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Is it just me or are there just too many toy
lines out there these days?
When I think about it, the 1980's were a heyday for
Kids, since toy companies knew what would sell to
kids and they did not have to fall back on lines
from Japan to pad out their lines. In the 1980's
it seemed like every cartoon that was in
syndication had a toy line and every cartoon put
out during that time had some sort of cool gimmick
that translated well into toys. Take the
Centurions for example; you purchased the figure
that you wanted and got a basic snap-on weapon set
with it for about $10. If you wanted the more cool
weapons kits, then you had to buy them separately
for between $10-$20, which was a lot of money back
then. If you wanted, you could mix and match the
weapons kits and make something cooler than those
kits ever did.
This leads me to my second point, toys back then
encouraged children's creativity. We did not have
half of the fancy toys
that kids have these days. One toy line I really
liked that I'm not sure they make any more was
called Construx. My grandfather would get me some
Construx every Christmas when I was 8-10 years
old, and I would spend hours building all sorts of
things from grappling hooks to towers with my
grandfather's help. This encouraged me to start
building things with him from boomerangs out of
wood, to a tree house in our backyard. This also
gave me the guts when I was ten years old to
purchase the Cobra Moray Hydrofoil from the GI Joe
line. I got it on clearance at Best for like $10,
and put most of it together myself. I just needed
a little help with the pop-up missile launcher. I
still had a great time putting it together and
would have never had the guts to put it together
all by myself without all those times I had my
grandfather helping me put the Construx sets
together.
We had no Dancing Elmo, hell we did not
even have Elmo, and we had
the regular Muppet characters that knew how to
talk and did not speak in a high pitched whine.
Anyway, we had hand puppets that you had to make
up voices for if you did not know what they
sounded like. I remember we had a few of the hand
puppets based on the characters in the
Neighborhood of Make-Believe that our mom would
entertain us with even though she could not do the
voices that well.
I'm longing for the 1980's again and I cannot
seem to remember why. Is it
because everything was cheaper back then or
because the quality of the figures was better and
we did not have all the collectors we have now? Or
is it because I was young and we all have fond
memories of our youth?
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