “strength of the bear” allows Bravestarr to out-muscle anyone with the strength of a grizzly bear, “Speed of the puma” is a speed boost that allows Bravestarr to travel great distances on foot with ease. While Bravestarr does have all these powers at his command, he is also a great sharpshooter but prefers to stay as a mediator in most things, trying to get both sides to settle differences peacefully… Plus he has a cyborg horse called Thirty-Thirty that talks and loves to shoot things with his gun that he calls “Sarah Jane”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJ46aKjB9oE
Each episode contained some sort of message at the end of it all that was related to that day’s adventure. This was done a lot in cartoons at the time to get around FCC guidelines about shows that were created to sell things to kids. As long as it had some sort of educational message, then you could get away with it all being a 24-minute toy commercial. But at the time Bravestarr was tackling issues like racism, prejudice, sexism, family violence and the plight of the native people long before the term “Social Justice Warrior” was ever a thing, and the lead was a representation of the Native American: Now that is progressive beyond its years.
If you want to watch Bravestarr, for free, FILMATION has released a lot of the episodes from the TV series on Youtube via the Official Bravestarr Channel.
So that’s Bravestarr in a nutshell, so let’s take a look at all those wonderful pieces of plastic that we all wanted as fans of the show. Check out the slideshow below for all that I can remember about the characters from the series.
So there you have it, all of the Bravestarr crew and the playsets to go with them. Now I did mention at the beginning that I have some personal regrets to do with these toys. Well, would you believe that during the time that Bravestarr was popular, I owned a full set of the figures and playsets? Well obviously I did or I wouldn’t be speaking about them would I? So the regret with these toys comes from the simple fact that out of all the toys that were sold when I was a kid, these are the ones I regret seeing sold, or sold myself depending on the story. But at the same time, the end result was worth the regret… kinda.
You see, back in the early 1990s, my mother and I participated in a community center second-hand sale. This event was put on by the local community center to give people a chance to offload some bits and pieces laying around their homes to the local community. One, of the things that went up for sale, was my entire Bravestarr set. Now the point of contention was between me and my mother because according to her I actually wanted to sell the set at the time as I had gotten bored of it. Now I remember it differently as I was forced to choose between the Bravestarr set and my collection of Transformers or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I wasn’t allowed to have that many toys at the time and was forced to sell off a lot of items that today would be considered collector’s items.
Story versions aside the result was the same: The set sold. I’m not too sure how much it went for, the only thing I remember was that the mother who bought the set had a child who was in the hospital sick with cancer and he was a fan of Bravestarr. So in the end, a much more worthy child ended up loving the Bravestarr set until he passed. In the end it was worth the sacrifice to help a dying child spend time with his favorite hero as he battled the biggest battle there is.
Sorry to end on such a downer of a story, but as much as I regret the sale now as I’m a selfish man-child who doesn’t want to pay $60+ to get his toys back, I still know I did the right thing…
….Next week on Toys on a Tuesday: Keith might finally post his Gunpla article.