Page 11 - Volume32Issue2R

SHINING THE BRASS

(THE SPEED DEMONS STORY) 1-14-18

By Bob Rosas

In 1985 a request came from the marketing department to
come up with something that especially appealed to the kids.
Larry and I, after much scratching heads and doodling came
up with an idea. Kids like scary stuff and scary to them was
dragons, gargoyles, dinosaurs, demons and insects out of
this came, Cargoyle, Double Demon, Turboa and Vampyra
. For the 1987 line we did Phantom Machine, Shark Cruiser,
Zombot and for the 1988 line Rodzilla and Ratmobile. We
didn’t name them, we had a department that did that. We
could suggest a name and sometimes it would go though and
be final.

Did you know that these are off and on still in the line after
32 years. I left Mattel in 1989 and I can still go into Target or
another store as see them on the pegs. The current designers
have even expanded on them with a stegosaurus and others.

Management had decided that when our ‘scary’ models came
out of production,, they were expected to work on the sets.
How were we to know that. Once again we had to revert to
making product size brass models to test on the tracks and
sets 9 to 10 months before the diecast and plastic molds were
making production parts. Once the 4 times size patterns were
done we had to have a model maker or an outside vendor
pantograph bodies, chassis and sometimes interiors in brass.
This was a painstaking process that took over a hundred man
hours to make. These are the ones we tested and then paint-
ed and had hand painted tampo put on them for catalog and
toy commercials as well as toy fair. Most of them had copies
made in wax and then duplicates made in brass using the lost
wax process. This how we did the copies for the Crack Ups as
well.

Well they did it and fortunately with tweaking in the molds
(we added or removed weight for performance) it worked.
I titled this story shining the brass. That’s what I was doing
when I got the idea for this story. Here are some pictures of
some of the brass parts pantographed all those years ago.

NEWSLETTER • ISSUE 2 11