My Childhood Toybox

Pictures of Toys I owned (or at least played with) as a kid.

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Ernie Doll (apologies for the tiny photo, it was the only one I could find of this doll)

While this toy itself was really of no particular interest to me it did come to be the object of one of the funniest/stupidest inside jokes my friends and I had.

One afternoon me and my pal, Scott, were hanging out in my room,  I can't recall exactly WHY, but at some point we got into a bit of a tug of war with poor old Ernie, and his legs were ripped from his body.

While normal kids might ruin a toy, mourn the loss, and move on, we were far from normal.

Ernie's tragedy soon became an inside joke between us.  This inevitably led to us drawing a comic called "Ernie's Friends" in class, because who actually did school work back then?

The comic featured Ernie wanting to play a game with Scott and myself, and we obliged by playing the 'war amps game' (a very poor-tasting reference to the war amps charity for helping veterans with missing limbs and paralysis. We were just terrible kids. Terrible terrible kids).  The 'war amps game' was just us ripping Ernie's legs off.  And then He was dead and Bert cried or something.

Well, a comic was great and all, but it just wasn't great enough. We composed a whole Ernie's Friends song with a cheap radio shack keyboard and recorded it on a casette tape.  Then we animated the entire story in Mario Paint on my SNES, bit by bit, and recorded that to a VHS tape.  Using that 80's kid ingenuity, we then hooked up 2 VCRs, as was common practice for ancient video piracy, and re-recorded the animation with the song on the audio input.

Somewhere in my parent's old VHS collection, there is still a tape containing this and many other terrible Mario Paint productions. It was certainly the best of times.

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Transformers Action Masters: Jackpot & Sights

At the tail end of the first generation Transformers toy run, somebody at Hasbro was enjoying a nice platter of lead-dusted paint chips when they came up with a brilliant idea.  LETS MAKE TRANSFORMERS, THAT DON'T TRANSFORM!!!!

And thus the ACTION MASTERS were born.  I guess there was some small bit of guilt because at the last minute they decided they should at least give them all pets that transform into guns, umbrellas, sex toys, etc.

The toy line did have some decent looking versions of classic characters like Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, Thundercracker, etc... that actually looked just like their TV/comic book counterparts.  These guys were just cool enough to be collectible.

Unfortunately, the one I got was Jackpot.  Pretty much the ONLY action master toy that was not a classic transformer.  At least he had a pet bird who's wings folded up, and you could stick Jackpot's handgun into the pee-hole of the bird's retractable wang, thus 'transforming' it into a folded up bird with a gun in it's dick.

So yeah, it was a cool toy.

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Zbots were yet another awesome set of collectible mini-figurines.  Unlike most mini-figs of the time, the Zbots actually had pose-able arms and legs (and some could even transform into vehicles). There were like 100 or more of these things (although a bunch were really just repaints) ranging from cool original robots to parodies of classic sci-fi bots.

These toys were pushed under the micro machines line and unfortunately never got any more marketing or media tie ins than that, which is unfortunate because with so many unique robots it would have made a hell of a cartoon. Just imagine that catch phrase "RADICAL ROBOT MACHINES" sung in a campy 90's pop rock theme!

On the plus side, they were made by Galoob, which I argue is still the most fun company name to pronounce of all time.  Go ahead, say it out loud and try not to smile:  "GAH-LOOB"

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M.U.S.C.L.E.

I'm still not entirely sure what the acronym was supposed to mean, but the whole point of these toys was that they were weird flesh colored people and monsters that wrestled. I wonder what country could have possibly spawned this idea...

There were 100's of these weird mini figures, and people went nuts trying to collect them all.  While I never got that into they toys, I do have very fond memories of the NES game.

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The Captain Power Powerjet-XT7 was a very early pioneer of interactive television.  

Basically you would tune in to the Captain Power live-action (with some crude, early CGI) tv show, and shoot at the bad guys that all had these unexplained glowing blobs on their chests.

The toy itself was basically a light gun, and it would keep track of how many baddies you managed to shoot.  

There were also screen flashes as the bad guys shot lasers toward the camera.  If you didn't point your ship away from the TV during these shots, they would play a small explosion sound.

If you took enough damage, the cockpit would eject your Captain Power action figure and great dishonor would befall your house.

