There are three universal truths about toys I’ve learned during the childhood: Toy concepts get better as time goes on, toy manufacturing quality drops over the years, and Legos will always, always be goddamn expensive. Children nowadays can ride in a child-safe motor scooter, play chess with frikkin’ laser beams on the pieces, or empty a clip from a powered Nerf uzi into a crowd of kids with powered super soaker cannons with backpacks, spread guns, and mounted water balloon grenade launchers.

Something awesome got left behind in the transition.
That awesome, is called the Eliminator TS-7.

TS-7 is this big-ass gun with push-button sound effects and lights. The ‘7’ part comes in with being able to attach and pull apart several parts of the gun to create different weapon firing effects, bayonets, or ditch the gun part and run around with a big ass sword. It was really just a short sword part (Power Dagger) that had two buttons on the handle that made ‘clang’ and ‘woosh’ noises. Then when you slid the dagger into a giant machine gun casing (Army Machine Gun), it would activate the gun buttons that would make machine gun fire, laser sounds, and grenade launchers. Then you had two extra plastic attachments, one was a long blade that you could put on the dagger to make a big sword (Power Sword), or you slide that in the gun and it would function as a bayonet (Bayonet Machine Gun). The other was an orange pointed cylinder tube you could attach to the sword to make a bigass laser tube sword (Laser Sword) or you stuck the tube on the top of the machine gun part to create a laser gun (Cyber-Gun). Now if you combined the longsword into the gun for the bayonet, then stuck the laser tube thing on the gun, you had the official terror beast weapon (Eliminator TS-7).

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I came in to work on Tuesday morning and found this waiting for me:

My dear friend Craig, knowing of my love for all things He-Man, found these Golden Books at his local thrift shop. That guy goes to the thrift store about three times per week and always comes back with some sort of awesome – and oftentimes ridiculous – treasure. I’ve gotten some great stuff from him (all with the price written in marker in the upper left-hand corner), but this is easily the best bit of booty he’s brought back for me.

So what we have here are three He-Man books, put out by Golden in 1983 and 1984. From what I can discern from the back cover, there were at least six books. This lot contains Time Trouble, The Trap, and Mask of Evil. Missing are The Sword of Skeletor, Caverns of Fear, and The Thief of Castle Grayskull. A quick look at eBay reveals that the books can be found for a buck a piece.

Paging through the books resulted in a rush of nostalgia. I swear I had The Trap as a kid. The artwork is a combination of cheesy 80s action art and just plain bad artwork. However, the cover art is fantastic, each book displaying highly detailed hand-painted covers. And the stories, as you’d expect, are steeped in 80s cheese, straight out of the cartoon. Here’s a sample:

These books will go nicely next to my massive He-Man collection, ready to be busted out when my son’s the appropriate age. Which, hell, could very well be tonight!

It’s that time of year again, where we show copious amounts of love to those who mean so much to us.  Husbands, wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, dead, undead… you know the routine.  This Valentines Day, stop by Think Geek where, for a very reasonable $12.99 (plus shipping), you can order the little plushie that shows your special someone how life without them would just… um… tear you apart.

Sorry.

Here’s another entry in the oobject.com list of top 14 toy robot commercials. This one I’m sure many of you remember. Hell, I’d bet money that a good number of you owned this watch. What cracks me up is just how hard they’re pimping the whole time travel element when it’s obviously a really cheap Transformer/Gobot’s knock off.

As I was watching this particular commercial, I started to remember an article that one of our favorite sites did on this 80′s robot travesty. Sure enough, you can find a great article on Kronoforms over at Retro Thing.

Enjoy the nostalgia!

oobject.com has a very cool list of 14 toy robot commercials. Some of these are pretty mundane but a couple of them jumped out at me and I’m wondering if they inspire some memories for you as well.

The first one to grab me was Chatbot. You remember this one? I seem to remember this one being at a couple of my friend’s houses when I was growing up. From what I recall, it provided about five minutes of fun, until my friend’s sister got sick of us recording dirty messages into it and walked out of the Chatbot’s rather limited remote control range. If my memory serves, these ended up in a lot of garage sales not long after.

You have to hand it to the 1980′s as that decade sure had it’s share of interesting robot toys. Oh, and one more thing: I realize it was the 80′s but were those hats that kid is wearing ever really “in”? I’m gonna have to say “no”.

Once again, the toy aisle at Target provides inspiration.

Nothing would make me happier than for the toys of my youth to be considered cool by my son. And when I was a kid, few things were as cool as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Turtle-mania broke right about the time I was outgrowing toys and kid’s cartoons, but my little brother was obsessed with the Turtles. As a result, I watched every Turtle cartoon episode dozens of times, played with the toys for hours on end, and ate at Burger King every week for months in order to nab all the collector’s VHS tapes for him. Yeah, I was a good brother.

