I collected WWF action figures until I was about 14 or 15. Yes, I was pretty lame. It was cool though because you could make matches that never happened in real life. I started out with the Hasbro 4-inch figures and then they stopped making them and there were Jakks. It always pissed me off beyond belief when a new company would start making them, or just start making them in different sizes because then you couldn't fucking use them together. I wish I was ten years old about five years ago because they started a Classics series, and now you could have Shawn Michaels and Marty Jannetty fight it out with the Powers of Pain! I also collected baseball cards, including a baseball card game called MLB Showdown. It was a multi-sided dice game that kicked Pokemon's fucking ass because it was fucking BASEBALL. The rules were actually pretty solid and I would build teams myself and play games and write down box scores. I got a few friends into the game and I remember the first series being vastly different from the second in terms of gameplay. In the first one you got a lot of low scoring games, so little kids hated it so they pumped up the offense. I remember buying BOXES of the first season for twenty bucks and getting the whole set after a few tries. I loved that card game so much and found a site you could trade cards on the internet. What sucked is that in real life, most of the "tournaments" involved 8 or 9 year old kids that said fuck the rules while I am 14 and building my team around the salary cap they provide. Little fuckers.
My toys were video games. I collected them since I was able to horde cash. I still have my original Genesis and Super Nintendo. Every now and again Ill fire up the SNES to play through Super Mario World. I sold my original Playstation with 15 games for a decent price when EBay was first getting big. This went towards my PS2 habit which was helped along with a two jobs the summer of my sophomore year. By the time I was able to afford a PS3 selling my PS2 games was all but a joke. I dont think Id make 5 bucks off trade in for the games I have. I really dont think there will ever be a way to get any more out of them so Ill end up trading it in for store credit and buying yet another game. As for collecting other toys my parents were kind of back and forth on whether I needed the coolest Ninja Turtle hide out or not. When I raved about the Little People's barn set at my kindergarten they had my grandpa build me a scale barn. When I wanted the Ninja Turtle hide out they fashion one for me out of a zerox box and some PVC piping. I did however get the Ghostbusters firehouse with ooze grate on top that turned into nasty crud grate after the first use.
Skeletor's Castle was the shiznit. God bless the steroid freak characters that were HE-MAN!!!!!!!!!!!
I'm afraid I have to unleash my inner nerd here, my good man. That is Castle GreySkull-that be where the Sorceress lived. Skeletors playset thing was Snake Mountain-it was purple, and had a voice changer microphone. I know-back to the basement, Bob.
That's right fuckers I still have my copy of Pokemon Gold and when my life falls to shit I can still be found playing it from time to time. Though i will deny this to anyone in real life.
My favorite was probably Legos, all you Playmobil lovers can suck it. Didn't get the pirate stuff or the space-themed things, and avoided most of the movie-tie in stuff. The Wild West is where it's at. I got this for a birthday, at the crazy-inflated price that Lego can command by being the best in its field. Now it's selling for something like 4 times that. Yeah, that's right. Why have swords and spears when there's revolvers and repeating rifles? Wild West Lego characters (well, at least the white/yellow ones. They really should have given the Indians more rifles) knew what's what. I ended up donating a bunch of my stuff to a local day care, I think I still have some stuff bouncing around in a box in the attic, though.
I fucking loved my Teddy Ruxpin talking bear. What a grizzled and rugged boy I was... Thinking back to my effeminate youth is quite un...bear...able...... *sigh* But I also had a bb gun since I was in early grade school. And so did my friends. We would put on thick sweaters and jeans and go to the trees behind my buddy's house and have an all our war. We would pretend to be in the movie "predator" and all hunt down the one guy who was picked to be predator. Sometimes we pretended to be in Vietnam and hunt down the guys who were picked to be "gooks". We had no clue what that word meant at the time. We were really safe about it though because we could only pump our guns 3 times. I can't tell you how many bbs I saw zoom past my face. It's a miracle we all still have our vision.
Hell to the yes. I also had this Playset. However, my favorite Star Trek toy was of the Voyager ship which had buttons on it which mechanically raised the nacelles, as well as buttons that made torpedo firing noises. Hot damn did I play with that all the time. Eventually the batteries had been changed so many times that the little screw that held the battery cover on was completely stripped and so I could never replace the batteries in it again. I really wish I still had that, but unfortunately they're going for ~$350 on ebay, so fuck that. Even if I could convince myself to buy it, I don't think I'd have the balls to take it out of the package. On another note, since someone mentioned going to their grandparents to play with toys, mine had some cool shit. First of all, they had a Big Wheel. Their driveway had the perfect slope to it, such that you could pedal to the top of it, close to the road, then quickly rush toward the bottom, hit the brakes (as in, you hold the pedals in place) and you would spin out. I think I managed doing a complete 360 more than once, which was awesome. Also at my grandparents was the go-cart of death. See, they had a big field out back that we could ride around this gas powered go-cart in. This was extraordinarily fun, until one day when I was around 10 I believe. I was riding it gleefully while my dad and uncle watched me drive around, when the brakes went out and the accelerator was stuck. Cue me freaking the fuck out. I was crying, I didn't know what to do, and my dad couldn't tell anything was wrong because I was too far away. Now, being the retarded 10-year-old I was, I decided that the way to stop was to start sticking my feet out the side of this go-cart and dragging them along the ground to try and stop myself. This is what got my dad's attention. He has no idea why I'm doing this but rushes out there to stop me from breaking my legs. Now my memory gets hazy, but somehow my dad stopped the go-cart (that is, he was superman in my eyes) and picked up bawling me, and all ended up being well after I was told not to do something so stupid. As I recall, all I could get in between sobs was "It wouldn't stop! It wouldn't stop!" That was fun.
