The 80's Toys Thread

Everything else
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http://www.flickr.com/photos/wishbook/collections/72157600003636126/

This guy put together a collection of various Sears Wishbooks from 1970 to 1992. I’ve been all day looking through them and reminiscing.

Christmas is coming, so I thought it would be a good time to talk about how awesome the 80s were for plastic magic.

I was a star wars kid. Robots of the sort from the early 70s that would walk, pop out concealed guns and spin around making light and noise were sort of a gateway drug to star wars. Being born in 70, I was the perfect age to make the most out of the whole robot toys, star wars, atari 2600, Tron perfect storm. That stuff just seems to have gone away in the 90s though.

Good nostalgia trip items: Masters of the Universe, Transformers and GoBots hanging together, MASK, Chuck Norris, Rambo, Evil Knievel, 6M Dollar Man, Sectaurs, Atari/Commodore computers and all the early game consoles. Man, I’d forgotten how nutty awesome Colecovision was compared to anything else on the market at the time.

There’s one page with the full-on star wars ROTJ room decor… curtains, bed sheets, pillow cases, R2D2 trash can, lamp, alarm clock. I had the original SW sheets when I was seven though.

One thing that isn’t in there is this: http://www.topperdingalings.com/35.html
I’ve still got a couple of those around in the basement back in Ohio.

1991 was utterly dominated by 8 and 16 bit console systems. It’s like… TMNT stuff, video game consoles, and RC vehicles. Where the heck is “everything else”? Damn. By contrast 1985-86 was apparently the year of the VHS tape. Pages and pages of VHS movies. I think 80-84 was the sweet spot.

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Going with the robot, jet, Macross looking deal I had that was die cast metal. Think a friend ended up stealing it… bastard. That thing was awesome.

Erik J.

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This might be early 90s, but close enough. I loved playing with this Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles van:

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Pizza Shooter was my favorite TMNT toy.

Erik J.

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Get your Generation Y TMNT 90’s crap outta this thread!

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I had the entire Voltron set - those were awesome, except that there was no actual people to put inside it. Still, it was pretty satisfying to form Voltron from the individual lions.

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I still have my Million Dollar Man Stasis chamber thing that Lee Majors lies in, badass IMO.

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Winner!!! for having both in the same year. D&D electronic game and Dark Tower.

Of every single toy I have ever received on Chritmas, I can honestly say that I played Dark Tower more than any of them and still get all tingly when I think back on opening that thing up and playing that game endlessly. Thanks Mom!!!

“More than games, they’re experiences”

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My favorite toy, ever.

(Excluding my Atari and Apple II Plus)

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My favorite toy of my childhood was Big Trak, a programmable robot tank. Of course, at age 5, my favorite program I ever gave it was Move forward 10, Fire 99 times.

According to the Wikipedia, this thing came out in 1979 (white rather than grey), but I must have gotten a re-release a few years later. I also had the sweet dump-truck trailer.

Edit: Ha, Rob- I just posted the same picture!

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I noticed in the Micronauts thread that many of you were ticked off your parents didn’t give you any of these. I had the three on the left. My parents loved me more than yours loved you.

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Nerd.

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The first person that links a Rubic’s Cube photo should be banned for Battle Dancing. Just sayin’.

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Do not aim at face or pets!

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Heh, it’s likely worth a few hundred or more. Perhaps I should sell it.

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I had some toys from a garage sale that were motorized vehicles. They were powered by a little cylinder that was glow-in-the-dark. You’d expose the cylinder to light for a while to charge it. Then you insert it into the vehicle and it’d run until the light ran out. I thought this was amazing, but I have no idea what the toys were from. I don’t really remember much else about them.

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Bah! Ok, grandpa. :)

19

Radiation poisoning is a bitch.

20

Had most of these too, but just realized these are from 1979, I shed childish things like this sooner than I thought. The FUCK I did, I just couldn’t be seen playing with them after 1982 or so…I’m a tweener, too young for seventies toy threads, too old for eighties toy threads…dammit.

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