JCC Debo's Attic

I'm so jealous that you still have all your old Transformers. For some reason I thought it was a great idea, somewhere between leaving childhood and being old enough to appreciate the ridiculous power of nostalgia, to sell them all in a second hand market for what seemed like a lot of money at the time but wasn't really.

I had an Optimus Prime that was completely white. Like an albino Optimus Prime.

 

Poor Salacious.

 

So you had Ultra Magnus?

 

Megatron was really hard to get in Australia if I recall correctly because he transformed into a Walther P38...

The He-Man figures look to be in pristine condition, Debo. Does Moss-man still have that weird odour?

 

Send the Carebears my way!!!

 

I got Megatron for a present at my Holy Communion party. I broke one of the legs off right out of the box. I still get pissed when I see them whole at cons and stuff.

 

I won a bunch of G1 Transformers in a colouring contest when I was 13yo. It was for the launch of the toys, must have had 10 or 12 in the pack. Optimus Prime, Megatron, the Walkman and cassette, a white Lamborghini, a T. rex etc. I was 12 or 13 so I ended up giving them to my little brother.

 

Oh, a Star Wars figure. How did that end up there? Well, I'll get to my Star Wars stuff later. Thanks for notifying me.

Next up… MORE JUNK.[/quote]

The Sarlaac's tummy 1,000 years later.

 

This thread is so traumatizing. I've been rocking back and forth on my chair for a whole day before finally deciding to reveal why there is no attic in my life.

When I was 11 or 12, my grandfather decided it was a neat idea to sell all of my toys to one of our neighbors, just before we were going to move to make sure I would never see them again. Why, I will never know: he merely shrugged and mumbled something about manning up and starting doing push-ups. He was from a different time, and probably a different universe where grandparents are ***holes instead of awesome. Anyway, I was crushed, as you can imagine: for a while I would dream of raiding my old neighbor's place and forecefully recovering my stash, but I was a wimpy kid and not a Navy SEAL. More like a regular seal, actually. I was so sad some of my classmates actually pooled money to buy me a Joe, but it was one of those ninja spring-action things that I never liked and that I would eventually dump myself, alongside the rest of my childhood. Goodbye toys, welcome alcohol. Thanks a lot, grandpa.

All in all, I lost 50+ G.I. Joes plus a dozen vehicles, some clumsy Saint Seiya figures, and a ton of random toys that included couple of Transformers that were always the red-headed child in my toys' family. I never got what people liked about them. I liked my StarCom toys much better, with their sleek designs and their magnets (how do they work).

20 years later, that's, last summer, I retaliated by buying a couple of action figures at Celebration VI and immediately opening the blisters and playing with them. I played with them so hard people started looking at me funny. That's how I became acquainted with the Revenge of the Sith stormtrooper action figure that everyone calls The ****trooper and that's been featured in several pictures and videos I can't post in here, forcing me to leave you with an official picture that doesn't reveal any of this figure's special qualities.



I might tell you of his many adventures, if you behave.

 

You need a hug.

Danthe...?

 

I had some cool toys (I particularly remember Beast Wars Transformers because I'm not old enough to be a grandparent like the rest of you lot). They ended up just sitting in my closet by the time I was a teenager when I mostly played videogames and brooded. I thought they would be of more use if I just gave them away to charity and maybe some stupid kid would actually play with the damned things. Voila! Not an amusing or interesting anecdote.

 

You are totally old enough to be a grandfather. Not legally though, I guess.

 

Eh, I'll never be one anyway.

 

That's the spirit!

 

Oh god, StarCom! I had StarCom toys! Smaller again than M.A.S.K.

And Joes. Loved the Joes. Had the Tomahawk, and my favourite figure was always Chuckles.

Now, I wish I'd had a Kenner Indiana Jones figure. That would have been sweet.

 

I miss my 70's Godzilla toy. I loved it so hard, I pulled off its tail, lost its flying fist, and got sand in the mechanism of its flaming tongue. And then my mom threw it out.

You know how in the Velveteen Rabbit, a toy that's loved enough becomes real? Somewhere off the coast of Japan, there is a monstrous lizard wheeling itself up the continental shelf, getting ready to burn Tokyo to the ground. :'(

 

This never got old:

 

I was a G.I. Joe fanatic. I had tons of vehicles, tons of figures. I used a lot of other figures in their universe. At one time I had a David & Goliath play set (Christians!) and when the David head broke off in a particularly ferocious battle with Cobra Commander, I tied him up with rubber bands and kept him as a "hostage" for years. I have no idea why he had to be tied up since he didn't have a head. Weird little bondage freak, I was. At one point, one of the Cobra figures broke in half. Do you need to ask if his upper half was kept on as a faithful adviser to Cobra Commander? You do not. You see, Cobra Commander is loyal to his soldiers, even when they lose their legs in a horrible jet fighter crash. Weirdly, the one I loved the hell out of was a member of the Russian equivalent of the G.I. Joe team. If you've seen the comics, you know what I'm talking about. He became an official Joe via some sort of foreign exchange program. He was uber-cool. Or what's Russian for uber?

 

The Oktober Guard!

I liked to go all DIY on my Joes's butts. Whenever they broke, I collected the spare pieces until I had enough to build a new character out of them. I became a master at replacing the pieces that broke most often, using (don't laugh) spare pieces I was given for my braces. And I liked my FrankenJoes more than any store bought figure.

 

Yes! The Oktober Guard! Couldn't think of their name.

 

I remember getting this badboy circa 1986 or 87, from a toy store in Singapore:

http://www.yojoe.com/vehicles/85/awestriker/

It had a removable engine, ridiculous cannon on top, and suspension.

It was my favourite Joe vehicle until I got the Tomahawk.

 

I had the uberbadass Rolling Thunder, the most useless tank in history. But it was so large!

 

Funny thing: Hasbro re-released that toy as part of their Stargate movie toyline (Yes, it was kinda sorta G.I. Joe RAH -scaled). Who wants to bet that movie would've been tons better with Kurt Russel and James Spader riding that thing on the desert planet in that movie?

EDIT: I had it too, only I think I got mine at a Ben Franklin dime store where my brother and I got all our G.I. Joes.

 

Stargate came out in 1994 though. Most of these toys were 80's.

This is not a place to remember 90s toys! 70s and 80s toys.

Speaking of - did anyone have any of the Buck Rogers figures?