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How did you play? [Nostalgia Thread]
Romantic Undead
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I was doing some cleaning up and came upon some of my old childhood toys; I still have a banged-up but well loved old Voltron, some Masters of the Universe, Ninja Turtles and the like, and I started reminiscing about the the adventures we had together.
Now I realize that there might be a gloss of nostalgia showing through here, but I began to marvel at the complex storylines that my child-mind would come up with during my sessions of play. Allow me to give you an example:
As a child, I had a He-Man action figure, I even had Snake Mountain (complete with faux-voice modulation microphone) but my parents never saw fit to get me a Skeletor Action Figure. During play, I used to have to make up scenarios explaining why Skeletor was never around when He-Man and his friends came to free the world of his tyranny. Beast-Man and Tri-clops were usually stuck squabbling about who would be responsible for leading the green army men that they had summoned to take down He-Man and friends.
Here's another example of my child imagination at work:
My parents, at one point, had bought me a large denim drawstring bag full of marbles. Large ones and small, of all types. I was never much of a marble player, but play I did, in a much different way.
I had segregated my marbles into two separate groups: The Catseyes and the Mutants. Note that I was 6 or 7 at the very most, and had never heard of the X-Men. I remember very clearly the setting I had invented. The Catseyes were a group of ultra-conformist ubermen, who outnumbered the mutants and had cast them out for being "different", while the Mutants were varying colors and patterns, each with a unique personality and some I had even named. I played out the Mutants' struggles to eke out an existance within fascict Catseye-land. I distincly recall one marble, which was milky white with streaks of cocoa that ressembled vanilla-fudge ice cream, who I had, for whatever reason, decided would become the leader of the Mutants. I named this marble "Choco" (I wasn't THAT imaginative). One day, this marble actually broke in half in my bag... I actually recall playing out a scene where the Mutants and Catseyes put aside their differences temporarily to honor the fallen freedom fighter.
Surely I can't be the only one here who has vivid memories of crazy or imaginative ways they would play with their toys. Share yours here!
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMDPnf89Ef4&feature=related
I always wanted to collect more of the Hot Wheels Crack Ups cars.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMEMPErsYbA
These toys were the only destructive ones allowed growing up since my parents placed a ban on toys with guns and violent looking weapons. No GI Joes or plastic army men. Squirt guns had to be neon in color. Though I was able to convince the 'rents that the Dino Riders toys (plastic dinosaurs with detachable laser guns strapped to their backs) were okay.
Going back further, though...
So, being a girl, naturally I got gifted a lot of Barbies when I was younger. Except I have two older brothers who always had way cooler toys. Fuck girl toys. I want Transformers and Lego. One day I decided enough was enough. There was this Fisher-Price kitchen play set thing set up in the basement where all my toys were and it had this little table on the side. So I grabbed my barbies by the legs and WHAM! Slammed them head-first onto the edge of the table and popped their heads off. I did this to all of them, one by one.
I think later I fixed one Ken and one Barbie because they were supposed to be the President and First Lady. And then I killed them with my Independence Day alien action figure (I really liked that movie as a kid for some reason).
Ah, what else... I went through a phase where I played with plasticene(?) a lot. I had a big tub of it. I'd take pieces of it and attach it to my action figures to change the characters. Like, I'd make them hats and beards and stuff or turn them into aliens.
Oh, one time me and my brother made a wrestling ring out of lego and then tried to piece together the lego men to be accurate representations of WWF wrestlers. I do believe I still have that tub of lego under my bed... And my Solid Snake action figure... And a couple Beasties transformers kicking around somewhere.
Do... Re... Mi... So... Fa.... Do... Re.... Do...
Forget it...
it was a pirate set I had with a boat and pirate figures and also I guess navy figures.
and then a castle set with two separate armies you could play with.
those things were so much fun.
