Due to having no money lately, I've had to think about fun rather than paying for it. As a result, I've been having a pretty hardcore case of lost childhood toy nostalgia. I'll be covering some late 70s/early 80s recreational products here, so let me crawl off my dinosaur, sit down by the fire, and get started:
Remember Stompers? The little 4x4 trucks powered by a single AA battery? They had those big spongy black tires that enabled the vehicle to effortlessly cross over some pretty rugged terrain such as No. 2 pencils, crayons, fingers, sticks, sand, and just about any other 1/4" tall object you put in its path. Can you say 'Ass kicking'? They had working headlights. My friend Jason and I would take them apart like they were little truck shaped froggies being dissected in biology class and put them back together. We'd inevitably ruin them by doing so, and beg our moms to buy us new ones on the next trip to K Mart. I've seen a new generation of Stompers on toy shelves lately, but just like everything else you grow up with (unless you were a kid in the late 80s/early 90s when everything was being made cheap and crappy by default), they don't make 'em like they used to.
Intellivision. Yeah, I'm old. I never had one of these state-of-the-art gaming consoles, but remember the controllers had numbers on them and a gold disc which you'd press to control gaming movements. Aforementioned friend Jason had one of those and in between ruining his parent's TV screen by holding magnets up to it and watching the colors change, we spent many hours playing Donkey Kong and some weird math game where a monkey was on a river and you had to solve math problems in order to get points and travel further down the river.
SIMON Red, yellow, green, or blue? I loved this game (Santa scored big time leaving this under the tree for me... along with those Ace and Peter KISS solo albums that year.) I heard this game is making a comeback, but I don't want anything to do with the new version.. I guess it has way more buttons and lights on it to cater to the needs of today's children who apparently need all of that shit to keep them from falling asleep or dying of boredom while playing. Poor things...
Garbage Pail Kids My brother and I got into these right around the 2nd/3rd series crossover. Miniature paintings of severely mutated Cabbage Patch Kid dolls? Sign me up. Those things were the best up until the Cabbage Patch folk allegedly threatened Topps with a lawsuit unless they eliminated the Cabbage Patch resemblance. What a bunch of wussies.
The last street I shall travel on for this entry is a toy which I cannot for the life of me remember what the name of it was. I think Nerf made them, but have searched the internet high and low with no answer. They were D cell battery-shaped chunks composed of a spongy Nerf-like substance. You'd hold them between your thumb and index finger and squeeze them until they'd fly out of your hand and make a popping sound. Sounds like about as much fun as a stick and a glass of water to you, but when I was five, holy crap - hours of entertainment there.
Time to head over to Ebay...
