Watch out, Snoopy! Starscream has his sights on your "King of Toys" title!

 

I owned and loved that FP Alpha Probe shuttle as a kid. I can genuinely smell the cheap bubblegum in that pic of all the trading card boxes (and I never even liked that gum!).

I have such fond memories of toy shops from my childhood, from small local stores to big department stores and even little cheap "junk" shops and second-hand shops (the latter is how - along with garage sales - I got most of my Star Wars toys as a kid, having missed out on the good stuff from the earlier movies). I could ramble for pages about specific stories related to such shopping trips, including being able to recall individual tales of how I got almost every single one of my G1 TFs as a kid (for example, how Kickback was my second TF after Ravage/Rumble, or how I bought Onslaught with a *huge* tin of 1 & 2 cent small change!).

Here in Australia, there were a lot of TFs we never got, and a lot we supposedly did but I never saw on shelves. I still remember the *one* time I saw Scorponok on a shelf in a big department store, and begged to get him, but he was way too expensive and next time, he was gone anyway. Shockwave was another example: never saw him anywhere but did see grey-coloured "clones" of him at a cheap market once and always regretted not getting that as a substitute.

 

I came here to post about that exact same toy!

What a bizarre sensation. I saw the picture and thought it looked familiar. I squinted at it for a minute...then I saw the 3 buttons on the side and the fragmented memories started coming back. I looked up pics of the toy, and each picture brought a fleeting feeling of remembrance, especially the rear thrusters that pull out into a separate ship. I can safely say that if I hadn't seen that pic, I NEVER would have remembered that toy again. Now I remember I played with it quite a bit when I was really small.

 

I remember a few of those Fisher Price toys from that range (I assume it was the same range) of "action figures"; there was a green motorcycle with a guy in a yellow crash helmet I remember well, but mostly I remember loving the sci-fi figures they did; an orange "jelly" alien head inside a fishbowl-helmet spacesuit, a robot, and others. I also recall a different spaceship that came with an orange "star beast", and a silver open-top starfighter thing that I had two of.

(these guys: 16bit.com Figure of the Day Review: Fisher-Price Adventure People Alpha Star Astronaut Action Figure)

Like you, I'd totally forgotten the Alpha Probe toy with the sound effect buttons though until I saw that image!

 

Not quite 20yrs yet but 12yrs later and it reminds me of how I use to think the bayformers had a chance to be good... like 5 times... and yet I still watched all of them in theatres for whatever reason  

 

Sugoi!!

That Skywarp with ramjet wings actually looks pretty cool in the video

 

Fantastic!



That thing appeared in catalogues too and even had artwork.



All the best
Maz

 

Thank you so much for posting that link a friend in preschool had that little Rover and I never quite knew what it was I remember playing with it a lot at his house one day

-

 

80s comic shop ad

Star wars cameo in early toy ad.

 

What in the fuck is up with Sky/Jetfire at 0:17?  

 

This is necessarily "from the '80s", but I think it's relevant enough for this thread (without having to make another thread):

Dan Veesenmeyer on Twitter

 

Totally unrealistic.
TRU would never have everything that neat, and every price tag exactly in the right spot.
 

 

LOL

 

News clip about the 1990 turtles toys craze (and a parent saying it's to violent and sexest! Really!)