Toys & Action Figures

One of the things that I always enjoyed about my childhood is some of the toys and action figures I use to own as a kid.

To be honest I didn't really have many toys. My parents would only buy me toys and action figures growing. I would only get them for my birthday, Christmas and sometimes if my parents had to go away on a business trip. I always loved the cartoons I use to watch during the 80's and it seemed like that whatever cartoon I watched as a kid I would always want a toy from that cartoon.

I especially loved my Transformers. Even though I didn't have many of them. Unfortunately a lot of toys didn't survive because I had a younger brother that took great pride is destroying a lot of toys. I wish I actually had more Transformers. They're were even some toys from cartoons I never even owned at all. I really wish as a kid I had toys from M.A.S.K., G.I. Joe, and the Centurions. I was always jealous of a lot of my cousins, that they had a lot better toys than what I did.

I think out of all the toys I've ever owned. I use to collect a lot of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, between me and my younger brother we had a lot of them. When I got older a lot of our toys were actually given away by my mom.

It's kind of funny because when I go to ebay it's amazing to see the toys you use to play with go for so much money.

I think out of all the toys I've ever owned. The best action figure I've ever had was my parents gave me a generation 1 Megatron in a really nice wooden box when I was 8 years old. Parts of it were made out of metal, and it was so wonderful to have. A couple of months later my younger brother destroyed it.

To the GFF community, out of all the toys you've ever owned what was the best toy you ever had. What kind of toys did you collect. Do you still have any. How did you feel about the toys you ever owned and some of the positive and negative memories you've had with them.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

I used to have a vast collection of Hot Wheels and Matchbox toy cars. Played with them on a play mat that wore out several years later, all that while having racing game soundtracks of the time that I had (Ridge Racer and Sega Touring Car Championship) playing. Good times.

A few years later, I found the Speedez toy cars (they were a 1/4th the size of a 'normal' Hotwheels car), and sketched out lots of little tracks for them. Lost them all over time. But they were the best for me.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

I spent the better part of the last 15 years collecting Star Wars toys. I kick myself every time I look back at how much money I've spent. Some of it went to the newer toys, some went to getting the things I never had but wanted and the rest went to getting back the things I did have but somehow had lost.

4 particular items stand out for me for best toy ever.

1. 1977 Death Star playset with the original box. This was given to me as a Christmas present by my girlfriend (now my wife). She got me this as a present during our first Christmas together. I knew I had to do whatever it took to hang on to her.

Death Star Playset

2. Han Solo in Bespin Outfit. I have it opened and still in the package.


3. Bespin freeze chamber micro playset. Something I had as a child but had to re-buy. It's worth it.

Bespin Freeze Chamber

4. The best memory I have with toys. Han Solo in Carbonite action figure. My grandfather bought me this. Not long after, he developed something called peripheral neuropathy and slowly wasted away. Playing with this toy with him is one of the few happy memories I can remember that deal with my grandfather.


my bad toy memory is when i got optimus prime for christmas, left it in the floor in the living room and my dad stepped on it in the middle of the night and broke off the leg. my parents wouldn't buy me another one to teach me a lesson that i should pick up my toys when i'm done playing with them. it's a good lesson, just sucked the way it went down at least for a 7 year old

i still have most of my star wars stuff. i gave two 50 gallon rubber tubs of the newer stuff to the local children's home two christmas' ago during their toys for tots drive. those poor kids could have alot more fun with it than I was having to store it.

Most amazing jew boots

Ah yeah, almost forgot to state that the amount of cash my parents spent on toy cars had to total well over 500 USD, but I'm sure that well over 75% of the cars I used to have are now gone. Quite an expensive thing to keep up really... and now I wish I had learned the concept of actually saving money.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Well, for toys, we had a lot of outdoor type Tonkas! We rocked the dump truck and grader and loaders, and we made some wicked roads and cities in the sand box. It was good sand too, not that beach stuff. It basically was a type of gravel but really soft and not too rocky. My brother and my cousins played a lot.

I was speaking idiomatically.

