ALF Colorforms

Gifts from family can be hit or miss, especially when you’re a kid. I think every person who would be reading this (all, you know, six of you) knows this. For the family members who know you, you can get some awesome presents (my mom, who got me this beloved piece of my childhood for christmas 1989  or my oldest brother got me this beauty for my 10th birthday). Sadly, you can’t always get Capcom’s Darkwing Duck NES game. Sometimes you get ALF Colorforms. 

Colorforms, for the uninitiated, are apparently a “classic toy”. I say “classic” because they’ve been around since 1951 and have won honors, including a place on TIME’s 100 Greatest Toys list. If you’re really uninitiated, or just don’t want to read a Wikipedia article about Colorforms, they come in themes, often licensed ones). In each box, you got a laminated background and a series of vinyl cutout characters, props, and speech bubbles. The vinyl adhered to the laminated cardboard, so you could put your colorforms on the background and then... um... peel them off and stick them back on?

They'll do any license, evidently.

I’ll be honest, I don’t get colorforms. Take that Real Ghostbusters one I linked to. Ray looks like he’s farting. And Ray will always look like he’s farting. He doesn’t move. Which leads to people doing this. Additionally, since the characters were designed to stick to the background, you couldn’t really move them around. I really just don’t get this as a “toy”. Maybe as a kid who drew lots of pictures (ahem...), I preferred drawing characters (I wish I still had any of my approximately googolplex of GB drawings). As an 8 year old, I could not draw a screen-accurate Ray, but I could make him do more than look like he had too many beans for lunch. 

Lucky for me, I think my mom understood that this was not really a toy for me. I didn’t get colorforms for gifts. Except for the one time I did. And for some reason, it was ALF. It was a gift from someone, I don’t really remember who.  

Do you remember the ALF cartoon? I hope not, because it’s horrid. Try and watch. I will admit that, as a kid, I liked the sitcom ALF; of course, I was, at most, eight years old when it went off the air, so I should get a pass. I even remember getting the ALF baseball puppet from Burger King during this promotion:

(Were the Soviets spiking our water supply in the 80s? What other explanation would there be?) But the ALF carton was a bridge too far for me, even at age six. So, at least in my memory, the ALF Colorforms weren’t a gift I enjoyed. But as an industrious kid and already steeped in Catholic guilt, I didn’t like to let gifts go to waste (to this day, I have incredible pangs of guilt returning gifts, with the exception of clothes that don’t fit. Even then, I feel an urge to just exchange for size). So I dutifully played with these things until I could no longer play with those things. Which wasn’t long. But let’s see what it was I was playing with.  

Now, I don’t have this thing anymore; I haven’t for ages. So I rely on the Internet for visual aids. Luckily, I believe a good 87% of the Internet exists for nostalgia purposes and, as such, someone on Etsy was selling one, and in pretty impressive condition, at that. Of course, that’s probably because the original owner saw “ALF” and “Colorforms” and was lulled into a coma. 

Here you see the character and prop sheet as well as the laminated background. Imagine all the adventures you can have in ALF’s (or more aptly, Gordon Shumway’s; ALF, afterall, means “Alien Life Form.”) apartment. At least, I’m pretty sure that’s his apartment, I’m not sure who else’s it would be. 

And there is the character, prop and speech bubble sheet. On the character sheet, you get two Gordons, his family, Mama and Papa Shumway, and the two short ALFs, his kid brother and sister. At least, I’m pretty sure that’s who they are. I’m not sure who else they’d be. Plus the weird dog thing. There are also lots of drinkware, foodstuffs and a CAH-RAZY alien saxophone, because I guess someone (presumably Gordon, is an alien saxophonist.) 

Then there are the three other ALFs, who are apparently Ronda, Rick and Skip (I assume Skip is the stuttering moron in that clip from before.) How do I know these guy’s name? Why, it’s in a speech bubble that says “HI RONDA, RICK, SKIP, ETC............” 

The best (possibly saddest) part is that, as a little kid, I was convinced one of the characters was named “Etc." I’m mildly embarrassed, but I remember clearly trying to figure out which character that was, and why there were seven non-Gordon ALFs but only four named in the bubble. It was perplexing. Don’t ask me when I figured out it was “et cetera.”  What can I say? ALF makes people dumb. Look at what happened to Max Wright. 

Look at the hatred in his eyes...

I also think there are some curious choices (and I swear, I had these thoughts as a kid), like the fact that the couch and easy chair are on the character sheet while the bed and TV are on the background sheet. Also, lounging Gordon is in a different direction than his bed. Only Gordon has a free hand that would be available to hold anything, but, with the exception for the blue apples and the sandwich, none of the objects would go in his hand.

So in the end, I don’t care for Colorforms. I don’t care for ALF (you can watch the sitcom on The Hub or this youtube montage titled “The best of ALF”). You can like Colorforms. I don’t think you should like ALF. And if you tell me that you can still like ALF, read this. 

OK, after all of this, I just decided to remind myself of the theme song to the cartoon show. First of all, we seem to introduced to be almost every element used in the Colorforms, which makes me think the Colorform designs stopped right here as well. Second, looks like Gordon does play the sax. And finally, I kind of like that song. I am a sucker for Doo Wop.