When I was a kid, I was proud owner of the Planet of the Apes Amsco Cardboard playset.
This "Adventure Set" was selling at Toys R Us for one dollar in the late 1970s, as I recall, and I sprung for it.
I will never forget this image ingrained on my brain: there were maybe a dozen such playsets stacked on a clearance shelf.
To this day, I wish I could travel back in time and buy all of them.
Regardless, this was a glorious, highly-detailed set that combined several incarnations of the Apes saga.
For instance, there was Zira and Cornelius's house on one side of the set, with a view out the window to the Forbidden Zone and the half-sunken-in-the-sand Statue of Liberty.
On the opposite side of the set, there was the grand (two story!) buried cathedral where the mutants worshiped the Alpha and Omega Bomb. Here it was called the "Cave of the Doomsday Bomb."
Other locales recreated for this toy included "Ape Headquarters," "Villagers Hut," "Underground Ruins" and a "Jail Cage with Moving Doors."
The set even included cardboard "figures" of Virdon and Burke - the heroes of the TV series, not the film series.
A small cardboard version of the ANSA Icarus spaceship seen in all the Apes films was another item in the set.
Although I was already into Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica and Star Trek by the time I got my hands on this set, the Amsco Apes diorama held my attention for weeks, perhaps months. I loved that toy.
Unfortunately, it did not survive my adolescence (and my messy bedroom closet...) and disappeared permanently somewhere during the dark years of the mid-1980s.
Lo and behold, super collector Jeff Locklear still owns his Planet of the Apes Amsco Cardboard Playset and sent me scans of it in 2008. Since I no longer own this toy, these photos are the next best thing
This "Adventure Set" was selling at Toys R Us for one dollar in the late 1970s, as I recall, and I sprung for it.
I will never forget this image ingrained on my brain: there were maybe a dozen such playsets stacked on a clearance shelf.
To this day, I wish I could travel back in time and buy all of them.
Regardless, this was a glorious, highly-detailed set that combined several incarnations of the Apes saga.
On the opposite side of the set, there was the grand (two story!) buried cathedral where the mutants worshiped the Alpha and Omega Bomb. Here it was called the "Cave of the Doomsday Bomb."
Other locales recreated for this toy included "Ape Headquarters," "Villagers Hut," "Underground Ruins" and a "Jail Cage with Moving Doors."
The set even included cardboard "figures" of Virdon and Burke - the heroes of the TV series, not the film series.
Although I was already into Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica and Star Trek by the time I got my hands on this set, the Amsco Apes diorama held my attention for weeks, perhaps months. I loved that toy.
Unfortunately, it did not survive my adolescence (and my messy bedroom closet...) and disappeared permanently somewhere during the dark years of the mid-1980s.
Lo and behold, super collector Jeff Locklear still owns his Planet of the Apes Amsco Cardboard Playset and sent me scans of it in 2008. Since I no longer own this toy, these photos are the next best thing
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