When you stop and think about it, the truth is that Mr. Potato Head is actually a dress-up doll, one that can be enjoyed equally by both boys and girls without the binaries of ‘this is what a girl should play with’ or ‘this is appropriate for boys’. The gender labeling of the toys themselves are even a curious misnomer.

Although Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head exist as separate models, Hasbro’s own product catalogue labels several accessory packs that would be stereotypically considered “female”, such as the Parts and Pieces Glamour Spud, the Mermaid Spud, and the Parts and Pieces Princess set, as being suitable for your Mr. Potato Head. Maybe Mr. Potato Head enjoys dress-up a little too much?

Mr. Potato Head’s feminine side. Shown are Glamour Spud and Parts and Pieces Princess Spud.

Jokes aside, the ungendered quality of today’s tater is actually a result of years of product evolution and changing safety regulations.

The original Mr. Potato Head kit actually was gendered, because the 1952 kit consisted of a plastic body with a huge spike for a neck that would be attached to the fruit. You would push a potato or apple or whathadyou onto the spike, creating the figure’s base, and then poke the eyes, nose, mouth and ears into the fruit to complete the toy. When Mrs. Potato Head’s kit came out in 1953 she actually had a different body mold, with a rounder figure, feminine shoes and a dress. They were the toy celebrity couple before Barbie and Ken, who didn’t reach the market until 1959 and 1961 respectively – Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head were even featured in LIFE magazine!

Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head, circa 1953 – note distinct gender molds for the bodies.

Naturally, as the years went on, a toy with a 3-inch spike on it became unkosher to give to little kids. In 1964 the equation was swapped around – both due to government regulations and possibly as a response to criticisms of ‘food wastage’ – a brown plastic ‘potato head’ was made by Hasbro. All the points of the pieces were rounded off, but the two distinct Mr. and Mrs. bodies retained slightly smaller pointy necks.

In the 1960’s, the first commercial tie-in packs appeared: Donald Duck, Bozo the Clown and a special Mr. Donut Head cross-promotion with Dunkin Donuts. Of course, the parts for each of these were all interchangeable. Primary accessories from the 60’s were Wild West, Masquerade, Circus, On The Farm, On the Railroad and On The Moon. Each came with a cardboard backdrop and a variety of strange pieces, some of which were repeated between sets. Some were intended for use with real vegetables rather than the plastic potato head, reflecting the crossover between versions.

From this era, the Picnic Pals are a quite obscure spinoff line, not well known today and difficult to locate.

Picnic Pals circa 1966.

In the 1970’s, the line began to diminish. The plastic potato head was darkened by several shades, and at this point the original body attachment disappeared entirely, replaced by just two simple plastic feet. Additionally the holes on the potato head became standardized to slots. Mrs. Potato Head disappeared from the line in 1973, no longer having a separate form of her own – she was only an add-on pack. She would not return as a separately labeled item until 1992.

Only a handful of kits – the Fire Chief, Sheriff and Lady packages – worked with the 70’s model potato. The strangest and rarest of all Mr. Potato Head accessory packs also hail from this era – the Fish, Bug and Bird sets. These sets include wobbly legs, wings, antennae and psychedelic-style beaks.

Literally the only available picture online of the Mr. Potato Fish, Bird and Bug sets.

The tater we know today took shape over the 80’s. The plastic body was retooled again, first to have attached arms and later detachable arms that could bend. A trap door backside was added to let kids store unused pieces inside the potato. It retained a slot for feet, and the slots on the body had been returned to peg-holes. The potato was now the entirety of the toy rather than one component. Kids were once more free to stick arms in ears and eyes in mouths. Finally, the signature pipe of the figure that had been a staple of the line since its beginning was swapped out for a pair of running shoes in support of the American Cancer Society’s “Great American Smoke Out”. (He also received a Presidential Sports Award in 1992!)

Accessory packs from the 80’s were somewhat thin on the ground except for the Bucket of Parts released in 1987 and the Super Silly Mr. Potato Head bucket in 1989 which featured muscle arms and crazy hair in extremely bright colors.

The release of Toy Story in the 90’s provided an explosion of attention for the tater. With Don Rickels providing the voice of the cynical spud in the box office smash, Pixar’s inclusion of the toy sent Mr. Potato Head skyrocketing in popularity, and a massive amount of new accessory kits and packs emerged. Some significant packs from this time were the Sheriff, Tool Belt, “Prima Spuderina” (ballerina), Pirate, Santa and “Cottontail” (rabbit, with a pull-on pink suit with ears!).

A clever variant of the figure from 1992 was the Soft Stuff Potato Head, which was a plush toy with Velcro-backed parts. Even more than the peg-version, these parts could be attached to literally any point of the soft body. Meanwhile, it’s possible that the re-release of Mrs. Potato Head as a separate character in 1992 was done in response to and preparation for the 1999 release of Toy Story 2, where the character was prominently featured.

As of 2011, there are over 100 separate team-specific versions of Mr. Potato Head, representing collegiate and pro teams. In this last decade the line has seen a tsunami of cross-merchandising- a real boom for collectors. There’ve been Star Wars spuds, Indiana Jones spuds, Transformers spuds, Spider-Man spuds, Elvis and KISS spuds… and in late 2011 there are plans to release Star Trek spuds too! Some special and cool new variants have emerged, like the “Silly Suitcases” for each model with over 40 mix and match accessories and body parts. There are even pets- the Spud Buds- a dog and cat.

Art from PPW Toys depicting planned Star Trek Mr. Potato Head licensed toys for late 2011.

