Legions of Power, a toy lost to time
My mother wasn’t very good at buying brand name toys. She understood that they were toys and that they’d get lost, broken, or both. Of course, at the time I didn’t care, I wanted what I wanted just like any good kid. In this case, what I wanted was a Capsela building set, but what I got was Legions of Power. And somehow a few Legion of Power toys survived childhood and ended up in the Box-O-Toys.
Close but no cigar
I don’t remember wanting the Legions of Power toys, but I do remember wanting Capsela. But I’m also guessing I didn’t do a very good job explaining to my mother what Capsela was because I’m pretty sure I called it the “bubble toy.” And if you look at some of the parts of Legions of Power, they are round and the toy is also motorized like Capsela. So while it was far from Capsela, it ended up being a pretty awesome playset.
While the motorized parts don’t work today, I do remember jamming C batteries into the Legions of Power battery pack and having it roll around. Much like the LEGO Technics, Legions of Power had a few select parts that were gears. In the case of LoP these were just wheels, but with LoP you could build some wonderful sci-fi machines that would slowly make their way across the floor.
Endless sci-fi possibilities
Legions of Power was limited though since the parts were all pre-fab, a la Play Mobil, but they could be connected in endless combinations to create spaceships, missle launchers, radar jammers, soldier transports, space tankers, space cranes…and well, just about anything else you could think of. And when you throw in things like rubber tank treads, wheels and glow-in-the-dark parts, you had yourself a good toy.
The style of Legions of Power is actually really cool. The base parts were pretty generic, but the cockpits and special add-ons pieces are well molded and tough. This wasn’t a toy that would suffer from breakage, but rather straight up loss of parts. The plastic was thick and heavy. Most of the parts have little pegs by which you can attach smaller pieces, like guns and radar dishes. The main body parts were connected with pipe-like cuplinks. I remember them being a bitch to pull apart.
MORE: See more Legion of Power photos over in the Flickr set
While looking up Legions of Power it seems that in classic action toy style, there were two legions of power, the blue team (Star Legions), and the red team (Tech Dynasty). I only had the red team if I recall correctly…or at least, that’s all that’s left now. The box art for LoP was pretty awesome too, so while I don’t remember asking for LoP toys when I was little, seeing the box would have been enough to convince me.
The Legions of Power figures were not much. They were tiny little guys with a plastic body and rubber arms and legs. The arms move independently but the legs move together, so all this guy can do is stand or sit…and point. Of course, the figures for this toys are really secondary to the wonder of building huge spaceships and moon rovers. By the looks of the LoP pieces I have left and the playsets I discovered on-line, I’m guessing I had a few of the sets at one point in time. They were probably pretty cheap so I had a ton of parts and figures. Alas, today only one figure survives and only 75 pieces out of probably a couple hundred have been found.
The wrong toy that ended up being right
Looking back at this toy now, I can say that my mom made the right choice. While Capsela is what I wanted, it was really an plastic, electronic Erector set…more of a science learning toy than an action toy. Even though you could see the propellers gears working, what was in my head was probably more along the lines of the Legion of Power toys…cool, motorized sci-fi spaceships and guns. What more do you need?
Legions of Poooowwwer!
