When I was trying to phrase yesterday’s Major Spoilers Question Of The Day, I found myself thinking about not only the awesome toys I kind of wish I had (the full Micronaut battle cruiser would have been awesome) but the ones I actually GOT (the ‘Empire Strikes Back’ AT-AT and the Millenium Falcon, for starters.)
Thus, today’s MS-QOTD (pronounced, as always, “misquoted”) is the inverse of the one before it: What toys/merchandise did you actually HAVE as a kid do you wish you’d kept?
Once upon a time, there was a young nerd from the Midwest, who loved Matter-Eater Lad and the McKenzie Brothers... If pop culture were a maze, Matthew would be the Minotaur at its center. Were it a mall, he'd be the Food Court. Were it a parking lot, he’d be the distant Cart Corral where the weird kids gather to smoke, but that’s not important right now... Matthew enjoys body surfing (so long as the bodies are fresh), writing in the third person, and dark-eyed women. Amongst his weaponry are such diverse elements as: Fear! Surprise! Ruthless efficiency! An almost fanatical devotion to pop culture! And a nice red uniform.
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The first would be my Johnny Jet. This was a plastic jet plane console with levers and buttons you could push, and a couple of rubber tipped dart “missles” that you could fire, but the coolest thing about it was the screen in the middle of the dash. It had a light behind it, and a metal jet plane which was linked to the steering wheel (yes, I know, real jets didn’t have steering wheels but this toy did) which would move when you turned the wheel. The whole thing was engineered so that this cast a jet plane silhoutte on the scenery that rolled past the screen when you turned it on. This toy was very rare since it was only sold for two years 62-63 through grocery store chains instead of toy stores. Last time I saw one on e-bay it was a non-functioning unit and was selling for $400.
My brother and I had a pair of toys that I don’t even know what they were called. My brother had what looked like an instamatic camera, but when you touched a secret button a barrell popped out and the bottom swung out into a stock, turning the fake camera into a cap pistol. I had one that looked like a portable radio set, which ejected a barrel and the bottom swung down to form a rifle stock, it was a cap rifle. I think these dated to about 1964 or 1965.
Okay, I was in error. It was called a Jimmy Jet, not a Johnny Jet. But, hey, it’s only been fifty years since I owned one.
Oh, and the secret agent cap guns were part of Mattel’s “Agent Zero” line.
My brothers and I had an original Nintendo system with a pretty large assortment of games that we sold at a garage sale once we upgraded to Super Nintendo. Sometimes I wish I could still play some Mike Tysons Punch Out or Tecmo Bowl on our old system.
Me too. I thought the original Zelda was great and miss the wrestling and baseball games. Alot of fun.
Back in the early Oughts, I sold all my Transformers and Super Powers figures on eBay. I kind of regret that now.
My Batman Forever Batcave, my Superman with magnetic kryptonite ring, and my Battletech Robots with a bajillion missiles and explosive battle damage.
For the most part I wish I’d kept my huge playsets. The Ewok village playset (which was actually rereleased later as part of Kevin Costner’s Robin Hood toyline with some new parts), Cobra HQ, my multiple varied GI Joe HQ playsets (including a few duplicates from yard sales), etc. You don’t really see that sort of thing much anymore, and the closest I’ve found was my Cantina Playset from the mid 90’s Star Wars line but it is made of cardboard (yet as I use it for display and not play, it has held up).
All my old Star Wars toys in general. I’ve been lucky and have found a few for dirt cheap at yard sales (including a Yoda toy complete with cloth robe and his cane as if it just came out of the package, and a similarly “nearly new” Droids issue Boba Fett), but my collection would be much, much larger if my parents hadn’t decided I needed to start being girly and throw almost everything I owned out.
Also, purely sentimental, I wish I still had my giant stuffed Alvin doll. That was a gift while I was going through chemo and my stepdad decided to burn it when he was drunk.
Got to thinking last night, and I realized I wish I still had a couple of my other toys.
My old “Photon” and “Laser Tag” stuff. I know that they have been updated and re-released, but I liked the old sorta retro-futuristic style of the old guns opposed to the newer styles. I also had the special vest, hat and belt for Laser Tag (some doctor when I was going through chemo got the stuff for every kid on one floor, much to the annoyance of the nurses).
