General Toy Nostalgia

Seeing all these makes me realize how much enforced restraint I operated under until I could drive myself to the toy store. There is *so much* of this I would have bought (that Connectors Dracula?!? HOW did I not own that??????) if I had been unsupervised and not “talked out of it” by my mom (“the glowing skeleton guy does look fun, BUT YOU ARE TOO OLD FOR HE-MAN NOW, RIGHT????????”).
I did snag that Little Dracula toy at a discount book shop while visiting my grandma. Hell, I remember being on a road trip with my grandparents in 1993 and I snuck into the Walmart toy section pretending I needed to stop to use the bathroom, and managed to secretly buy and stash a BTAS Joker figure. Ahhhh those were the days: where being interested in toys was treated as a social problem or even a disease. Definitely why I have such a maximalist approach as an adult. I buy ALL the Scare-Glows now.
Luckily I had parents that have always encouraged and enabled my collecting. They occasionally would toss out a "You're not too old for that now?"-- but never in a "You're too old for this" type of way. More of a "Really? You're not more focused on girls right now?".

No, Mom. I can multitask.

She has always loved shopping for shit for Christmas for me, she enjoyed the hunt... but you know..I always felt guilty asking for too much. We weren't poor, but we weren't rich, either. So I would leave a lot off of my want lists to not burden my parents too much, because trust me, if it was on my list, they would get it for me. So, I would save them from themselves.

Long story long, I am pretty sure that that guilt is what drives my collecting habits and maximalist approach now, myself. Couldn't ask for it then, adult with adult money, getting it now.
 
Trashbag Bunch. Dissolving trash bags that when put in water expose these little figures.


Legend of Sharkman, these weird Hawaiian based figures were the highlight of Toy Fair 1996,1997 to me. I remember seeing these in Tomart's.


Zen the Intergalactic Ninja. Man. MAN, I loved Zen back in the day. First an independent comic book, then Archie series. There were plans for a cartoon, movie, there was an NES video game. It tried to follow the Toxic Crusaders and Captain Planet "Save the Earth from Pollution" path.

Oh man, I forgot about the Trashbag figures, but I LOVED those at the time. Especially that red bat one.

Never heard of Legend of Sharkman, but those figures are just cool.

Had a few of the Archie issues of Zen, not sure I even knew there were toys at the time though.

Great post!
 
Ok I got one for y'all:

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These are fun. Wonder if it inspired this Kickstarter that I never got in on:

 
Ohhhhhhhhhhhh Jasis... I had one of those! Keeping the armor on was frustrating heh.
And they were made of that 'sticky hand' gumball machine material, which meant within a day they were covered in pet hair and dust that you'd never be able to get off.
 
Any 90's kids buy the 90's Stretch Armstrong line?

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I got a small Stretch and the large Vac Man for Christmas one year. I don't think Stretch made it long before breaking and spilling his goo all over the place and I think Vac Man's air pump broke before Christmas Day was even over, but there's definitely a prime memory in my head of getting them.
 
I didn't want or probably ever play with Stretch Armstrong - but I had him and some of the other related merch (there was a line of smaller Stretch figures as well, as I recall). It's just a matter of it being one of the ubiquitous toys of the '90s, so at some point almost everyone ended up with one as a birthday or Christmas gift or something.
 
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