I had two unusual figures I remembered playing with nearly non-stop in the 1970's and 80's. They were 8" tall and each had a battery-operated light-up feature. One was a cross between the Gorn (from one of my favorite Star Trek episodes ever) and a Sleestak from The Land of the Lost. He was a green lizard-thing with a lightbulb in his chest. The other figure had a blue body and greyish-silver armor. His lightbulb was in his shield. Those two battled one another in my imagination for ages, but I honestly never knew what they really were. I thought back about them many times, but wasn't sure how to go about discovering their true identities. Flash forward many years to my re-discovery of the green guy in storage in my parent's house, where a close inspection revealed the stamp, "Hasbro 1977" on its back. I immediately plugged that bit of information into ebay and, voila, he became GOR King of the Terrons from Hasbro's Super Joe G.I. Joe line! His nemesis (my hero) was revealed to be "The Shield" from the same line.
My Gor has managed the passage of time pretty well, all things considered. The battery compartment on his back is missing, and I doubt the light feature works any longer, but nothing else is broken. He's accumulated a bit of dust and such, but he's otherwise fully functional as a bit of childhood nostalgia returned to my toy shelf.
The sculpt is pretty basic, with most of the finer detail apparent on his chest. His other scales are broad and fairly shallow. The face on the rubbery head retains its villainous look these many years later. The joints are extremely loose so I have him suspended in a doll stand, where he will remain as a fond remembrance of a simpler time, when play was play and a toy could exist outside the support of a major movie or television tie-in.
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