The other day I was looking at my Monster in My Pocket toys and I thought it would be a good subject for a new Proof of Youth article. Today let's briefly look at some Monster in My pocket toys from the early 90s.
From what I recall, the first time I became aware of Monster in My Pocket was in an advertisement in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Magazine. I don't have the issue anymore to confirm this, but I'm fairly certain that was where I first saw them. First impressions of the figures from the advertisement had me thinking they were made out of squishy foam like the current Squish-Dee-Lish toys. They're actually strong but very pliable rubber, and they've held up well over the past 28 years.
The toys came out in 1990 when I was in 4th grade. They were super popular among my friends, and it was not uncommon to see us wearing fanny packs stuffed full of our favorite monsters. We did a bit of trading back and forth, but it was not common to do so because of the nature of the way the figures were packaged. If you bought every color 25 point monster, you ended up with the entire set and all their color variations.
Eventually the figures were released in neon colors. At the time I felt that these versions were cheap and I preferred the original ones. Looking back now, I really wish I would have bought more neon colored ones because neon and the 90s go hand in hand. Looking online at the neon ones now I realize that they're actually a lot cooler.
The Toys
There really isn't much you can get relating to Monster in My Pocket save a few odds and ends. If you're really curious about what all is out there, this is a great site you can visit with a wealth of information. There was a four issue comic book series from Harvey Comics released in 1991. I owned two of the four issues back in the day but have since purged them from my collection. There was also an NES game released by Konami in early 1992 that's actually pretty good. I wrote an article comparing the monsters from the game to the toys around the time I first launched this site.
Today
Today I think you would be hard-pressed to find any Monster in My Pocket representation in every day life. I went on eBay to see how much they were going for because I wanted to get some more of the neon ones, and I was shocked to see how expensive they were. I thought they would be about $15 or so for a big random lot of them. Instead, I found individual monsters going for $15 each.
In any case, I'm very happy I still own the toys I had from my childhood, because re-buying all of these monsters would cost a fortune. If you are interested in picking up some, I absolutely encourage you to do just that. They're really cool little toys and they'll bring you a lot of enjoyment.
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