After what seemed like years of begging, I finally got that yellow one. ‘Gaiking’ I think? I had wanted Raydeen, the one furthest left, but c’est la vie. Talk about toys that packed a wallop. The spring loaded fist that you could shoot off of Gaiking’s arm was deadly.
Starbird rocked. Someone on the X-wing Alliance team thought so too since it was a corvette class ship in that game. Go look, I’ll wait…
Space 1999 Eagle. I don’t need no stinkin Aluminum Falcon. I smuggled spice in this.
Here’s a nice page on the Shogun Warriors: http://www.toysyouhad.com/shogun.htm
I have Godzilla, Dragun, and Gaiking. Really really wanted Mazinga but never managed to score one. Sigh.
Raydeen was a big disappointment, his fist was too heavy due to the rubber blades, and it didn’t go nearly as far as the lighter one of the yellow guy. I can’t remember their names, but the third one from the left was my first. Those missiles from his left hand were awesome. You could also pull the top part of his head out (you can see it in the pic),it was like a scout ship.
I had this too, the 9 volt battery in the front…It made awesome “ascending/descending” noises based on how you held it. My son still plays with the remains of this toy, but sadly the electronics are dead.
Let’s hear it for poor kids, yay! I didn’t have any of the cool stuff.
I grew up with Lead-filled impostor Transformers and impostor Go-Bots. They didn’t actually transform (you could flip a head out from the bottom, the end), but they were very durable (being one solid brick of lead and die-cast metal and all).
I did own tons of marbles, a few steelies and Mexican ninja-throwing stars though.
You weren’t poor, you were just bad. Those marbles were coal.
Anyway - it’s not so much about what we had, as what we remember about the 80s and toys. Toys in the 70s started getting good toward then end, and the 80s were super cool - but I think the toys were cool because of the time period and not that I fondly remember the time because of the toys. They’re just my vehicle for reconnecting to what was going on at the time.
My guilt at being a materialistic consumer whore is for a different thread… I’m not going to hose up this one with it.
Well, that explains the fires.
This thread seems tailor made for secret santa ideas.
Yeah, until you lose the little fake microchip thingie in his arm. Then there’s a big hole under the rubber skin, and it never looks right again.
I never had the big D&D electronic game, but I had the handheld. Oh, yeah: 100 rooms, one dragon, and you are armed with an arrow. Epic.
Dark Tower = teh awesome.
I get warm fuzzies looking at all of the electronic games. The little arcade-shaped Pac Man, Merlin, Electronic Touchdown, and Blip! I had forgotten all about Blip. What an awful game that was.
I never had Big Trak, but always wanted it.
He had a giant “microchip” in his leg too, I think. Yeah, I had this toy too. I was one spoiled little bastard, apparently. Maybe my two older sisters were right after all…
Wow thats a trip down memory lane. I had the guy in the middle and I loved him. I haven’t thought about him in over 20 years. What a great toy.
He’s the one I wanted, The Great Mazinga!
Hell.
Fucking.
Yes.
In the end my brother and I ended up snapping off the bottom and using it as a weapon to terrorize the cat.
Heh, I remember the Six Million Dollar Man and the roll-up rubber skin. My brother and I also had a bunch of GI Joe stuff. Not the tiny pansy ones, the foot tall guy with the submarine with the air pump and the giant squid.
Also not yet mentioned:
He had two levers on his back you could push to get sound effects. The jetpack lever made the jetpack noise and it lit up, the sounds for the other lever depended on what you had plugged into him.
Also also, this:
Of course I owned a ton of LEGO. The LEGO train set, where I also used the motor to build windmills and all kinds of great engines, and then this their first Sci-fi setting. I had this very model:
I loved building models - I recently threw away this (it was built, painted, then broken and incomplete):
And as I noted on Facebook when DennyA went to watch a launch with his kid (something I’ve always wanted to do) I got this the christmas of 1980 (I think) from my parents after sitting home all day watching Columbias launch:
I had that same Lego space set, the 928 one, and a big trak. I have a sudden urge, seeing the pics again to go play in the corner.
My favourite Big Trak programme, contrary to the ads that had it storming round the house bringing dad his slippers, was also to move forward 5, turn left and fire 99 times.
Does:
count as a toy (then rather than know perhaps)?
Favorite toys: Soundwave (the Transformer), a snake-themed Hot Wheels track set, ten tons of Lego. I don’t know if these really count as toys, but I loved my kiddie microscope, telescope, and SewEasy sewing machine. Oh, and my Fisher-Price weaving loom. I had a few dolls and stuffed animals, but I didn’t really play with them much. I did hand-sew clothes for the rag doll my grandmother made me, though.
Oh, yeah, and I had pretty much every Star Wars toy from Empire and Jedi, and a few from the original film. I loved Star Wars.
Good times.
My favourite toy was probably the radio controlled “The Fall Guy” Jeep:
I don’t know if it was exactly this one I had, though.
I also had a toy bow for which I bought real sporting arrows that I used to blindly shoot over the hedges in our garden and then walk around looking where they had landed. I used to shoot them at straw rolls on the farm next to us. I guess I got lucky I didn’t kill anybody with that thing!
I loved to play with plastic tanks and soldiers, too.
One thing I found amazing looking through the catalogs was how well the saturday morning commercials for this stuff did their work. I can still replay the jingle to like 100 different toys in my head. Stuff I didn’t even remember existed until I saw it again… then I’m like “Oh yeah… Air Jammer, Road Rammer”
I was trying to find it last night in response to the Robotech comment but can’t locate it again - but one of the catalogs has a veritech fighter and a ZENTRADI POD. Not the officer’s pod toy that I’d seen a lot of… I mean the blue ostrich looking battle pods. I never saw one of those before.
Robotech was the gateway to anime for me. I saw speed racer and such, but Robotech was the tipper. In GI Joe all the planes would blow up and parachutes would fall out. Not so in Robotech. And when Rick blew a car-sized hole through the guy in the city and the camera was looking at him through the guy’s back as he fell down… I knew this wasn’t typical craptoons.
Great timing, I just got a Rubik’s Cube today!