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My main Playmobil set was the Victorian mansion. I didn't have the mansion itself, but I did have a bunch of the furnishings.   I loved putting all the tiny plates on the shelves and the spoons in the drawers. I also learned what a rug beater was from this set.
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Sep 6, 2023 22:41
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JPrime posted:
Holy smokes right in the nostalgia. I haven't thought about my old one in years.
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Sep 7, 2023 04:47
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Snowglobe of Doom posted:We had Lost Valley Of The Dinosaurs: this is delightful! love those cheapie dinosaurs
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Sep 7, 2023 05:41
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Dr. Jerrold Coe posted:Fireball Island was the superior choice I don't think I ever actually played this game, but goddamn did I play with it.
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Sep 7, 2023 11:13
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Bees on Wheat posted:I don't think I ever actually played this game, but goddamn did I play with it. See also: Mousetrap
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Sep 7, 2023 16:25
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:See also: Mousetrap My folks would only ever buy mousetrap from garage sales, so we never had a complete set to actually play the game with
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Sep 7, 2023 16:29
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One other late 80s electronic (terrifying) toy I'd forgotten, Mr. Gameshow! This was basically playing Wheel of Fortune and some similar games. The animatronic doll would move and open its mouth as it "talked".
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Sep 7, 2023 17:26
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aniviron posted:In the interest of actually Ping some of MFs though, have Forbidden Bridge. This thing loving sucked, it was great; it looked cool as poo poo and was absolutely no fun to play. The tortured creaking sound of the plastic twisting as the motor struggled to turn it is burned into my head. In an act of craven, unquenchable greed, even loving Sorcerer had tie-in merchandise. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlfJcU3nnl8&t=88s
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Sep 8, 2023 01:36
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I remember these guys making me so irrationally angry. Something about their shape. They're just so..... European! 
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Sep 8, 2023 01:40
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This was my only Playmobil set: Lots of adventures in the bathtub.
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Sep 8, 2023 02:13
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Speaking of bathtub adventures, another playset I've been thinking about is Capsela. I'm curious how many people played with these. It was a construction set based around plastic capsules, but the neat thing about it is that it was motorized, with any number of rotary gear capsules, wheels, belts, etc, to make all sorts of weird machines and vehicles.  But the coolest thing is that it came with floats, so you could make self-propelling boat contraptions to have fun with in the bathtub or pool.   That was the neatest thing that really set it apart from the other building kits we played with. I guess Capsela was even popular enough to be used in some schools, but I'm curious if anyone else ever used it because the few times I've brought it up with friends as an adult, nobody had any idea what I was talking about.
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Sep 8, 2023 02:56
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On the subject of toys you DIDN'T have, did anyone get the Hearthsong catalog? It was like Montessori and Waldorf style toys and crafts. idk why we got this catalog, it's not like my mom ever let me get anything from it. Wooden dollhouses and fabric fairy dolls and silk butterfly wings.   They're still around. I suppose I could buy myself some butterfly wings now, but it wouldn't be the same, MOTHER
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Sep 8, 2023 04:09
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The Mighty Moltres posted:This was my only Playmobil set: I had his friend going fishing in the slightly smaller rubber dinghy:  Captain Hygiene posted:Speaking of bathtub adventures, another playset I've been thinking about is Capsela. I'm curious how many people played with these...but I'm curious if anyone else ever used it because the few times I've brought it up with friends as an adult, nobody had any idea what I was talking about. Yep! I had a Capsela set. Looking at eBay I think I had the Capsela 400:  It definitely had one motor capsule, four wheels, four of the yellow plastic floaty arms and one propeller. One of my friends had a slightly bigger set with two motors, a chain drive and the paddle wheels and we would combine them into making some monster machine that would go into a garden paddling pool in summer and looked like something out of Howl's Moving Castle. Let's talk Micro Machines: I had quite a few of the actual Machines, but the only base/set I had for years was this military one:  Which was picked up nearly-complete from a car boot sale. Fake edit: Just remembered that we also had the Rollin' Raceway, which was a really neat idea because if you titled and rocked it in the right way you could get the cars zooming around it by themselves.  My best friend had Super Van City, which I coveted:  Then one Christmas I was given Super Truck City, and clearly a Truck is better than a Van! There don't seem to be any decent pics of this online, but there is the very 90s advert  Back in the world of Lego, my sister had a couple of the (what I now know were called) 'Paradisa' sets, which was a pastel-coloured 'Lego for GIRLS, but not egregiously so' series. She definitely had Sunset Stables:  and the Sand Dollar Cafe:  and I'm pretty sure she had Dolphin Point:  Because I remember that base-board, the dolphin and the dinghy sail, but I have no memory of the actual set or the big pink spiral stairway piece. There wasn't really 'mine' and 'her' Lego - if it wasn't in a set it all got tidied up and put in one big crate. I also remember specifically hunting though the spreading pile of bricks on the floor looking for the Paradisa bricks because they had a completely different colour palette to the other Lego. And the baseboard with the graduated sea/shallows/beach/grass were much more realistic than the others.
