Toyriffic: Galaxy Laser Team Lobstrosity

Another 'Holy Grail' enters my collection today as I am now the proud owner of an oversized Galaxy Laser Team Lobster Alien (aka The Lobstrosity!)

I have been a fan of The Lobstrosity ever since owning the original Galaxy Laser Team set released in the late seventies/early eighties. I no longer have any of my originals, but the figure on the right is a modern re-issue of those same figures I had as a kid. Tim Mee has been reissuing the Galaxy Laser Team in multiple colors over the past few years, and if you don't already have some I highly recommend them. The figure on the left is Zip - a freebie figure released in boxes of Screamin' Yellow Zonkers sometime in the mid eighties. I remember begging my Mom to get Screamin' Yellow Zonkers (of which I could have cared less for - except for the toys) in the hope that I would get Zip. I would have eaten fifty boxes of thast crap to get him, but thankfully he was in the first (and only) box we got! This Zip is not my original but one I found at the Flea Market a couple years ago.

And of course the silver figure in the center is the newest addition to my collection, a toy I did not even know existed when I was a kid! And of course he was found at the Flea Market this weekend for only a dollar!

A few years back I learned that the Galaxy Laser Team figures were bootlegged (in a larger format) in Mexico - maybe in the late eighties? - and ever since I have longed to add a large Lobstrosity to my collection. He was definitely a 'Holy Grail' on my wishlist, and a toy I had secretly hoped the Flea Market would eventually yield. Patience pays off, as I not only found him, but he is in miraculously great shape, and he's a spiffy silver and not some other boring color.

I not only love having so many Lobstrosities, but I love having three different versions of the same obscure no-name random alien creature. Just the fact that three versions of this character exist makes me happy. Because - WTF?!?! I mean there are still mainstream superheroes that have less than three versions of themselves in toy form, yet here's some random plastic alien creature who somehow beat the odds to rise from nothingness to stardom. The inclusion of Zip in the Screamin' Yellow Zonkers has always had me scratching my head, as there is no reason this alien design should exist in two separate toy lines (if you can even call a snack pack-in a 'toy line.') He's also a bit 'chibi' in his design, while the oversized Lobstrosity is just the original version scaled up.