80s memories
- Thread starter ghostryder
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80sKIDAutoman
Well-Known Member
That is it for now. Vintage Transformers. Tamiya RC stuff and more
I had a lot of that as a kid (uss flagg? there's one sitting in my store room) thing is I played with things so a LOT of them are falling apart or are missing parts,plus I've found most of the toys back then are rather notorious for coming loose I've actually got a couple of my old dinobots sitting on my desk right now and while the ray guns and missiles/swords are...somewhere and while the toys look to be in fine shape for being thirty odd years old but they're not,both of these dinobots are so loose they don't really stand up anymore and I remember they did this within a few months of being bought.
Sorry but 80's toys are just junk,if you used them for static display fine,but play with them? stuff went loose,or broke can't tell you how many have parts that snapped-I had two shockwaves back then and both the legs broke off;GI Joe was the same none of the ones I actually played with survived,the last I bought in the late 80's that I didn't play with much are still ok but not by much.
As to you taking stuff apart,that can be just fine as I find I can sell my old stuff on Ebay for parts and make pretty good cash.
I need to part out that flagg,see what's still there........
I totally forgot about those! I had a friend that had one, but I never did.
I got in trouble for taking this apart, my speak n' spell for example. Boy my dad tanned my hide over that!
My sister had a doll that I think was called Jelly Belly, which had a squishy belly. I'm guessing it was the same stuff the Stretch Armstrong figures had inside. It got pretty torn up eventually so we performed surgery to see what the belly was made out of. My mom wasn't happy.
Yeah, toys from the 80's were pretty much junk. The main reasons, I believe, were demand and the materialistic "keeping up with the Jones" attitudes of the decade.
Let's face it, G.I. Joe and Transformers were THE toys to have in the 80's. The demand for them was ridiculously high, and I firmly believe that the manufacturers cut a LOT of corners and used lesser grade materials to keep production costs down and increase their profit margins. Why? They knew that because of the demand, the toys would fly off the shelf and anything that broke would be replaced because, like everything else, their kids had to have the latest thing.
Really none of the toys I've ever encountered were made to last unless you just let it sit there (I do the old buy and sell now of things like storage units) but the 80's stuff was pretty amazing at how bad it was.
If you use the Transformers as an example you take one look at them and you see plastic studs used against metal or other ways,like I said the Shockwave was the worst as the leg always broke,but the Megatron was a stinker too with the other ones at least they held together just got horribly loose.
Now that I'm taking these apart and selling the bits that might be of use for a collector I'm a little put off at the quality of it all,springs,the metal parts were what I'd call Harbor Freight level cheap like you said made to sell not last.
Though the plastics back then are flippin' amazing! since they had no environmental worries most of the plastics had a shelf life akin to radioactive materials! :lol
I can't tell if the new transformers can actually transform or not or if they are static.
Some are static. My nephew is 12 and I think for some of the bigger ones he has, he maybe transformed them once or twice. They are so complicated, IMO, compared to what I had in the 80s. You could usually transform them without even looking at instructions.
Fenris
Well-Known Member
Me and my sister had all the colors; red, blue, black and grey. It was all the rave in my school at the time.
Here's another one I remember. I had a couple of these... I would save my allowance and try to buy one every 2 weeks.
These are the Tamiya Jr. line... they were smaller than their real RC counterparts.
They've actually gone back to making them simpler after complaints about how complicated the Bayformer figures were to Transform. They're still not as easy as they were in the 80s but they're better. Honestly most of the Transformers they're putting out these days are remakes of the 80s figures for the collectors. If you want to see some sturdy plastics you should see the toys my dad has from when he was a kid, no fading or cracking or anything from age. Just lots of missing pieces and wear from use lol. He had this neat space complex from late 50s or so that i found an old ad for, the thing is massive and was only 11.88 lol.
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What about Jarts? And every garage had a croquet set. Emmet Otter's Jugband Christmas!
The trash heap had boobs and was scary. I always wanted to meet Uncle Traveling Matt, but hated Mokey.
My earliest favorite toy was this:
View attachment 535565
EVEL KNIEVEL STUNT CYCLE
I'm trying to remember if it was actually early 80's for me or late 70's. It feels like early 80's to me.
I wonder if Evel Knievel is responsible for subliminally implanting the notion that "being evil is cool" into a generation of young kids... even though Evel and evil are spelled differently? I mean, I was really young back then and probably wasn't spelling much.
Watched "Summer School" and "One Crazy Summer" and "Dragonslayer" about a 1000 times each.
The trash heap had boobs and was scary. I always wanted to meet Uncle Traveling Matt, but hated Mokey.
My earliest favorite toy was this:
View attachment 535565
EVEL KNIEVEL STUNT CYCLE
I'm trying to remember if it was actually early 80's for me or late 70's. It feels like early 80's to me.
I wonder if Evel Knievel is responsible for subliminally implanting the notion that "being evil is cool" into a generation of young kids... even though Evel and evil are spelled differently? I mean, I was really young back then and probably wasn't spelling much.
Watched "Summer School" and "One Crazy Summer" and "Dragonslayer" about a 1000 times each.
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Hard to believe someone had one of those that still worked lol. 80sKIDAutoman: I want to raid your video gaming stuff so bad lol. One thing about collecting: you will kick yourself for not saving the packaging lol. My dad used to tell me when i was little to put stuff back in the boxes when I'm done with it and he was right. This is why he has 50s/60s toys in near mint condition. My buddy has a room in his house that is just Transformers from the US and Japan.
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80sKIDAutoman
Well-Known Member
I had to make a painful decision to sell off a great portion of my collection recently. I have 2 houses worth of crap! Inventory rich but cash poor Gotta change that now!! All my monies now go to building costumes. "Collecting is an obsession!". Dehoarding purge continues.
Gotta change that now!! All my monies now go to building costumes. "Collecting is an obsession!". Dehoarding purge continues.80sKIDAutoman I got out of collecting Transformers because hasbro's just going insane with releases, now i'm strictly vintage gaming. Which is worse than Transformer collecting lol Sadly I see a few things in the one pic you have that are on my want list and i can't go shopping right now lol
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That's a pretty typical Evel landing....followed by several weeks in a hospital.
Laspector
Master Member
Nah! I never keep packaging. Never did as a kid, still don't to this day. When I buy something I collect, it is for me and me alone. I have no interest in "mint in package". When I collect something it is purely for my enjoyment and I never have any desire to ever sell it. If I can't touch it, take it apart and rebuild it, it's not worth having IMHO.