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Sep 8, 2023 10:42
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Had a flashback to this thing I was obsessed with when I was really little You’re vampire hunters racing through a haunted castle to be the first to spike store brand Dracula. The gimmick? You play in the dark, and the lighted tower swaps throughout the game between red « daytime » and blue « night time » The board and all the cards and stuff would react to the light colour, so for example the vampire was a Dracula in blue but a rotting corpse in red. It was legit terrifying playing huddled in the closet at like kindergarten age. The irony is that the red daytime was scarier.
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Sep 8, 2023 12:53
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:Had a flashback to this thing I was obsessed with when I was really little That looks so loving fun. Edit: Imagine wearing a pair of those red/blue 3D glasses while playing, that would either be trippy or give you a headache. The Mighty Moltres has a new favorite as of 22:30 on Sep 8, 2023 |
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Sep 8, 2023 22:27
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Sep 9, 2023 08:21
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Snowglobe of Doom posted:I used to spend hours and hours playing with these Fuzzy-Felt playsets when I was a toddler My Grandpa designed the box art for Fuzzy Felt! He was a graphic designer working from the 1950s, after he was discharged from the Navy, all the way up to the late 1990s until he retired. He worked for Casdon toys for many years and produced many of the marketing and box art materials for them. My brother and my cousins and I often ended up on the cover or in catalogues. UK residents might remember the Casdon toy till. We had the version with the little coin stacker. I can still feel the sensation of the clicky button that opened the drawer:  And here, fresh-faced circa 1987 doing some child labour to advertise a toy cot, is baby CuriousSymptoms:  I remember the day these photos were taken. It was at Kirkstall Studios in Leeds, and we drove there in my mum's old red Micra :3
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Sep 9, 2023 14:15
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pandy fackler posted:
like the third post and this sparked such an intense feeling of nostalgia in me that I teared up. I played with this exact model so much and haven't thought of it in decades this one too 
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Sep 9, 2023 17:05
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My brother had one of these and I was a little too old for it but god I was envious, it was so stinking cool. I still love how the vehicles move with such... purpose. Around and around. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_lo1AsS6IE And of course Screwball Scramble, delighted to find they still make it! The new one looks a little flimsier, brighter colours. This is like the one I had 
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Sep 9, 2023 17:15
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Sep 9, 2023 17:29
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HelloIAmYourHeart posted:On the subject of toys you DIDN'T have, did anyone get the Hearthsong catalog? It was like Montessori and Waldorf style toys and crafts. idk why we got this catalog, it's not like my mom ever let me get anything from it. Wooden dollhouses and fabric fairy dolls and silk butterfly wings. Yup. My mom and aunt were absolutely their target demographic.
