Friday - TOYS - get off my lawn edition

Prior to the release of A Real American Hero, this was my favorite toy.



It wasn't until a decade later, that I found out it was originally...Judge Dredd's Cursed Earth Killdozer!


Article on the toy and Judge Dredd:
2warpstoneptune.com/2014/03/18/matchboxs...raider-command-1977/

I also shoplifted M.U.S.C.L.E. figures and also Hacky Sacks to sell to the other kids in the apartment complex.

My cousin had the Star Wars Droid Factory and that was super cool.

I had the whole Crossbows and Catapults collection. It was glorious.

I remember my Erector set in all of its tetanus glory.

Slot cars were popular amongst us kids. The original Super G+ cars were great.

I raced a lot of slot cars too. I don't remember what set we had but it was pretty basic and ran two cars at a time with resistance-trigger type controllers. Never had the real nice sets. I was always convinced that there was somehow skill involved in it and I would race by myself and (probably randomly) deem some of my laps faster or slower than others. It was unfathomable to me at the time the fastest way around the track was just to hold the trigger down the whole race. I was determined to master the corners. It never once occurred to me that the inside track was faster until years later.

Also:



I got way more mileage out of these than Erector sets.

wadenels wrote: I raced a lot of slot cars too. I don't remember what set we had but it was pretty basic and ran two cars at a time with resistance-trigger type controllers. Never had the real nice sets. I was always convinced that there was somehow skill involved in it and I would race by myself and (probably randomly) deem some of my laps faster or slower than others. It was unfathomable to me at the time the fastest way around the track was just to hold the trigger down the whole race. I was determined to master the corners. It never once occurred to me that the inside track was faster until years later.

But depending on your magnets, it is easier to spin out on the inside track. There is a dude south of me that has two 4-lane tracks setup in his basement. People from MI, OH, and IN travel to run their cars.

You should try and locate a 1/24th scale slot car track. Those are awesome.

Exo-squad were shockingly high quality toys.

I loved Mighty Men & Monster Maker but I never had my own until I found a mostly-complete one for $3 at a flea market a few years ago:



I also got this guy from a relative for a birthday and I had no idea what toy line he was from:



Turns out he was Waspax from the Sectaurs line of action figures. The more expensive toys in the line came with an insect puppet that you could fly around with your hand while the included figure rode it. One thing fun about the pre-internet era was getting these oddball toys every once in a while that you had no idea what they were or where they came from.

Michael Barnes wrote: What was the name of that line where the main figure was a green, swamp thing-looking dude made out of some kind of weird stretchy stuff that came in a gibbet? You could like tear him apart and put him back together or something and there was some slime you could dunk him in. Hoo boy, those 80s.

Manglors! I got the main Swamp Thing guy for Christmas one year and he sucked. The arms and legs wouldn't go back on for shit, and that was before he got covered in lint and dirt. The slime cage playset made an appearance on one of those worst/dangerous toys shows that seemed to air every year in the late 80's on nightly news shows around the holidays. I always loved watching to see which toys shot dangerous projectiles or had heating elements that could burn you.

My best friend had all of the M.A.S.K. toys and those were awesome with their transforming vehicles and the cool little mask each character came with.

I had a Winnie the Pooh record player that played those small 45s. I had a whole bunch of record books like Star Wars and The Black Hole where you read along as they narrate, with R2d2 chirping when you had to turn the page. Anyway I got bored of that thing real quick and discovered if I put my penis on the turntable, it would feel funny when it spun.

Thanks Santa!

One of the things we got the kids for Christmas was a portable record player and a big stack of book and records. Lots of Disney, all the Star Wars ones,The Hobbit/Return of the King.

Also got them a Viewmaster...paid way too much for a set of Dracula reels but they are awesome. Also got a Snoopy and the Red Baron one that was a childhood favorite.

I had all the Sectaurs, definitely a more obscure 80s toy.

What about Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors.

Oh, how about STARRIORS with that big red dinosaur called Deadeye?

Mighty Men & Monster Maker was awesome.

Zebra disc guns where THE BEST, I love those. Remember how the feeder would get jammed?

They also did those guns that shot the yellow rubber BBs...had a ton of those too.

Manglors, yes that is what they were! I had a couple of them...and yeah, I vaguely remember them being "controversial", maybe Donahue had a show about them or something.

Anybody else get a "talk" from their mom after you got your first D&D set? "So... you know you can't actually fly right?"

Black Barney wrote: Anybody else get a "talk" from their mom after you got your first D&D set? "So... you know you can't actually fly right?"

No, my Mom made a character, my Dad made a character, and my sister made a character. This was 1981 Red Box Basic.
But, I understand, a couple of peers wouldn't play because of their parents.

What about Dinky Toys?
When I was young, my Dad would fly for his job.
Every so often he would bring back a Dinky Toy...
I still have my Junkers JU-87 B "Stuka", a S.H.A.D.O.W. tracked rocket-launcher, and some missile-launching British APC.

Black Barney wrote: Anybody else get a "talk" from their mom after you got your first D&D set? "So... you know you can't actually fly right?"

No, but Track and Field for the NES definitely warped any concept of gravity and physics I might have had. I'd never heard of the Triple Jump before that game and then I found out it was a real thing that people do. But why stop at three jumps, I asked? Probably because it was just some stupid competition rule. So I spent way too much time working on my Long Jump, followed by the Double Jump, then the Triple Jump, then the Quadruple Jump, and so on. I remember messing up an ankle more than just a couple times. The idea was that once I had the technique down I could jump indefinitely and that would be way cooler than running or biking around.

I like to think I had a great imagination, but maybe I just wasn't very bright as a kid.