The Story of the Unreleased Roadblock

Pictured:
USA sample, Taiwan sample, & Approval sample.

I had finally found my grail.
That find led to others. Turned out that it had been purchased from the Collegeville Costumes warehouse liquidation sale some time in the mid 1990's after the company closed it's doors. And it certainly wasn't the only thing bought at the event.

Pictured:
Retail China & USA, on top of their respective approval samples to show the differences.

I was able to track down a few more contacts, all of whom had gone to the factory liquidation sale. Among them was a seller that had several more masks. I bought everything she had, which wasn't much.

She had 4 different masks total, 2 Roadblock's, and 2 Duke's. Some of the Roadblock's where marked Taiwan, and some USA. Both versions where in colors that differed greatly from the original approval sample. The Duke masks were marked USA, and China, both of which did indeed make it to retail, but the colors on both where different. The USA mask was just slightly off from it's retail counterpart, while the Chinese mask had considerably paler skin. Considering the differences in the Duke masks, and the fact that I can find no proof that the Roadblock masks were ever released, I can only conclude that these are all pre-production factory samples.

Now lets turn our attention to the costumes themselves. To date I've been able to add 2 complete approval sample costumes to my collection. Both are silk, and both have approval paperwork stapled to them. The Roadblock costume is dated 3-5-92, while the virtually identical Duke costume is dated 9-14-92. So sometime in the intervening 6 months, the powers that be decided that Duke was more marketable than Roadblock.

There are several key differences between the 2 costumes. Most notably the "Duke" name tag, and the complete lack of one on the earlier Roadblock costume. Roadblock also has a red collar for no apparent reason. In general the colors are more vibrant on Duke. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, Roadblock sports a plain orange "American Flag" on his belt buckle, while Duke has one in full red, white, and blue