While not mine, I wish we’d kept my older brother’s fantasy toys (I think some might have actually been D&D?). But the summer we moved from our larger house to a smaller house, they were among the things mom decided to toss out (possibly because he was about to be a senior in HS and she thought he was too old for them).
I had so many. Stars Wars, G.I. Joe, Hot Wheels Cars. I think, the ones I miss most are the Mego Marvel and DC figures. I had every Mego figure made. I also had the Mego Star trek figures and the Mego Starship Enterprise Bridge playset, you know the vinyl fold out think with the spinning transporter. I would really love to have those back.
I hung onto my Star Wars stuff, but I wish I’d been able to resist my mom’s cleaning purge when it came to these plastic robots I used to have. I wish I could remember what they were called, but they all had a boxy torso, and some shot darts and one had a claw, and the kicker was that there was an interchangeable motor that took 2 AA batteries that you could put in the torso and it would make the robots walk and there was a switch that made a gear come down and the robot would run on this kind of monorail track. Anyone have any clue what I’m talking about?
One sentence – Planet of the Apes Forbidden Zone play set…
Castle Greyskull, Snake Mountain and Yoda’s Dagobah environment. :(
The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Sewer Playset from Playmates. I would spend hours setting up my Turtles action figures (and other assorted guys) and letting loose the pointed ball down the sewer pipe in my own version of TMNT Bowling. Awesome stuff.
The late 80’s sewer playset is one of the few major toys I still have. The larger part is the remains of my original, while everything else has been “restored” thanks to yard sales (and the odd “random box of toys” holding a part or two).
I wish I had more display space so I could bring it out of the storage box along with some of my other TMNT toys (currently I only have the four classic turtles, the “kid” turtles from the FOX series and “Space Usagi” on my random shelf along with a lot of other random geeky items).
This is a great topic! I wish I had never opened the Devastator gift set my grandmother bought me for Christmas one year.
2XL. I’d like my son to have first-hand experience with 8-track cassettes.
Scott– They were called the Zeroids, individually known as Zintar, Zobor and Zerak. I wish I still had them too, along with Major Matt Mason.
1. Big Jim and his Karate Studio. Thank goodness for eBay. One of these days bam! It will be mine again.
2. Pulsar The Ultimate Man of Adventure and his Life Systems Center. A very bizarre concept for an action figure. Appropriate that I got it for my birthday while in the hospital recovering from appendicitis.
3. Mazinger and other mechas’ 48″ inch versions.
Sadly I also owned every Star Wars figure, space vehicle, and misc ever sold through around 1991… Which my parents gave to Goodwill after I left for college… All in mint condition with all parts/weapons/accessories intact.
Sorry, I gotta go cry for a bit now…
:)
I sill have my Legos from when I was a kid, and I still have my star wars figures. Sadly, the tie-fighter and the landspeeder are long gone. I do wish I had kept my Timex Sinclair. It actually got tossed out in a move back in 2001.
Wow. That was one of my first computers! That and an Atari 800! Didn’t keep either but I did keep my TI 99/4A.
So retro.
Still have my X-Men and Star Wars figures. I’d say I wish I still had my AT-AT (it got broken by a family friend) and I wish I still had my GI Joes. My brother got all of our LEGO, so it’s still in the family. Other than that? I wish I had my old NES/SNES. I honestly have no idea where they went… I guess my parents purged them at some point.
I had the Star Trek Enterprise bridge set with the spinning transporter.
I miss my Tyrannosaurus Dino Rider and the green Centurion. I also had an airplane gun that went to a video game. It would eject the pilot out. I saw it in an advertisement in one of my old Avengers comics.
The Space:1999 Eagle Transport from Mattel. By the time I got rid of it, most of the parts were gone. I’d love to have one again.
I had a bunch of Models I had built that my folks eventually tossed. A 2′ (ish) Diameter Millennium Falcon (lit up), 2 Space:1999 Eagles, The original Enterprise, Klingon D7, and Romulan Bird of Prey. As for actual toys it would be pretty cool if I still had the Battlestar Galactica Viper (came with a 1″ ‘action figure’ that fit in the cockpit and was actually from the early sales from before they disabled the ‘missile’ that shot out of the nose) I Had and and the Star Wars X-wing (scaled to the Action figures).