Know your Madballs from your Micronauts? Your Teddy Ruxpin from your Rock Lords? Then you just passed the initiation test to join the Strange Kids Club, the Austin-based celebration of the time of Saturday morning cartoon trading cards, anthropomorphic action heroes, and scratch-and-sniff wonder.

Strange Kids Club is the creation of Rondal Scott, a celebration of the weird, wonderful and, yes, downright strange era of bizarre toylines, crazy hybrid monsters, and cheap plastic collectibles. It’s a virtual treehouse of childhood memories and memorabilia, and the cornerstone is the quarterly magazine that he started in 2014.

Scott already has about 65% of issue 5 ready to go, with the main story, “Strange Kid Comes to Frogtown,” heavily underway. That’s why he is currently trying to raise $7,500 via Kickstarter. That will go towards paying the artists, publishing costs, plus a collector’s jam-packed closet of rewards, from copies of the completed magazine to exclusive prints and even cuddly Staargoolian pillows

Feel like a teaser? Issue 4 is already online for free via Dropbox, featuring original retrotastic cartoons, plus features on toy lines that never got a revival (poor Battle Beasts), an interview with My Pet Monster creator James Groman, and a look back at the Eighties pop culture obsession with mad scientists.

For more about Strange Kids Club, visit www.strangekidsclub.com, or read our 2014 interview with Scott, “Strange Kids Doing Strange Things” (July 25, 2014). Now here’s the man himself to offer you your SKC membership card:


One in a Crowd is a series intended to showcase Texas film and tech projects that are crowdfunding their way to a goal, be it distribution, a prototype, or production costs. If you have a project that we should know about, email us at filmflam@austinchronicle.com.

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The Chronicle's first Culture Desk editor, Richard has reported on Austin's growing film production and appreciation scene for over a decade. A graduate of the universities of York, Stirling, and UT-Austin, a Rotten Tomatoes certified critic, and eight-time Best of Austin winner, he's currently at work on two books and a play.