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Sep 9, 2023 21:48
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I have a very specific memory of being at a Christmas party at my dad's coworker's house and just sitting there watching these little guys go up the stairs and down the slide. Now I kind of want one, tbh
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Sep 9, 2023 22:29
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I dunno about that one in particular, but I remember getting a kick out of driving toys like that. I was fascinated by pretty much anything in the days before videogames were everywhere 
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Sep 9, 2023 22:34
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now i'm remembering the big flat table out front of like kaybee toys that had these and the little barking, backflipping dogs.
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Sep 9, 2023 22:47
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 loved my ghostbusters fire hall. i think i was 3 when i got it but i played with it for many years  never got any of the big castles or ships when i was a kid but i did get this bad boy. shoutouts to the crystal explorer sub and the spooky knights stuff from earlier, i had some of those too. the crystal explorer sub i remember in particular because i got it for christmas and was dealing with chicken pox at the same time. i was all slathered in calamine lotion and feverish as hell but dammit i had legos to build Joey McChrist has a new favorite as of 23:48 on Sep 9, 2023 |
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Sep 9, 2023 23:43
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I had a few of these space Lego sets that have been posted, they were so great. Every one I had eventually got incorporated into my own custom leviathan of a spaceship build that just kept getting bigger and bigger to the point that picking it up got awkward. Wish I had never disassembled it. This item, the Star Trek TNG Transporter play set, was another I spent a couple of indoor summers enjoying. It was essentially just one mirror gimmick but it was satisfying. I trained my hamster to go in and beamed him to many away missions. Until he peed in there once and I never quite got the smell out, anyway  
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Sep 10, 2023 00:37
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Incremus posted:I had a few of these space Lego sets that have been posted, they were so great. Every one I had eventually got incorporated into my own custom leviathan of a spaceship build that just kept getting bigger and bigger to the point that picking it up got awkward. Wish I had never disassembled it. Hell yeah! Recently rescued mine from my mom’s attic and got it back to working condition. You ever try to change the light bulbs in it? Huge pain in the rear end but worth it. And the sound of it is glorious 
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Sep 10, 2023 08:21
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CuriousSymptoms posted:My Grandpa designed the box art for Fuzzy Felt! He was a graphic designer working from the 1950s, after he was discharged from the Navy, all the way up to the late 1990s until he retired. This is the closest I've ever got to an actual "My uncle works at Nintendo" moment Incremus posted:This item, the Star Trek TNG Transporter play set, was another I spent a couple of indoor summers enjoying. It was essentially just one mirror gimmick but it was satisfying. I trained my hamster to go in and beamed him to many away missions. Until he peed in there once and I never quite got the smell out, anyway 
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Sep 10, 2023 09:42
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Incremus posted:This item, the Star Trek TNG Transporter play set, was another I spent a couple of indoor summers enjoying. It was essentially just one mirror gimmick but it was satisfying. I trained my hamster to go in and beamed him to many away missions. Until he peed in there once and I never quite got the smell out, anyway Lol I really missed out on Star Trek toys. TNG was on occasionally when I was a kid, but it wasn't something we watched enough for me to get into. I really got into Trek when I was a bit older, I liked things like ship model kits but by that point I wasn't really interested in all the action figures and playsets.
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Sep 10, 2023 17:24
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Never had it myself but absolutely loved it when I saw it somewhere else, just mesmerizing. Another one I did not own but my cousins did, and I played with it often:  Big Bird looks kind of weird though.
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Sep 10, 2023 18:48
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Neat! My brother got this and then I needed to have it as well.  The real prize was the big pirate ship with the red sails, but if you combined the two blue ones you’d get pretty close.
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Sep 10, 2023 18:51
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Laserjet 4P posted:Big Bird looks kind of weird though. He went through some weird phases in the 1970s, it took them a little while to get his look dialed in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoVOaf9DOj8
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Sep 10, 2023 18:56
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The mention of KayBee Toys earlier really brought back a lot of memories, what a fun setup with a bunch of moving toys and stuff out on display. A real highlight of the classic mall experience. But what I remember them most for was GoBots, the off-brand Transformers. The real ones were mostly too expensive for anything other than garage sale finds, but KayBee had me with its fine selection of $2 GoBots!   I remember feeling like they were pretty close to Transformers in terms of quality, but in retrospect, they mostly stuck to simpler designs and had a lot of sameiness in their bipedal robot form. Still, they had some occasional interesting ideas and had stuff like the Voltron-esque car robot there. Either way, I had tons of fun with them.
