Popoids

Popoids Building Sets

The Tomy Popoids were building sets, sort of like big Legos, that consisted of accordion shaped tubes (like the bend area of a bendy straw) that could be attached together with special connectors.  You could build a ton of different things.  To illustrate, one of the commercial jingles went: “make them into rockets, or little Popid cars, or snap them all together and build a Popoid man from Mars”.  When you collapsed the straw tube sections, they made a popping noise, thus the name “Popoids”.  They came in themed sets, like the Colossal Cosmic Set, and were popular enough to make it into the McDonald’s Happy Meal.