Throwback Thursday: 1985 Hasbro Catalog!

It's been almost a month since our last Throwback Thursday, so today I though I'd show something the public rarely gets to see - a dealer catalog. 

Specifically the 1985 Hasbro Dealer Catalog. For those that don't know what a dealer catalog is, it's a manufacturer's catalog of items that haven't been mass produced yet. Sometimes the items are still in the prototype stage, so you get to see what an item may look like but after production, it may change. 

While the cover isn't very Muppety, like your moma always said, don't judge a dealer catalog by it's cover!

For inside there are two pages of Fraggle Rock items, including plush dolls of Red, Mokey, Wembley, and Gobo Fraggle, as well as fan favorites Flange and Wingnut Doozer!

As you can see the spread also features Fraggle and Doozer PVC.

The reason I brought up the fact that some items may be still in the prototype stage, is that while the Fraggel plush look fantastic the photo, the actual plush dolls that landed on store shelves looked more like this:

 

Not horrible, but definitely not as great looking as shown in the catalog. Mokey especially drew the short straw and her eye placement made her look like she was staring off in to space cross eyed.

To make the matters worse, the back of the box used pictures of the prototype figures. So costumers could clearly see the differences in quality from the pictures shown to what your actually buying. 

Thankfully the Doozer plush fared much better in the transition from prototype to stores.

The the catalog also featured The Muppet Babies, fresh off the screen from The Muppets Take Manhattan and their new hit animated TV show.

Most of these fared better then the Fraggles. 

Baby Kermit and Baby Piggy looked pretty much the same.

However, Baby Fozzie's eyes weren't as focused,

and Baby Rowlf went from being a very dark brown to a more medium to light brown, which I think was a major improvement. 

 Again, the prototypes were used on the back of the packaging:

Remember, next time you're at the store not everything makes a transition from concept/prototype to the store.