Glyos System Influences: Air Raiders
So just where did the Glyos System (Onell Design) come from? What influenced the creation of the toys and the setting? Well, Glyos System Influences is a speculative series in which I look at toys of the past and try to connect them to today’s Glyos System action figure series.
Today’s look at past toylines that I feel had an effect/influence on the Glyos System focuses on Hasbro’s adventure toy series of 1987, Air Raiders. Now this isn’t the first time I’ve mentioned the series at battlegrip.com — see Airlandia? Yeah, Toys in the 80s Sucked as Much as They were Awesome — but it has been a long time since we last looked at the series and at the time I didn’t even bother discussing how the action figure designs appear to have affected the look of the Glyos System.
At right you can see one of the tiny — 1.5-inch tall — action figures that was part of the Air Raiders series. Now that’s even smaller than the Glyos System standard (hell, that’s even smaller than the Starcom figures I mentioned yesterday), but the character design has that sci-fi, space explorer suit vibe that we get from the Glyans and the hard edged look that’s carried throughout the entire Glyos System line.
And if we go all of the way back to the pre-production days of the line then I’ve gotta say that the Voss — see the second photo in this post at the Glyos Transmission Web Log — looks like he was born in the same insane world that created the Air Raiders figure shown here. The swoopy, curvy lines of both designs go well together while the basic articulation on both figures really helps tie them together.
Learn More, Children
I’ll admit that my chattering here does nothing to teach you about the Air Raiders series. For actual information you’ll want to visit:
But I will say that diving into this old line has me looking at ebay. I kinda want to get a couple of the old Air Raiders vehicles now so that I can get a close look at them. After all, some of those designs are way cooler than you would expect from an obscure and forgotten series of the 80s.
Another awesome toy line from way back! I can’t for the life of me tell you what set(s) I had, but if I remember right the little figures had little grooves that went from the back of the heel to the middle of the foot. I have no idea if they were supposed to work like pegholes so they’d stay fixed to vehicles or what, but I remember carrying these guys in my pocket on a regular basis. Nice!
Something I’ve noticed about the pre-Glyos mini-figures that Matt made is that several of them have the same notch wesitron mentioned in the heel.
I think the only set that actually actively used the notch for a peg-hole was the good guy’s base.