JCC The 80's toy thread

I know we have the Everything Retro thread, but meh. The discussion in the Star Wars thread about 80s toys made me think we grown kidults need a time to remember the best decade for toys there was.

Not only did we not have the "made up stupid outfit" syndrome - I know you wanted Batman, but here's a pink and silver Batman in his OB/GYN costume. Or here's a white and black costume for Space Combat Batman - you know, from when Batman fought in space? - we just had kickass toys and support cartoons designed to whip our need for these toys to fever pitch.

I mean, even though there was a He-Man who had a three stage, spring loaded chest with varying degrees of damage or one with CAPS who made explosive punches, it was still awesome.

Just look at these toy lines:

* Star Wars - Kenner
* Super Powers
* GI Joe
* Robotech
* M*A*S*K
* TransFormers
* He-Man / She-Ra
* Corgi Superhero vehicles like the popular Superman Van!

plus more!

80s kids, what were some of your favourites? I know dp4m loved T-Bone and Scott from MASK.

90s kids, sorry your toys weren't as cool.

 

I don't know what is but it looks metal as ****.

I wonder if tom had himself as an action figure?

 

1980 - rubber bat with clear chest that had fake blood you can pump through it. I was five and requested this toy for Christmas. My parents obliged. WTF is wrong with them. Haha

 

The 3 3/4-inch Archives will probably help you with that, Ender.

 

We lived in better times, when parents understood kids wanted toys like this and not the Ninja Turtles in Hawaiian vacation clothes.

Remember these?

 

This ****ing thing.

 

To be quite honest, Playmates seems to keep things relatively sane with the new TMNT toyline based on the new Nickelodeon cartoon, with the only turtle variants being show-based, and ones like "head pops down into shell" or "their shell becomes a hidden weapons compartment" ones, and keeping the plain vanilla versions in rotation.

Just saying.

 

Sorry, no. My M.A.S.K. faves were Thunderhawk and Switchblade.

Overall, my two favorites were Star Wars and He-Man.

 

My brother and I had quite the smorgasbord of '80s toys, with stuff from everything like Star Wars, G.I. Joe, He-Man, Transformers, MASK, Super Powers, etc.

It was a good time to be a kid, IMO.

 

Remember the micro collection playsets?

I had a Luke in Bespin Fatigues with blaster that we repainted the hair of to make my Brash Pilot in WEG.



And I fondly recall the Snowspeeder, which "fell apart" when you pushed a button on the back.

 

I had one of the Micro Collection Death Star playsets (the trash compactor one).

I can understand why they failed from a sales point of view (parents weren't going to invest in another scale of toy when they already have invested in one in particular), but they were neat in how they presaged the Galoob Micro Machines SW playsets of the '90s.

 

JoinTheSchwarz - did you ever get the mailaway Cobra Commander?

The PC game Payday 2 has a mask I think you'd like:

 

Gonna go 70s on ya. Sue me.

 

All of the mailaways and special characters were different in Europe, Ender Sai. That Cobra Commander was a regular figure in here, and yeah, I had it. (We also had many more Tiger Force characters, some of them pretty awesome, and we had Slaughter's Renegades and Action Force 2000 characters sold as regular characters.)

 

Yeah, I had both of those. I totally forgot about that Little Professor calculator.

My biggest toy theme was Star Wars stuff. Mostly the action figures... I can still remember the way the plastic on the figures used to smell when you opened them. I also had some ships / vehicles too; I remember having a landspeeder and an X-wing. I also remember my friend having the Falcon and an AT-AT. Good times.

 

This was the best game ever to 7 year old me.

 

Star Wars figures / vehicles.

Space / Blacktron LEGO


Micronauts


That's my childhood, right there.

 

Pre-90s is all I ask, jaypes.

 

I think we had Slaughter's Renegades as a 3 pack, if it's the one I'm thinking (black guy, bald guy with red beard, guy who I renamed Stringfellow Hawke when playing Airwolf - Mercer maybe?). And St Slaughter I think had his own terrible little tank?

My favourite Joe was always Chuckles. Such a dude.

We also had GI Joe-esque figures that looked like almost-knockoffs of 80s film characters. There was a Rambo-like one, an end-of-temple-of-doom-Indy-like one... I wish I knew what they were called.

 

You kinda get the feeling Hasbro was capitalizing on Miami Vice by making him.

 

He was so much more than that, how dare you!