I also had megaman action figures at one point that I played the hell out of
edit - oh yeah! my cousins had wrestling figures and a WWF ring. so cool
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqquIzrRQQI&feature=related
i was mostly into guns and piano
i sometimes played with my older brother's toys, though
the only one i really remember is the action figure for Hicks, from alien
I always wanted one of those transformer sets that combined into a larger robot (like the constructicons). I managed to get one or two pieces, but never a full set.
HOWEVER, I did get a Go-Bot one that was similar, made from 5-6 cars. It was crap, wouldn't stay together, and there was no variety between the parts.
Nothing beat the 80s for cartoons designed to sell toys. There were 100 different attempts at action figure lines and each and every one had a cartoon to go with them.
I also played around with Estes rockets a bit; I had one that would take a grainy little photo at its apogee that I used for a science fair project.
Oh, and funnoodles! Man, my friends and I staged many wars with those things (and with nerf guns and occasionally water guns). I also remember this flying/thrown toy called an Aerobie that was more or less triangular and would return to you when thrown. I was never allowed to play with the damn thing because it took about one throw to get it hopelessly lost in a tree or worse every goddamn time.
I had this. Or I should, say, still have this, one day my kids will play with it. It actively encouraged you to crash things together. It was the best toy of all time.
I had this one:
edit: and a pic of the cockpit flying off:
We actually had a whole set of rules for playing with these. It was like Warhammer 40K for kids.
I was never really into action figures, but I fucking loved Lego and Micro Machines. In fact, the first toy I ever bought myself - it cost $18.97, I had to save my paper route money for a month, and it took a week to order it through Consumers Distributing - was this bad boy right here:
I was kind of funny in how I played with Lego, though. I liked building each set when I got it, but I wasn't into breaking them down and combining them into new, original Frankencastles: I just followed the directions, then when it was done, I left it alone. Instead, I just used them all as stages for the dramas I acted out with the minifigs, starring such characters as Boromir the red-haired Viking dragonlord, Artos the grim, dark-beared Roman-Celtic warchief, and Milton Fuzzy, the talking horse.
I did the same thing with my Micro Machines. I had a ton of the Travel City sets - bridge, carwash, hospital, marina air base, motel, rock quarry, suburban house - and I would set them all up, then let my Micro Machines have grand adventures on them. Every one of those tiny little cars had its own name and personality, from Jason, the good-natured teenaged dump truck, to the retired 1930s hotrod Bonfire and his wife Mona.
And my parents wondered why I didn't spend much time hanging out with other kids. Ha. With awesome imaginary friends like those, who on earth would want the company of common humans?
I was such a lonely little girl.
The CORPS figures were basically knock-off GI Joes, but were cheap (4 packs were $5) and had amazing articulation. Rubberbands inside the joints with hooks and such.
I loved these guys.
Girls are weird.
In short, little girls are disturbing when they play.
Monster in My Pocket were soft, rubbery Muscle Men.
Dissolving bags? Doctor Dreadful playset?
Oh my god, yes! That's what they were called!
My brothers had a big bucket of these. I used to build awesome tanks and trucks out of them. One time I built a recycling plant. It was just a vaguely sci-fi ish looking building so I don't really know what made it a recycling plant other than I said it was.
edit: aaah, Doctor Dreadful! I still have a box of it up in my closet I think.
Oh, and does anyone remember that game Siege? You got to catapult orange plastic balls at a cool looking castle. Don't think I ever actually played a legit game of it. I just played out crazy battles on my own.
Do... Re... Mi... So... Fa.... Do... Re.... Do...
Forget it...
I had one lego set that I have never been able to find again, or even find a picture of.
It was a decent sized box, I'd say maybe a foot by 8 inches by 5 inches, and it could make a gas station, a car, a pickup truck, and a really really big truck that took the entire set. I want to say the general color scheme of the box/pieces was green and white, but can't quite recall.
I know this was an official lego set, not one of the knockoffs, but even after spending an hour delving Lego Lists, I haven't been able to find it again.
Edit: And it wasn't the Octan Gas Station set, but it looked a lot like that... Or else, if it was, nothing on the internet mentions that there was a guide in the booklet with it to build a truck instead of a gas station with all the parts.
