A British bathroom tie-in rather than a toy. Sensodyne, made in the UK by Stafford-Miller Ltd of Hatfield, Hertfordshire, put ThunderCats on a range of children’s toothbrushes and sold them one to a carton through chemists and supermarkets. This is the Lion-O brush: a plain yellow handle with SENSODYNE embossed down its length and a small full-colour Lion-O printed near the neck, sword raised.
The carton is the interesting half. The front panel carries the chrome ThunderCats logo, cover art of Cheetara, Tygra and Lion-O, and the instruction every 1980s licensing department eventually reached for: “Collect all 4 Thundercats characters on Sensodyne Toothbrushes.” The spine repeats the logo over a Third Earth landscape and names LION-O and TYGRA against their portraits. The legal block reads “Thundercats and Thundercats characters are trademarks of Telepictures Corporation”, copyright 1985 Telepictures Corporation, Leisure Concepts, Inc. and Ted Wolf, with Reg. Des. No. 1001830 and Made in UK beneath it.
Dating and the rest of the set
The carton’s own copyright line is 1985, which is the licence year. Specialist dealers catalogue the retail line as 1986, which fits the UK broadcast window, and give the brush at 7.5 inches. Both dates are defensible and they are not in conflict; the copyright is when the rights were cleared, the release is when it reached the shelf.
Four were promised on the box, and a dealer photograph of the retail stock finally shows four different carton designs together. Their spine scenes are Lion-O with Snarf, Lion-O and Tygra, Lion-O and Cheetara, and Mumm-Ra. The example here is the Lion-O and Tygra carton. What the photograph cannot settle is which brush sat inside each one, because the handles are not visible, so we are not yet claiming a definitive four-character brush list. If you own one of the other three, a photograph of the handle would close this out for good.
The Mumm-Ra carton is catalogued separately by dealers, which is where its detail shots below come from. So is the retail counter display: a twelve-brush stand headed SENSODYNE and RECOMMENDED BY DENTISTS, with a die-cut window showing the packs behind it. That is how these were merchandised at till level, and it explains why loose cartons survive in better numbers than the display units do.
Collecting notes
Card and carton stock is thin and these were sold to be thrown away, so survivors are usually creased, sun-faded along the spine, or opened at one end. An unused brush still in its box, as pictured, is the uncommon state. Watch for the yellow handle going brittle and for the printed character transfer wearing off, which is the first thing to go on brushes that were actually used.
Picture credits
The first two photographs are of the example in the thundercats.org collection. The Mumm-Ra carton detail shots, the four-carton group and the retail counter display are photographed by Lulu Berlu, the Paris vintage toy dealer whose listings are the only substantial published record of this line, and are reproduced here with credit for reference.
★ DISCUSSION
Join the conversation.
Comments below are mirrored on the ThunderCats.org forum. Sign in once, post anywhere.