TFARCHIVE FORUMS

Anyone remember this thing? Great big white spaceship thing, split in half to reveal this armada of themed patrols of spacey stuff! The blue one was underwater stuff. Little breakable plastic men with the articulation of 1986 Transformers.

Awesome.

No, but I remember something called Manta Force which fits your description. [/git]

Ah, bliss. They showed us a video about the toy biz at primary school one time to get us to design our own toyline (I'm trying to remember ever doing anything resembling schoolwork at primary school and drawing a huge blank) - the product that the video centered around was MANTA Force. Rock on!

http://www.mantaforce.co.uk/manta.html

Yay! I had the big ' Manta Force'ship with all the little ships and men.

Wasn't there a story which involved the purple little men stealing a hovercraft thing from the littleyellow/white/blue men. The leaders were gold and silver little men and they had to encourage the little men to steal back their vehicles on a far away planet?

There were fighters, buggies, bikes, submarines....nostalgia overload!!!!!!!

I also had the fortress with the working cannons and a space age version of a scud missile a big long truck with some massive spring loaded double mortar bomber thing.

I am proud to say my Manta Force troopers served with distinction in the epic TF/Action Force/Battle Beasts/Muscle Men/Army Men conflicts of my youth, good lads the lot of em

There's one on there called "the Snatch"

Originally posted by Wildrider


I am proud to say my Manta Force troopers served with distinction in the epic TF/Action Force/Battle Beasts/Muscle Men/Army Men conflicts of my youth, good lads the lot of em

Yeh, they weren't a bad size for Transformers, were they? I mean, when you consider Transformers were wildly out of scale with each other, they looked alright next to Quig or someone. Mind, they were always evil, because there were twice as many Autobots as Decepticons. Or they were Autobot-allied cannon fodder, meaning you didn't have to kill off any of the Transformers you liked, thus allowing emotion and pathos to seep into a harmless blastathon.

I remember Manta Force (there could have been something called Manat Force ) did try to do a sort of villain thing with some guys called the Stinkoids or some crap, who came with chambers for gassing Manta Force men. Their sets also included these little meltified MF men

I distinctly remember the commercial suicide of the whole line... you could buy all the patrols seperately, or get them in a great big ****ing ship with more men than you could count. All you had to do was hold out until Christmas, and Mum and Dad loved the way the ship also encouraged you to tidy it all a way neatly at the end.

They did invade Legotown at one point, but the fact their limbs clicked perfectly into Lego mens' hands meant they spent much of the subsequent campaign being swung over the heads of Governor Broadside's enthusiastic garrison.

I want one now Yay for OCD!

Still got a base set I haven't thrown out yet, I think, if you want it... dunno how complete it is, mind...

I get the feeling Manta Force wouldn't pass health & safety regs these days.

It's funny how on some days you could really fashion a decent battle out of the mix match of your toys as a kid.

If I could get a decent scenario in my head, I'd use Battle Beasts as the leaders of the Muscle Men fighting valiantly from the Manta Ray fortress against the Decepticon/Gobot controlled Metroplex!

Meanwhile Brad from 'Mask' would team up with Merman from 'MOTU' and lead my SAS Action force troopers in the hope of gaining independence on the bed. (I used to read 'Battle' and they had ideas for making action force skis out of cocktail sticks and lolly sticks! Quality!)

or whatever.......

Then I could play for hours showering my warriors with saliva as imaginary munitions impacted on intricately prepared fortififcation with appropiate "Poooowccchssss!" noises.

Then some days you'd get it all out and think.

'Sod it I'm off to play on the Spectrum!'

I had this awesome truck thing, that had an open topped hopper type thing that you put little BB pellets in, then turned a handle and they'd all shoot out of the cannon. It was quality.

And I had the big white ship. There were seats for all the little men around the outside I think, and a cockpit for the gold boss.

Did anyone have the big red bad guy ship? I never got that.

-Ss

Originally posted by Brendocon
Ah, bliss. They showed us a video about the toy biz at primary school one time to get us to design our own toyline (I'm trying to remember ever doing anything resembling schoolwork at primary school and drawing a huge blank) - the product that the video centered around was MANTA Force. Rock on!

Yeah, we were shown that video as well, no doubt taped of BBC2 onto Betamax. My First and Middle Schools (yep, we have a three shchool system round these parts, don't ask me why) continued to use Betamax well into the 90's (and possibly still do) on the grounds that the machines were expensive to buy in the first place gawd damn it.

i never owned any Manta Force, but I remember being very excited by the sight of the boxes in Owen and Owen.