Amen to that. Not two weeks ago I saw a G1 Prime re-issue here on the island. Still in the box, brand new for $140. I sat there for almost an hour trying to rationalize spending that much money on a toy. (I'm 34)
Godzilla Apache Attack Copter I about cried seven year old tears when I first saw the commercial for the Godzilla Apache Attack Copter. I had just come off the high of seeing the movie (which I thought was cool as hell) and I already de facto loved anything that shot projectiles. It fired six missiles, two grappling hooks, and dropped a containment net. Removable door to fit a Godzilla action figure inside? You bet your sweet ass it had that too. I was smitten. If awesome were manure, this toy could fertilize the fucking state of Nebraska for all I cared.
I'm surprised these haven't been mentioned yet. If you didn't have pogs, you weren't cool in second grade.
My older sister got the NES in 1986. I'm in possession of it now and it still works. In fact, just the other day I took it out for some Duck Hunt. After 40 minutes of blowing in the cartridge and system, cleaning it with rubbing alcohol and Q-tips it finally worked and I found out the hard way that the Nintendo Zapper gun doesn't work on anything but old CRT TVs. The last CRT we had was given to my grandparents and they just threw it out for an LCD. Fuck. Focus: Beast Wars. Sure, you older folks may not think they're as cool as old school Transformers, but god damn do I love Beast Wars. A few years ago I started buying figures off eBay that went out of production before I could save up enough for them. I even bought the entire series on DVD (including Beast Machines; that shit was awful) and watched them all in one weekend. If you're not down with the Beast Wars, you can suck a slagging dick.
Sucks being the youngest, you never get new shit. It's cool sometimes though, when you get your brother and his friends hand me downs. I inherited this bad boy.
This is probably the thing I wanted the most but never received. I had a dream on Christmas Eve that I got this as a gift, but upon actually waking I was the most disappointed 8 year old of all time. That being said, my favorite toys as a kid were most definitely video games. My parents were completely retarded when it came to policing what I played, so I was able to play Doom, Mortal Kombat, Duke Nukem, etc., from a very, very young age. Jack Thompson can suck my dick, I've never really been in a fight, let alone killed anyone (Yet.)
Was I the only one who had the giant transformer base? If no one else had this then you lived a less full childhood. The thing was fucking awesome! It transformed from a base in to a two foot tall fucking robot! It's head even turned into another robot, and it's heads' head turned into a little minny robot! It had a working eleavator, and places for the little minny robot to sit, and ride around. It currently lives in my Pop's garage, and I have told him, in no uncertain terms, that if he should ever sell, give, or throw it away, he will be spending his golden year in a home where you have to pay the orderlies extra not to beat the patients. As far as the collections go; I play collect, and play, Magic the Gathering. I have taught pretty much every girlfriend I have ever had how to play. I even play it at work, infact if you ever walk into a karoke bar in South Bend IN. on a slow tuesday, and see a bouncer pissed because you interupted his weird card game, well then you have just met BigPerson. I guess shame is something that happens to other people.
For me, it was all about the hockey cards. My parents got me my first pack of cards when I was six, and I was hooked until about the seventh grade when I got too cool for card collecting. My friends and I would trade hockey cards for hours on end. Being the die-hard Canuck fan that I was (and still am) I'm proud to say that I've still got this card in mint-condition: I briefly got back into collecting hockey cards when I was 18, and had some extra money to burn, but once I turned 19, my finances were often used for trips to the bar.
I wanted one of these so bad when I was little. Every Christmas I would beg my parents to get me one. I brought it up a few years ago at a family dinner and it brought my Mother to tears that I remembered how bad I wanted one and every year that motorized hunk of plastic wasn't under the tree. FOCUS: This thing, until I was old enough for a regular bike.
An ingenious one I had as a lad was Nerf Indoor Mini-Golf. 2 Clubs, nine holes, and design your own course in the house. It also came with course scorecards and four balls. Possibly the greatest rainy day toy ever made. Fuck, I wish I still had it now.
Like others have said, it was all about legos, videogames and trading cards. I have several boxes full of legos, both random blocks and Star Wars and Medieval sets. Those were my favorite. Once they stopped making the Medieval sets I went over to ninjas. My brother has a bunch of the Pirate sets. I've 'inherited' lots of video game systems dating back to atari 2600, because I'm the youngest of 4 boys. We had 2600, NES, SNES, Genesis while I was still a kid. Of course since then I've gotten an N64, Dreamcast, Gamecube, XBOX, 360 and Wii. Not to mention the handhelds. GameGear, GBA, DS. I just brought back all of my trading cards with me to my apartment. I've been playing with those bringing back memories. Any of you other former collectors interested in buying anything?? Also, growing up I had one of those sweet steerable sleds, though I don't know if it was the same kind as has been mentioned here.