I had tons of Transformers when I as a kid, plus some random crap like My Little Pony. I didin't even want those things but my relatives would buy them for me. Oh yeah, I forgot I had all 3 Voltron lions too. I loved those things, and they were probably bootlegs now that I think about it. I remember seeing them while I was in Hong Kong and I begged my parents to buy me it. I kid you not, it was one of the happiest moments of my miserable life.



I had some really cool TFs, such as Prime, Trypticon, Sky Lynx, Ravage and Razorbeak. I can't remember all the ones I had. I guess my favourite one would be either

Trypticon 'cause it had such an awesome design and an awesome box.



or Slag 'cause trikes are my favourite dinosaurs. For some reason though I never had a Grimlock.


Sadly, my childhood lasted for a long while...I've collected toys even when I grew up. I had a batch of Beast Wars figs but I no longer have them. My faves would be Megatron dragon form and Silverbolt.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

I had quite a few Batman and Beast Wars action figures in my late childhood, and some legos and shit. But when I was younger it was mostly just random junk.....except...!



These were so badass. Did anybody else have them?

FELIPE NO

My parents were never big on buying me action figure type toys. I had a few He-Man toys, a couple of Transformers (Although I did have every single issue of the UK Transformers comis, which my parents threw out when I went to Uni, would have been worth a fortune), a few Action Force (GI Joe in America), one or two Centurions and a couple of MASK toys. I alwasy though MASK and Transformers were the best, I think Galvatron was the best toy I had for a long time.

I did collect quite a lot of Micro Machines too, no idea what happened to all of those.

How ya doing, buddy?

It's kind of a tossup between my Star Trek action figures and my X-Men action figures. I especially liked Phoenix: she had a button on her back and the phoenix logo on her costume lit up.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by Zephyrin

These were so badass. Did anybody else have them?

I never heard of this series. Did they even come out in Canada?

Seeing it though reminded of yet another firm favourite of my childhood...ZOIDS. I love building these things! Did anyone else collect them? I used to get them all the time in Hong Kong.



How ya doing, buddy?

My aunt (a teacher) used to buy me Capsela sets. They were ok to play with, but I much preferred Legos. I had lots of town sets (firehouse, airport, etc), as well as the classic space sets, including the one below, which is on someone's list of the 6 ugliest space sets:



Some of my favorite sets were the humorously named Lego Blacktron space sets. The ships were built to intentionally split apart into several interconnected pieces (like a shuttle pod coming off the larger cruiser), plus the black Legos just looked awesome.



Transformers was the only cartoon I followed that had merchandising, so by default most of my action figures were Transformers. I had a few Go-Bots (such cheesy knockoffs), but I didn't know their mythology, so I usually just incorporated those figures into my Transformers play. I got into the series/toys right after the first set of G1 series started disappearing from stores (Optimus Prime, the first Bumblebee, the original Megatron, etc.), so anytime we'd go on vacation to a place with old stores (out of the way K-Marts, outlet malls, etc.), I'd scour their toy departments for old figures. I still remember one trip we took to South Carolina, and I hit the motherlode for all kinds of old figures I'd never seen, but my parents would only let me buy one. I got Blaster (the Autobot cassette player), and ended up passing on the Dinobots.

Back home, there's a large toy chest filled with all my Transformers and their weapons. Even as a kid, I was careful with my toys, so they're all in decent condition. One day before my dad sells the house (early next year, probably) I need to go through all of them. I don't really want to sell them, and maybe if I've moved to a bigger place by then, I can set up a way to display some of them.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by Zephyrin

These were so badass. Did anybody else have them?

I did. My dad brought me three of them from here in the States to Mexico, which I took very good care of up until I left the motherland. Who knows what happened to those.

I bought 15 sets for the kids here at the school but they were quickly ruined by the majority of the little fuckers. The only one they never got around to ruining was the Weather Station, but that's because I gave it to the sixth graders last year and they kept it safe in one of their classrooms.

As for other toys, I had a multi-piece Voltron action figure with all 5 lions attaching to make one whole massive robot. But, as with all my plastic toys, parts of it quickly disappeared and/or were destroyed by the kids I played with back then.

Then I got a Nintendo Entertainment System and I lost all interest in toys after that.

