Pocket Power was available at retail in 1988 to 1989. The sets were made by Sega, but distributed by Tyco Toys (who were later absorbed by Mattel) in the United States. Pocket Power was the type of toy line that you could find both in your major toy retailer, like Child World, or even in your local pharmacy’s toy aisle. Pricing ranged from about US$4 to US$5 making it a fairly affordable purchase. The wide availability and reasonable pricing made this toy fairly popular for a brief period and that is why today P is for Pocket Power.

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Since the alphabet is the building block of our language, the Powet Alphabet is the building block of what makes us geeks.

Today is P for the Powers of Grayskull. The Powers of Grayskull was a line proposed in 1987 that would serve as a sort of prequel to MOTU as we had known it. While some of the figures made it to the prototype phase and licensing material was sent out to interested companies, nothing ever materialized as far as a full scale toy line. After the jump we’ll dig a little deeper into what was really planned for the series based on what has been found.

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Since the alphabet is the building block of our language, the Powet Alphabet is the building block of what makes us geeks.

When Sony entered the market as a console manufacturer, they began a whole new era of gaming, and much of it was due to the rise of disc-based gaming. Disc based systems at the time were becoming more commonplace due to CDs being easier and cheaper to manufacture. Since they could hold more information than floppy disks and cartridges, it was easy to see why they were becoming increasingly attractive to developers. Even before the Sony, there were already several disc-based systems on the market, although few of them fully utilized the potential of the added storage space and horse power of the medium. The Sega CD for instance, was merely an add-on to the Sega Genesis. Most of its line up either consisted of amped-up versions of Sega Genesis titles, arcade ports, and interactive movies. such as the controversial Night Trap. The Super CD, an add on for the Turbographix-16, had a slightly more impressive lineup (including the highly sought after Dracula X), but it never made it beyond the borders of Japan. The 3DO, which was a standalone system, carried many of the interactive movies that graced the Sega CD, and it also boasted arcade-perfect ports of games such as Samurai Showdown and Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo. However, its high price tag prevented it from making a huge impact in the marketplace. The Phillips CD-I, just plain sucked.

Around the early 90s, Nintendo wanted to jump into the CD gaming market. Originally, it was Sony who would help them develop the technology that would power the new system. Sony was of course no stranger to gaming. Under the name Sony Imagesoft, they developed and published several games for their soon-to-be competitors (in fact, you may have even seen a couple of them as Lost Classics). However, the deal would fall through due to lawsuits on both sides, and Nintendo opted to go with Phillips instead. That deal would also fall apart, and Nintendo would eventually abandon the concept of a CD based gaming system altogether in favor of cartridge-based the Nintendo 64. It’s because of this reason that many suspect that the Playstation is what Nintendo’s CD system would have been. Regardless of weather or not that rumor was true, it was ironic that Sony, the people slated to work with Nintendo on their new hardware, instead usurped their place as top dog console manufacturer.
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