Since it’s been about 4 months since I’ve posted a Peel Here sticker column I figure it’s about time for a new one. Just over two years ago I mentioned a set of stickers called Color Me Stickers that I was really looking forward to sharing on the site, but I just couldn’t find an affordable example. I’ve since rectified this, and as an addendum to that early Peel Here column I present some of the oddest stickers yet, the 1983 A-Team Color Me Sticker set from Diamond Toymakers…
This set, which is similar to the Craft Master Stain-A-Sticker sets that I also talked about a couple years ago, is basically like one of those gaudy black felt color-you-own-poster sets that you can usually find in discount drug stores on the toy aisle. The stickers themselves are glorified puffy stickers with a fuzzy felt-like finish applied, and an included set of crayons to color the stickers as you saw fit. I’m assuming that the patented fuzzy finish is included to help the crayon colors take to the sticker’s surface easier, but I bet it ends up looking kind of funky…
Unfortunately the scanner had a hard time getting a pristine clear image of the stickers because of said fuzzy finish, but you get the idea. On the one hand, I’m surprised that I haven’t seen more of these types of craft sticker sets when scouring ebay for Peel Here content, but on the other, I can totally see how parents would have hated this sort of thing. Not only will the stickers end up potentially stuck all over the house, but you’re also giving a kid a set of crayons to color them, the walls, and any other surface that needs a little splash of color. I suppose it’s easier to focus a child attention at coloring inside a coloring book, and giving them a little bit more of a free rein with coloring stickers.
All in all I like the balance of the chosen images on the sheet of stickers, just Mr. T heavy enough to please the fans, but not neglecting the rest of the cast, including their awesome battle van. What I found a little weird was that the artwork on these stickers was lifted from the packaging on another company’s set of A-Team stickers! Released in the same year by Larami was a set of puffy stickers and a collecting book that came packaged together and on the back of that package was a picture that the company encouraged kids to color, which I thought was an interesting way of using up a bunch of free space. I wonder if they ever realized that Diamond Toymakers swiped these drawings for their own sticker products?!? Heck, it might just be the same company, but judging from the bootleg quality of the packaging on the Diamond Color Me stickers, I have to assume their not related. Ah well, all’s fair in love and TV show merchandising I guess.
I ended up fudging the bucket on getting a picture of the included crayons as I have a new digital camera and I haven’t quite figured it out yet. All the pictures I’ve taken are just slightly blurry, enough so that it can bring on a small headache trying to focus on the image, so I thought I’d spare you pain. Basically the crayon set is one of those all in one plastic pencil deals, much like the analog mechanical pencils that were huge in the 80s (the ones that had about ten little chunks of lead mounted on small pieces of white plastic that filled the barrel of the pencil and were popped out the front when they were mostly gone, and then reinserted into the back to push a new lead forward.) The crayons, like the package states, are chocolate-scented, and have aged surprisingly well. I’m still on the fence about the potentiality of a chocolate-scented Mr. T sticker being a bit racist, but it’s a weird enough concept that I’ll let it slide.
Diamond Toymakers also brought us a bevy of other Color Me Sticker sets as you can see from the package above, including various Jim Henson brands as well as Knight Rider (which I’ve also secured for the next Peel Here column), and my all new coveted sticker item, Blue Thunder! I do love me some awesome attack helicopters, and it makes me wonder why Diamond chose to go after the rights to that R-rated flick instead of its TV friendly counterpart Airwolf.