How ya doing, buddy?

Originally Posted by Freelance Wolf

I never heard of this series. Did they even come out in Canada?

Seeing it though reminded of yet another firm favourite of my childhood...ZOIDS. I love building these things! Did anyone else collect them? I used to get them all the time in Hong Kong.

I used to have quite a few Zoids, they were pretty cool. I always used to lose bits though so they never stayed as complete sets for long.

I used to have a ton of Lego too. A couple of castles, a bunch of spaceships and all sorts. My parents both being teachers though, it pretty much all got donated to various schools over the years.

I was speaking idiomatically.

I'd probably say the best toy I ever owned was my Transformer Galvatron toy. I had alot of other toys I never enjoyed for various reasons. Like I'd have 1 or 2 of the toys for one of the big combiner robots, which sucks. Only Voltron toy I ever had was the black one so I couldn't form Voltron.

I think my GI Joes got the most play though. I never really cared by the cartoon, but the action figures had such easy to move limbs it made them more fun to play with for me.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Originally Posted by DarkMageOzzie

I'd probably say the best toy I ever owned was my Transformer Galvatron toy.

Good old Galvatron. The glittery plastic orange piece that formed his gun cracked pretty early on, and his batteries were dead most of the time, but I did get a lot of life out of that one. Always wished I had Megatron, though, but sadly we'll never see that particular toy again.

FELIPE NO

Originally Posted by Zephyrin

I had quite a few Batman and Beast Wars action figures in my late childhood, and some legos and shit. But when I was younger it was mostly just random junk.....except...!



These were so badass. Did anybody else have them?

I don't remember those Zeph, but I do remember my parents use to buy me a whole bunch of sets called Construx. I don't know if anybody ever had these but I remember you could build a whole bunch of space type vehicles with them as well. I had a lot of fun with them.



In my early teens I use to collect a lot of lego, but I mainly stuck to the pirate sets and the pirate ships. I actually had about 4 to 5 sets from lego pirates.

This was probably one of my favorite sets from the lego pirates collection:



What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Wow, I got so many toys from my childhood it's really hard to recall which was my favorite, since that changed everytime I got merchandise from a new cartoon series or movie. Heh, but I'll list what series I had toys for and mark my favorite (I'll go from elementary to late jr. high, since I've never really stopped collecting toys).

Hmm, lets see I had:

• Batman movies up to Forever - favorite is either Batman with the retractable belt-hook thing from the first movie, or the Batmobile from Returns where the sides eject out to transform it into that bullet form
• Beast Wars - Optimus Prime, the one where his beast form was the ape
• Bucky O'Hare - Bucky is my fav, though I do recall owning that big foot plane thing, and I remember losing my brother's Deadeye Duck at school (I wonder if I can find the cartoon series on DVD)
• Dragon Ball Z - favorite being the model kit Goku where you could swap his head between saiyan and super saiyan forms, these were the Japanese Bandai toys that you found in Chinatown (the initial lines actually had some decent sculpting), none of that crap you could buy at Toys'r'us when they started broadcasting the dub (which I never followed, I grew up watching the cantonese dubbed movies)
• Jurassic Park - my favorite is the Jeep, as I remember being really excited when I came home from school one day seeing it on my desk, I love my mom
• The Lost World: Jurassic Park - either the Rex that had caged man in his belly or the trailers vehicle set
• Ghostbusters - favorite is easily the Ecto 1 (heh, just recently purchased the whole "The Real Ghostbusters" series on DVD)
• SD Gundam model kits - favorites are probably the gundam wing ones where they were redesigned in a feudal japan fashion
• Gundam model kits - favorite is probably the RX-77, Guncannon, my friend got for my birthday (though I mostly collected Gundams from the Wing series, because it started airing on YTV)
• Lego - favorite being the Johnny Thunder stuff because he was based on Indiana Jones (who didn't play with Lego when growing up?)
• Rugrats - probably the Reptar tank thing from the first movie I think
• Star Wars - favorite being the first Bespin Luke from the 90s line, his right hand was removable, mostly because Luke's outfit from "Empire Strikes Back" was my favorite. My most memorable moment with the SW toys was when my parents were willing to take me to the midnight release of the Episode I figures at a Zellers on the other side of the city, and lining up in the -12 degrees Cel. temp with people 10-20 years my senior while the local news team filmed (heh, I remember my parents turning away from the cameras). Heh, it was pretty horrific once the doors opened as it was a mad dash/grabbing fest for Darth Maul, and it was me (I couldn't even dig in to the pegs) and my dad against everyone, while my mom waited on the side. Didn't get the Maul figure that everyone was fighting for, but I did get the speeder version that night. Heh, ended up getting one from Wal-mart the next day.
• Spider-man - referring to toys based on the FoxKids animated series in the 90s, flexible Spidey was my favorite
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - my favorite turtles were the ones from the second movie, though I only had Leonardo and Donatello
• Ultraman - back when the live action TV series was starting up, favorite is Ultraman himself