Underneath all the ears, noses and funky plastic eyes, the Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head bodies are now the same simple plastic shape with slight color variations. There once was a meaningful difference between the two, but that’s no longer true. Kits that work for one also work for the other. Moms and dads concerned about gender stereotyping in their toys might like a Potato Head as an inoffensive alternative to the Barbie/Hot Wheels dichotomy. Boys and girls get exactly the same experience with the toy. The kits are ridiculously low priced- as low as $4 for some accessory packs and around $20 for a Silly Suitcase with full figure included. At these prices, and with a huge variety of dressing options to boot, everyone can and should have a spud of their very own!

Cassandra, when not writing about media and randomness at her blog, cassandrapoe.com, prefers her nongendered potatoes dressed with butter and garlic.

Want more on the classics? Check these articles out:

-The History of Rainbow Brite

-Drench With Power: A Super Soaker Retrospective

-Throw Your Hands Up and Your Hands Back: A PEZ Retrospective

A sneak peek at what awaits.

Here at Toy-TMA, we’re all about learning. We’re also all about fun. And we’re definitely all about mixing the two together. But sometimes it can be a challenge combining a game that people enjoy playing with a means to learn something since kids view education like rats view poison. I have a solution, or rather my father does: True Quest.

The First To Break The Scoop

What is True Quest? Well, you haven’t heard of it yet because it doesn’t exactly exist in this time period (people in the future are all about True Questing, yo). I, however, have played this game and find myself qualified to teach its gospel to the masses both because I have a direct connection to the game and also because I assume I know everything (probably because I do).

True Quest is a card game my dad invented for between 2-10 players or one kid who talks to himself and his parents are okay with it. The basic principle around True Quest is to learn about history in the form of making your friends look like fools by beating their stupid faces into the ground…with history!

History is Written By the Victors

Dang, you need some rules to understand this one, right? I forget that this isn’t like Scrabble or Monopoly where everyone has a pretty good handle on the rules already. So in True Quest you have the players sit down and decide it’s time to play True Quest (or surprise them with history to their FACES). For games involving 4-6 players you’ll want two decks, and 7-10 players will want three decks. At that point the game gets nuts, but so much fun (that one special kid with eight decks and no one else around has the most fun).

Each deck contains 50 Quester cards (these are characters from history), 10 Quest cards (major accomplishments from history), and 10 Change History cards (major events from history). Let’s say that an example of a Quester is Abraham Lincoln, a Quest is to build the Great Pyramids, and a Change History card is the Black Plague (a dangerous card that sends all Questers back to the history book, so kind of like a Blue-Eyes White Dragon).

Artist's rendition of the time Abraham Lincoln and myself invented written language.

At the start of the game each player is randomly dealt five cards. Someone decides to go first (by the diplomatic means of screaming “Me first!”), and draws a card. A player can only have five cards in his hand at the end of a turn, so he either has to play a card or discard one before his turn is over. So this hypothetical first player draws the “Build the Great Pyramids” Quest card and decides to play it. This is his quest. The card states that it is worth 40 points if completed and requires a leader with at least a rating of 8 Brains to complete. During this player’s next turn he looks through his deck and sees that Abraham Lincoln only has a Brains rating of 6, so he can’t lead this group. However, he also has a Plato card with a Brains rating of 9 and plays that as his team’s leader, meaning that he will be building the Great Pyramids with Plato.

In order to complete a Quest, you’ll have to assemble your team correctly by taking note of the requirements. For the Great Pyramids Quest you’ll need a total of 30 points Brains and 40 points Age (hey, those pyramids took forever to build, alright). So you stack up Plato as the leader, a good choice since his Extra Skill is adding 1 point Brains to anyone with an Age rating of 5 or more (kind of like a Mewtwo card), and then add on Abe Lincoln, Elvis Presley, George Washington Carver, and Moses. After you have enough people to complete a Quest, you get the points on the card and the Quest and the Questers go back to the History Book (the discard pile). A standard game ends once someone collects 100 total points, though variations allow for you to play to the end of just one Quest, forcing drastic defensive skills, or 200+ points if you want a longer game.

But aha! Someone has a Change History card! Some thoughtless monster in the form of one of your friends plays the Dark Ages Fall on Europe card, which reduces every Quester’s Brains rating by 2 points (same thing happens in Magic the Gathering all the time). Suddenly you don’t have enough Brains to complete your Quest and have to keep adding more Questers. All of this adds to a ripping good time (“Ripping Good Time” Copyright True Quest).

The goal with the game is to have decks built with different cards, so that there is a collecting aspect to the game as well. Someone may have a rare card with a Quester who has an amazing Extra Skill, or you can just take the blank cards in the deck and make whatever you want, even yourself. Just think, you could be helping Benjamin Franklin end the Civil War.

Nothing's stopping you from making this for your kids in your spare time.

One of my favorite variations of the game plays out like War, the classic card game, where two players each have a deck of Quester cards facedown, call out an attribute (Age, Brains, Charisma, and Daring), and whoever draws a Quester with the higher rating wins, so Mother Teresa beats Emily Dickinson with Age while Joan of Arc stomps Marie Curie in Daring.

As I said before, True Quest hasn’t been made yet. It’s still in concept form with prototype cards. But it doesn’t have to stay this way for long. Does this sound like a game you’d enjoy? Does it seem like a game you’d want your kids playing? Send a comment and let your voice be heard, or if you’re interested in helping create the game, please contact me at eclipsestar@msn.com and we’ll talk business and by “we” I mean “you and my dad.”