Playset Magazine #11, 2003, provides a monstrous issue for monsterkids with its glimpses of the prototype for the Marx Monster Mansion and other cool plastic monster toys every boy (and some girls) howled for back in the 1960s and 70s. "The mansion would have been 23" x 13" x 11" tall, the exact same dimensions of any Marx castle in this configuration."
My favorite playsets to pretend-play with included Fireball XL5 Space City and Hamilton's Invaders (giant bugs, pull the string to make them walk, military victims included). Now, had I the Monster Mansion to hang my action figures and plastic creatures from the gallows, or drop them to their doom from the walls, well, I might never have grown up.
I wish I still had my MPC Haunted Hulk. I took it for a sail every time I took a bath, which was once or twice a month. I would load it up with those MPC pop-top horrors and push the green-slime colored hulk through the bubbles–I mean post nuclear mutating mist–and spray crazy foam at the monsters. I miss crazy foam.
Usually illustrations and photos are in black and white, but the full-color spread on the Monster Mansion is eye-popping. So be prepared to pop them back into place if you haven't seen this issue yet. Those eyeballs can roll around the floor like crazy.