Ecto-Glow Winston!

Holy crap, am I actually updating the site?

In my defense, it's been busy lately. I've had articles written about me in the news paper, been to a showing of Ghostbusters every day for the last 5 days so far, and been working, so it's nice that I finally found a little time to review something on here.

Gearing up for October 1st. That starts Halloween around here. I am going to be doing a "31 Ghosts in 31 Days" countdown. I've been slowly prepping that, so there has at least been some shred of effort being put into this site, most of which you are not yet able to see.

Now that we got the boring "where the hell have you been" stuff out of the way, let's talk toys!

Ecto-Glow Winston was kind of a big deal for me to own. As far as the actual Ghostbusters (Egon, Ray, Peter, Winston, Janine, and Louis) go Ecto-Glow Winston was the very last one I needed.

I was super excited to buy him off of the evil machine empire called Ebay. While I typically hate the hell out of that site, sometimes I must use it to fill in small gaps in my collection.

Now, I know you're thinking that the whole Ecto Glow concept is a bit silly. You're not wrong. Of course it's crazy.

At this point in the Real Ghostbusters toy line, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were dominating toy shelves around the world. Ghostbusters, in the eyes of many kids, had lost their luster. 

The big shiny new super cool Ninja Turtles were where the toy market was at, and would continue to be until a few years later when Power Rangers took over.

The Ecto Glow line was Kenner's last attempt to keep our heroes relevant.

Large quantities of these figures were not produced, sadly, making them much harder to find than their earlier produced counterparts.

Our pal, Winston, comes equipped with his Ecto Glow uniform, as well as a mask and Proton Pack to bust the Ecto Glow Wrapper Ghost.

I'm seriously trying to think how glow in the dark equipment could fit into catching ghosts. As silly and strange as it may sound, here is what I came up with:

Ghosts are running amok in New York City, destroying everything in sight. A select few were electrocuted by a downed power line, causing a major power outage in the city.

Still with me here? Yeah, I know, stupid, but keep going.

Ready for action, the Ghostbusters are equipped with their all new, top of the line, glow in the dark uniforms and Proton Packs to take care of the power munching spooks.

Again, stupid, but really the only scenario, save for "everybody jumped into a vat of glow in the dark goo" that really could work.

I should note that on the back of the card, the unreleased Ecto-Glow Copter is advertised, meaning Kenner was all into doing it until some big wig saw sales numbers and decided to totally pull the plug on production. Had they held out for another few months, I'm sure we would all still be playing with Ecto-Glow Copters today.

It was clearly a rushed judgement to pull the line on the series as several other items were in the process of being made, such as Egon's Lab and the Backpack Heroes set, among a few other things.

It was a great run for Kenner and The Real Ghostbusters, but it had to come to an end at some point.

I have always wished that the Trendmasters Extreme Ghostbusters Toys would have caught on a lot more along with the cartoon. That could have been the big revival for the Ghostbusters, but I think the 90's wasn't ready for it as the Ninja Turtles were already being revamped to a live action show, and Power Rangers were starting to plateau in popularity. 

While everything big that we have grown up with has been remade at some point (Ie: 2 more Ninja Turtles cartoons and a recent movie, Power Rangers is still on TV, Thundercats, Masters of the Universe, etc) Ghostbusters has yet to really get that type of treatment.

I think if they were to release a new cartoon, based on the same characters, they would do pretty well with it. I can definitely see it being a contender for kids' attention.

And of course, a new cartoon series would mean new toys.

A boy can dream, can't he?