Unfortunately, the commercials for these toys over-promised the enjoyment they actually provided (can you believe that your TV didn't actually shoot lasers?).  It didn't help that they were relatively expensive compared to other popular toy lines.  

The TV show, however, was actually pretty awesome and is rumored to be getting rebooted as a show called Phoenix Rising.

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Stink-or!

The Masters of the Universe toys were very well known for reusing the same molds over and over with different colors, but some of their original molds were just so unique, it took some real ingenuity to come up with an alternate use for them.

Mer-man was just such a case. His unique head with it's fin-like ears and it's large amphibious eyes wouldn't translate to just any type of character. But someone realized that fin-like ears and giant eyes reminded him of the rare tailless Tasmanian swamp skunk (those exist right?).

By painting Mer-Man's model black and adding white stripes, the new toy was almost perfect. It was just missing one thing... an action feature.

At first they tried adding a miniature water pump so he could 'spray' his enemies from his rear-end, but that proved to be too expensive to mass produce. 

The toy was almost abandoned until one fateful day, an intern was delivering the memo regarding this toy's cancellation to the lead designer.  

The designer had been at the office for three days, without rest, just staring at the prototype hoping another brilliant idea would come to him.

His office was full of random notes and sketches, and so when he was asked to sign off on the toy's cancellation, he had nowhere to set the prototype, and instead held it in his armpit to sign the form.

With a sigh, he returned both the toy and the memo to the intern, who returned both the Matel's board of directors.  It was then that one of the directors caught a whiff of the slate musky sweat and called the whole cancellation off.

Stink-or was officially born!

Finally, the Masters of the Universe would meet their match in Skeletor's newest henchman.  His power of not smelling good would be far more useful than say a tank or something!

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Apparently, at some point, Superman finally figured out how to deal with his aversion to glowing green rocks.  A shielded suit you ask? Don't be foolish, this is Super-MAN!!! 

The only manly way to deal with a personal shortcoming is to get an uneccesarily large vehicle.  In this case, the Super Powers Supermobile.

This manly machine had everything Superman needed to take Lex Luther to pound town, starting with a thick, hard, ribbed shaft below the cock-pit. This shaft could thrust in and out to give ol' Lex a facial he would never forget.

And once all that foreplay was over, the panting, exhausted Mr. Luthor would be taken away after fisting one of the two sphincters located under the wings.

Unfortunately for Superman, this kryptonite contraceptive had limited use as it couldn't even fit through, let's say, a closet door.

PS. If you thought this toy was just something whipped up for the Super Powers toy line, it was actually in the comics, and it was even more retarded:  http://dc.wikia.com/wiki/Supermobile

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I think every little boy from the 60's through the 80's probably had (or at least wanted) a Super Astronaut style robot.  

I was one of the lucky kids that got the rare version with a Storm Trooper style head.  

This particular one would walk a few steps, then the chest would open to reveal a couple of flashing nipple canons that would fire as it's entire torso spun in circles.

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Army Ants were collectible mini figures inspired by the classic tan and green army men toys of old.  

I always felt like Hasbro missed a great opportunity with these toys by not franchising them into a Saturday morning cartoon.  

With all the different ants they had, it could have been a gold mine of fun anthropomorphic personalities.  Could have even been a fun NES game or something.

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This was a lesser-known construction set that was a lot more fun than it looks.  The various capsules had motors, led lights, geared axles, etc.

You could make motorized cars, boats and cranes.  It was a really cool way to introduce kids to basic engineering because you could plainly see how all the electric and mechanical parts interacted.

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Cylon Raider.

This was pretty much the cheapest version of the raider you could get in toy form.  It was the wrong color, the pilot looked nothing like the cylons in the tv show, and it was rather small.  But the "wings" did retract and the little red missiles could shoot.  

All-in-all this was a fun toy.

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Shogun Warriors Godzilla.  

This bad boy had a little lever in the back of his head that made a flat rubber flame extend from the mouth.  

Other extremely godzilla-accurate features included roller wheels on the feet and a spring-loaded, shooting fist.

Tokyo never stood a chance.

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The first Lego Space set I ever owned.  The little rocket car fit inside the ship!

Something about this particular set would make me a life-long Lego fan.