Monday, June 6, 2022

Create Exciting Color Pictures with Light!

I'm a well-known meanie when it comes to the brandification (and kiddie-fication) of Dungeons & Dragons by TSR in the mid-1980s. For that reason, I apologize in advance for my instinctive disdain of products like the Dungeons & Dragons Lite-Brite Picture Refill. Bear in mind that, in 1984, when this was released, I was almost 15 years old and at the height of my adolescent snobbery. That 15 year-old still slumbers within my middle-aged shell. When I look at images like this one, it's hard to keep him in check.

On first glance, I wondered why Bozo the Clown was pictured on the front of this thing. As I looked closer, I realized that the kids were in fact creating an image of Strongheart the Paladin, but I can't be the only one who had to squint to recognize him, can I?

There were apparently a dozen Lite-Brite patterns included in this refill set, all of which are depicted below, though they're admittedly hard to discern. Most of them look to depict characters and monsters from the LJN D&D toyline, like the aforementioned Strongheart. More interesting, I think, is that Hasbro now owns Lite-Brite, alongside Dungeons & Dragons (and just about everything else I remember from my childhood).

10 comments:

  1. Is this your "Stranger Things (S4)" tie-in post? ;)

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    1. Does Lite-Brite figure into it somehow? I've never watched the show.

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    2. 4th season (the newest) has a subplot about the Satanic Panic with everyone misunderstanding the D&D club as some kind of satanic cult because of the news.

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    3. No spoilers, but yep! It plays a role in one of the later episodes (I'd never seen one before last night, so this is an odd coincidence, especially given the show's D&D tie-ins).

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  2. Now I have the Saturday morning Lite-Brite commercial jingle running through my head. Why do I remember it? Thanks a lot, James!

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    Replies
    1. My head is filled with even more useless "knowledge" than that ...

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  3. Well we are probably a year year and a half away from Litebrite the Movie

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  4. You don't need snobbery (adolescent or other) to despise stuff like this.

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