The other day, my wife made the mistake of sending me to Target to pick up some items for the house. “Mistake” because inevitably I wind up coming home with a toy for Ethan, forgetting half the things on the list. Intending to pick up some Batman figures to go with his Batcave, I instead stumbled upon the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 25th Anniversary action figures.

Put out by Playmates, these figures replicate the classic look of the 80s figures and the box art is completely old-school 80s. Hell, I even found the word “tubular” printed on the side. It was like a fucking time warp. Also included in every package are the classic weapons that came with the original toys and a DVD featuring an episode from the 80s cartoon.

I nabbed Leonardo for Ethan not just because he’s bad ass (though Michelangelo was always my favorite), but because it came with the very first episode of the cartoon. But not to worry, the very next day I ran back and picked up the rest of the collection. They’re just too damn cool.

If you feel like reliving some childhood memories, you may want to get to your local store soon as I have no idea how long these things will be in stock. They retail for about $9, but I’ve already seen them going on Amazon and eBay for upwards of $25. Damn dork collectors.

Cowabunga!

People have children for all sorts of reasons. Some people want to carry on their family name. Some people have a yearning to take care of someone. Some people got drunk and had dirty sex in a bar bathroom. Me? I wanted an excuse to play with toys. Seriously, if there’s one thing I miss about my childhood it’s all the bad ass toys.

While growing up, my favorite toys were He-Man action figures. I had dozens of figures, all the accessories, and watched the after-school cartoon religiously. In my mind, Eternia was a real place and Skeletor was a diabolical villain who needed to be eradicated.

While in retrospect He-Man figures seem to be, I don’t know, a little homoerotic, was there any sweeter toy than Castle Grayskull? I mean, just look at this thing:

The most awesome toy of the 80s.

Given my childhood obsession, it was only natural that immediately upon finding out that my wife and I were having a boy, I returned to my parent’s house and fished all my He-Man toys – and Castle Grayskull – out of the attic so it would be ready for him. I knew that any son of mine would find Castle Grayskull to be the coolest toy ever. But as cool as Castle Grayskull is and was, Ethan got something for Christmas nearly as awesome: the motherfucking Batcave.

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Takahashi Meijin and a Master Higgins shirt.

Being a devout Turbografx fanboy, I am naturally an admirer of Hudson’s Takahashi Meijin. The inspiration for Adventure Island’s protagonist Master Higgins, Takahashi is somewhat of a legend in Japanese gaming, famous not only for Adventure Island, but also for his uncanny gamings skill. In addition to being Hudson’s spokesperson, Takahashi is known for his ability to press a controller button sixteen times in one second. That’s right: 16 times.

What, that doesn’t impress you? You think you can do better? Well, chump, prove it with Hudson’s Shooting Watch.

Available from NCSX.com for just over $20, this little controller-like device will measure your shooting speed, allowing you to compare yourself to the master. After opening the package, I was eager to see how I stacked up. (more…)

Every now and again, I feel a bit guilty at the unorganized state of my comic collection. Inevitably, I start in on the task to finally organize the chaos but what starts out as a well intentioned dive into my comic boxes for the purpose of cleaning things up always ends with my getting nothing done. Nothing except reading through a bunch of comics that I rediscover in the process.

During my most recent excursion into the organization process, I ran across some old GI Joe issues. Being that this was one of my favorite comics series as a kid, I started paging through an issue or two. While reading one issue in particular (Issue 23, published May, 1984) I stumbled onto an advertisement for something called Zorcom Audio Adventures. You can see the ad from the comic up at the top of this article. Just what was Zorcom, you might be asking? That’s a good question and one that I was asking as well. On the face of it, the ads appear to be marketing a series of space adventures with a poorly designed hero who seems to be fighting some sort of alien race. The ad in this comic was selling an audio cassette-tape adventure and makes mention of both a poster set and a toy spaceship that you can buy in addition.

Intrigued, and armed with knowledge that there is nothing too obscure for the internet, I started digging a little deeper. Here’s what I found. (more…)

You should all know that I have a deep distrust for this red Muppet. As cute as he may be and as much as my daughter adores him, as far as I’m concerned this little thing is a demon in furry form, thrust upon us by the Children’s Television Network for Lord knows what purpose. As it stands, this little creature is responsible for breaking my Xbox 360 and turning my house into a shrine to his helium voiced brand of evil cuteness.

Chris Brown, one of our good friends and co-host of the infamous Married Gamers has sent us a link that is both satisfying and downright creepy. Anyone who’s been to the toy section in your local big box retailer has seen the vast array of Elmo toys. The latest one is a scary thing called Elmo Live that is simply frightening. Here’s a look:

Chris sent over a link to an article entitled Elmo Live Dissected. And like I said, it’s both satisfying and extremely creepy. Anyway, for all those who are subjected to the slavery of the character, enjoy. I think.

*Shudder* I think it’s looking at me again.