Jam it back in, in the dark.

I... still buy toys. I just sank ~$75 on Legos just the other day since they're on sale at Toys R Us this week. Sadly, probably gonna go back this Friday after I get paid and toss some more cash at a horrible decimating hobby.

As far as what I collected, I had and still have...

-Transformers: I have a fairly large box of these. Mostly G1, but they're fucked. I got a lot of my stuff from yard sales, so they were already in 'meh' shape. Toss in a ton of years in boxes, and you've got some broken, lost stuff.

-GI Joes: Before I started collecting them again to get vehicles I never had, I had somewhere around 120 of the figures, the Space Shuttle, the Mobile Command Center, the 'General' tank place, and a ton of the other vehicles.

-Ninja Turtles

-Power Rangers: The whole zord set for the first two of them. Megazord, Dragonzord, and Titanus... and Red Dragonzord, White Tiger Zord, Torr "The Shuttle Zord", and then the 4 retard ones that made up arms and legs.

-Marvel figures

-M.A.S.K.: Wish I had taken better care of these things. They go for outrageous amounts on eBay--not that I would sell them. It's just that I can't afford to buy them now... what, with my expensive Lego diet now...

-Star Wars: I had a ton of these, too, although it was the 90's releases of Power of the Force. I was just collecting them, but they took up a lot of room for something I was never going to get back into. So I tossed them on eBay and lost a ton of cash just to get rid of them as a whole.

-a shit ton of Lego.

I should take pictures of all this stuff. It's kind of bewildering how spoiled I was, and yet how decent of a person I am--at times.

How ya doing, buddy?

Originally Posted by Hantei

Bucky O'Hare - Bucky is my fav, though I do recall owning that big foot plane thing, and I remember losing my brother's Deadeye Duck at school (I wonder if I can find the cartoon series on DVD)

You can get it on dvd but it ain't cheap.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by Freelance Wolf

or Slag 'cause trikes are my favourite dinosaurs. For some reason though I never had a Grimlock.

dude slag was so awesome. I wanted swoop because pterdactyls (sp?) are my favorite but my parents could never find it. Not sure if they even made it.

I like the Incecticons also. I had the grasshopper and the beetle. I don't remember their names.

I had He-man and ninja turles stuff too until my mom went on a religious kick. according to her, He-man was evil because of magic and ninja turtles was evil because my mom saw on the turtles arcade game that Splinter worshipped Zen and that flipped her lid. So I had to get rid of those toys. I'm glad she snapped out of it. Too bad it was after my toys were sold at a garage sale. It was too evil for me to have but who cares whether some other little kid had it, right....

damned christian extremists.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Originally Posted by Angel Of Light

How did you feel about the toys you ever owned and some of the positive and negative memories you've had with them.

Back when I was four, I had this Hulk Hogan stuffed toy. I thought it was the greatest thing. So one night, my sister, who was ten at the time, thought it would be funny if she took scissors so she could stab him and rip out his innards.
I cried so much that night...


Thinking about all the toys I had, I think the best one would be those blocks of different shapes and colors. Boring, I know, but I remember building stuff with them all the time!

I was speaking idiomatically.

