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Tuesday, March 06, 2007

Mego Aqualad Doll - 1977

sgHappy Birthday Aqualad!

According to the 1976 DC Comics Calendar, today is Garth's birthday, so I thought today would be the perfect day to post this, one of coolest and most-expensive items I've got in the collection.

This was part of Mego's 1977 (coincidence?) Teen Titans line, which consisted of Garth here, Speedy, Kid Flash, and Wonder Girl. Why Mego thought to make a Kid Flash when they never made a Flash is a riddle for the ages.

I found this little beauty in the late, lamented (*sniff*) toy shop Toyrareum, that was located in Ocean City, NJ. During the spring and summer I would take nice, relaxing drives
with the top down on the car there to see what new stuff they had and drop a couple of bucks. They always had more cool stuff than I could ever afford, so my trips there were always an exercise in priority rearrangement--let's see, I really want the carded Shazam!, but I can't get that today. But the loose Star Trek Gorn is cheaper, which means I could take it home now...

sg


To me, Aqualad has mostly suffered from the same fate as his mentor--he always seemed to be written to be under the strain of terrible emotional turmoil, which made him just thrilling to read about, let me tell you. I don't think a lot of kids want to read about feelings of inadequacy--they wanna see their superheroes kick butt, so poor ol' Garth always seemed like a big wet blanket.

Over time, they've developed him into a hero called Tempest, and he seems more like Aquaman's equal now, like Nightwing is to Batman.

But all of that doesn't matter--this Mego doll is the coolest, and I'm glad I found it at Toyrareum when I did. When I saw it, standing there in the glass case, I knew I had to have it. I have yet to find a carded Aqualad (I've never even seen a picture of one), and as you can see from the original tag which, for some reason, I still have:

sg


...a loose one was expensive enough.

Happy Birthday, Aqualad!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

An Aqualad from Ocean City...how appropriate!!!

Aqualad is the one regular WGSH figure I don't have. Still on the hunt for one....

Happy Birthday Garth!!!

Chris

rob! said...

>> An Aqualad from Ocean City...how appropriate!!!<<

wow, i never even thought about that!

Scurvy said...

Happy Birthday Garth. I'm looking forward to your return to the title this year.

Cool find by the way!