My barbies were...well...let me start by saying I had a ton of toys. My barbies got special treatment though, as I'd cut their hair off, pierce their faces, make them naked, give them sex changes, dye their hair, make them LGBT oriented (without having consciously known LGBT people at those ages so everything came from my mind), and also have my personal fucked up soap operas (that would make BANK, let me tell you).
I was weird with my toys, but thoroughly entertained. It was more exciting to me because I'd have them do "boy" stuff too like blow shit up, but it wasn't the same thing every time I pulled them out.
This leads me to believe little girls want Barbie dolls for their birthdays because they think they're supposed to like Barbie dolls. The Pink Aisle has hypnotized a whole gender. What little girls really want is a Barbie doll with a green mohawk and kung-fu kick action who solves grisly murder mysteries and drives a MONSTER TRUCK!
There is not enough love in the world to express how much I love Z-Bots.
When I was a kid, I had this huge intricate storyline going on, where one faction of the bots was always trying to grab the resources of the others. Different rooms were consistent locations, and the factions would vary on who controlled what. Each Z-Bot also had a power or specialty that made them unique. I remember when Burger King had Z-Bots as toys, I freaked the hell out.
Z-bots were indeed the shit and anyone who says otherwise is challenged to fisitcuffs at dawn.
However even as a kid despite having them all I didn't know the "story" behind them. Obviously there must've been good bots and bad bots, but I decided who were the good guys based on which ones I liked more.
Edit. looking on wikipedia it seems that each robot had either a Z or V on them to show whether they were good (Z) or evil (v) this never occured to me. I thought they were just random markings.
and I missed out on two whole series of them (the last two)
Kids imaginations are way better than the package story.
Have the Masters of the Universe and the Thundercats sacrifice it to the Giant Stuffed White Tiger God to calm its wrath, allowing Evilyn and Cheetara to cross through its domain of Dark Closet Caverns to reach the Great Carpet Ocean, meet up with the Legoship Pirates, sail to the Piled Pillow Isle to meet the Dinosaur Oracle who gives them the secret to slaying the Dread Mohawked Punk Popple of Sheet-Thrown-Over-Pile-of-Junk Mountain.
Pretty much the only action my one barbie doll saw anyhow.
OMG! I had tonnes of these, along with Lego, and another building toy called Legions of Power. I made a 3 ft long starship out of Construx. It wasn't very...structurally sound though. It would flex when you picked it up.
Oh god, two words that instantly bring me back to childhood.
:^:
I never finish anyth
Also, Duplo, Legos, lincoln logs, and bristle blocks. I would build towers out of them, then build a ramp out of books and cardboard, and run my hot wheels up them and crash them into them to knock them down and break them. I think my mom worried about me.
Holy. Shit.
I loved this stuff! I ended up giving mine away, but it remains one of my favourite toys. If I ever have kids, I don't care how much it costs on ebay, they're getting Construx.
Also, there were no little mans or computer consoles to set them in front of.
And there were panels that made them less skeletal. The bare bones systems weren't necessarily great, but the space themed stuff was badass.
How can you not love toys that look like this when closed:
And this when open:
I also had a bunch of those weird troll things. I'd line up all my miscellaneous action figure toys I'd bought from various charity shops into fairly arbitrary teams, and have them battle mano a mano.
So much win!
I wanna hear more stories like these!
aww man I had that! i forgot all about it until now
but when I was reaaallly young (like before 1990) I had these awesome dinosaur toys that were like to scale with normal sized action figures. I know every little boy loves dinosaurs, but some of my first correctly pronounced words were dinosaur names
anyway, this guy was part of the set
but I don't know what the set is called
Hey look at that, I had that set too.
Those little hemispheres glowed in the dark, too, didn't they?
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Things following those links taught me:
They are releasing a kit for The Queen Anne's Revenge
They are also releasing one for The Black Pearl
I am going to buy the shit out of those