While I was growing up, some of the key toys I had gotten were Legos and G.I. Joes. I used to have a rather decent collection of Joes, back then. I don't really remember what happened to them. But I had stuff like a Cobra tank and a "good guy" tank. I don't even remember what the factions were called, haha. But the "good guy" tank was my favorite. It had a front compartment that opened up by retraction of the top canopy. And as it opened up backwards, diagonally, a rack of missles/rockets pop out. Must of held eight to ten launchables.

I don't really recall the names of everything I had. But it will forever be burned into my memory of how those action figures worked. Torso held onto the pelvis + legs with a black rubber band. It was awkward even then, as I used to compare its quality with the other kinds of figurines that I'd get.

As for Legos, I didn't have a whole lot of sets or variety of themes. I did however have a ton of general pieces that of which I'd put together and make stupid things. Only because I didn't know any better, back then. As for today, I've got the Mos Espa Pod Racer set, a Clone Trooper Gunship, and a Ferrari Enzo build lying around.

I'm also actively collecting the Final Fantasy Play Arts figurines. Regrettably, I've joined in the game a bit late, so not everything I want is easy to get as it may have been before.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

I got a few Gundam models, anyone know if they are worth any moneY?

no homo

Firstly, my Star Wars toys. My parents bought quite a few of them for my brothers and I when we were much younger. My brothers had Tie Fighter and X-Wing models (possibly the Millenium Falcon); my biggest craft was a ROTJ Speeder Bike. I can only go by memory to recall the figures I had. Luke, Han, Leia, Chewbacca, Darth Vader, Obi Wan, R2D2, CP30, Lobat and a few Sand Troopers I think. Being a girl of only 7 I did have a dollhouse but it was populated with characters from the Star Wars universe when my best friend at the time wasn't at my house; we used to play with them for hours, creating really bizarre storylines which generally only referenced Star Wars itself as a backdrop. As for if I still have any, I'm no longer sure. None are in the dollhouse where I left them, which quite possibly means they have been transferred to the attic. The only negative memory held for those would be when my best friend would bring his Alien figure round, which naturally obliterated anything in its path and I was never allowed to play with it.

I believe there is a large box of Lego in the attic somewhere. Mostly it is comprised of the building bricks themselves but there are a few parts from sets floating about in there.

My other favourite toys were the Airfix models; there used to be a really canny model shop down the road from us where we'd go and pick out our next project. We had all sorts, a B-52, Lightning, Harrier, Vulcan, Spitfire, Dambuster, Jaguar, Apache. There are a few still dotted about back home, including an unpainted Buccaneer, my pride and joy. The paints were very expensive and I never wanted to bugger up the job. Those aircraft brought me literally years of entertainment.

And finally, a large box of toy animals. Special in no way other than the happiness playing with them brought. I remember being particularly upset when I decided to make my favourite iguana fly when I was at primary school. It got stuck in the big oak tree in the playground, and I was sad until months later a particularly vicious gust of wind freed it again.

Of course, I could have had an incredible adventure just using a breezeblock and a bit of old bone...

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

I actually found all my old Star Wars figures when we emptied a storage unit back in December. For some reason, I only had a handful of prominent characters, and piles upon fucking piles of stormtroopers, jawas and characters nobody's ever heard of. I mean, R5-D4? Xizor? Darth Nobody-Gives-A-Shit? WHO THE FUCK. I swear my mum either picked them out at random or just went for the cheapest ones each time. I had Jar Jar Motherfucking Binks though, I guess that's something. I probably got more playtime out of Boba Fett than all the others combined. Oh he's so dreamy. Unf.




Pretty much all my other toys were hand-me-downs from my brother. I can only remember ever receiving one Lego set in my life (and I'm almost positive it was this one), but I had a huge fucking box of parts from various sets my brother had received for birthdays/christmases and the like all through the 80s. The frayed and yellowed instruction manuals were still in there, too, so when I didn't feel like improvising, I'd dig through the box, find all the correct pieces and attempt to build what was depicted in the manual.



This was one of them. The car for the battery had apparently been missing for years, though, so I never got to see it in action. I found out last year that my mum had thrown it away because she was terrified that I'd magically electrocute myself while playing with it.

How ya doing, buddy?