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Sep 10, 2023 19:14
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 Stealing my own post from the star war forum to show off my most favourite thing I ever played with First ever paycheck, what did I go in for Lego Millenium Falcon Lego rules
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Sep 10, 2023 19:15
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Captain Hygiene posted:But what I remember them most for was GoBots, the off-brand Transformers. The real ones were mostly too expensive for anything other than garage sale finds, but KayBee had me with its fine selection of $2 GoBots! I had that dark green one, 4th in the 2nd row. I also had the GoBots combiner Monsterous:  ..... well, I had 4 of the 6 so I never got to form the full combiner. I was missing the blue leg and the purple arm.  Google tells me that the original model was a combiner called Devil Satan 6 from the 80s anime Machine Robo: Revenge of Cronos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqAczA7CNSg
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Sep 10, 2023 19:34
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Snowglobe of Doom posted:I had that dark green one, 4th in the 2nd row. I also had the GoBots combiner Monsterous: Oh neat, I never saw that set before. I guess they went through a range of properties that they pulled the model designs from depending on who owned the franchise at the time. And I feel your pain, I only had the two legs of the car combiner one. So when they were in robot form, they still had the giant awkward feet that were meant to hold up the full combined model 
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Sep 10, 2023 20:04
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Dr. Jerrold Coe posted:Hornet Hill This post unlocked some long dormant memories. My brother and I had Hornet Hill and one other micromachines military base thingy, and we used to stage little battles between them in which we drafted the various tanks and stuff onto our team and then battled them against each other using a complicated system of rules and stats that we made up, agreed upon, and kept entirely within our heads somehow. Captain Hygiene posted:Capsela Capsela owns; my mom got some at a thrift shop for my brother's kids and it's still as rad as it was 30 years ago. One of my favorite toys for sure.
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Sep 11, 2023 12:10
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I thought of another thing I spent tons of time playing/learning(?) with, the 200-in-1 electronic project kit from RadioShack. A neat little setup with a whole mess of circuitry and components to teach you about electronics:  Lots of fun to be had making lights turn on and off and rigging a speaker to make annoying beeps, boops, or fart noises, and I can't even remember what all else. I think you could even wire up a simple radio. I found a few of the 200 projects listed in the manual, and even the first one gets pretty complicated:  It was a ton of fun. I don't know if anyone makes them on a large scale any more, the search terms are pretty vague - I saw some sellers listing them, but it looked like potentially smaller retro runs. I did see some newer kits that are more streamlined, with fitted snap-in circuitry pieces, which would make sense. The vintage kits had more tha their fair share of pokey little pieces to get lost or stolen by cats.
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Sep 14, 2023 20:36
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Captain Hygiene posted:I thought of another thing I spent tons of time playing/learning(?) with, the 200-in-1 electronic project kit from RadioShack. A neat little setup with a whole mess of circuitry and components to teach you about electronics: I was not an engineering kid and most likely wouldn't have played with this if I'd had it as a kid, but as someone who got obsessed with modular and analog synthesizers as a mid teen I now realize how loving cool that thing would be. It even just looks like you've got your own korg ms-50 or moog sonic six or something.
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Sep 15, 2023 13:09
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Deep Glove Bruno posted:I was not an engineering kid and most likely wouldn't have played with this if I'd had it as a kid, but as someone who got obsessed with modular and analog synthesizers as a mid teen I now realize how loving cool that thing would be. It even just looks like you've got your own korg ms-50 or moog sonic six or something. Yeah, it's a really cool idea, I think you could do some neat stuff with it. I'm 95% sure mine actually made the cut to get packed up and go along with me in my various moves across the country, I want to try to dig it up if I have time later today.
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Sep 15, 2023 16:58
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