Oh ye of little faith. Here’s a page on Wacky Packages.
O.K. here’s mine… I can’t for the life of me remember what this toy was called. You rode in the center of it and had a large wheel on each side of you that you turned or cranked to get you moving. The most fun I had was crankin’ those wheels as fast as I could then pulling one back and spinning out! Please help, this has been bugging me for a LONG time! Great thread!
B the E S, you’re my hero!
I had this. I also had a very similar calaculator that was built like a silver robot. He had come from the planet Mathematica to make math fun again.
Sectaurs-Yep. I never had any of the big hand puppet insects. But, I’ve still got plenty of figures. The comic provided a code that was the secret language of the Ancients Of Symbion.
Inhumanoids-From the firey depths of the earth where nightmares begin! Inhumanoids! Inhumanoids! The evil that lies within! I still need Tendril. Also, my Metlar recently fell off my breakfront and knocked his head off. I got it back on. But, one of the connectors broke off 
Hey, DocCathode, I have 130+ My Little Ponies from my childhood days–all different kinds, including ones with plastic butterfly wings that are still attatched (I also have a couple with the wings broken off), a couple seahorses, ones with jewel eyes (they look kind of creepy), and a few that I remember ordering from some special offer. Do you think I could sell them on Ebay or something and make myself some cash?
(Quantum Butterfly, you’d get first choice–you know, give me a vague description and I’ll see if I have one that matches.)
Is Cecil the Master?
Another late 80s/early 90s girly toy… Lady Lovely Locks dolls! The ultimate in pink fluffy frufru- I loved it. I remember she came with little Pixietails, cute colorful plastic animals with really long brushable tails. They had barrette clips on the bottom so you could clip them either in your doll’s hair or in your hair. I think my sister and I liked the Pixietails even more than the doll 
She had a horse, a dog and I don’t remember what else, all with long pretty hair.
Mirror Image egamI rorriM, email me if you decide to sell your Ponies, would you? Thanks.
Thanks for the link, tanstaafl. I forgot that it was a tank, not a truck.
A couple other people mentioned having the calculators. I don’t remember if mine had the cap and gown. It may have had the cap.
My favorite was the Spider Man web “shooters”. It didn’t really shoe, it had this weird glue substance that you touched on the wall, and then to your wrist “shooter”. You could hang stuff on it at that point. Not much else to do with it.
Also, the brain that you would squeeze and it would have green goo come out of it.
Had it, loved it. As far as I can remember this was simply called “Girders And Panels”. There are pictures of me at about seven years of age proudly standing next to what I’d just built.
I had the Talking GI Joe Commander.
I still remember when Dad took me out and bought me the thing. Would have been around 1969. He gave me an extensive lecture about how leaving GI Joe Commander lying around, or leaving it out in the rain, or playing with it in the bathtub would cause its voice box to cease to function… and Dad would be unhappy. Very unhappy. Because the damn thing cost SIX DOLLARS, which in 1969 was apparently about $200 in real money.
I loved my GI Joe Commander. He had realistic hair and a beard (some kind of rust-colored flocking) and he said a whole BUNCHA different things, depending on exactly how far you pulled out his string.
…but he always said the same thing when you pulled out his string ALL the way: “Mission accomplished. Good work, men!”
One day, my friend, Li’l Bobby, and I were at home… and we were bored. We dug out GI Joe Commander and my other Joes and prepared to assault the Mystery Of The Mummy’s Tomb or whatever that particular adventure accessory set was…
…when I happened to glance out the door to my room… and realized that there was a much more dangerous objective at hand. Yet… far more rewarding, as well.
In my sister’s room, across the hall.
Barbie’s Dream House.
GI Joe Action Marine was assigned to reconnoiter the area and report back. He reported that Mom was still out on the porch, having a drink with Bobby’s mom, and my sister was nowhere in sight.
The Joes broke down into a pair of two-man strike teams, consisting of Action Marine and Action Pilot, and Action Sailor and Talking GI Joe Commander. They moved up on the objective, and Action Marine circled around the rear for further reconnaissance.
He reported back that the house was clear. Barbie was upstairs with her friend Malibu Barbie, and Skipper was in the pool out back.
Action Marine and Action Pilot moved quickly to neutralize Skipper, while Action Sailor and Talking Commander stormed the front door, hoping to take the objective before any kind of communications or resistance could be made.
Turns out they hadn’t planned on putting up a fight. Barbie, Skipper, and Malibu were so happy to see these fine examples of America’s Military Men that they were out of their designer costumes in a twinkle. Turns out that Malibu Barbie actually knew Action Pilot from her senior prom – the truth was that Dad was too cheap to go in for Action Ken, so my sister occasionally borrowed Action Pilot for double duty.
Much furious activity ensued, much of which I cannot repeat here. At least not in any detail.
The scene of domestic bliss was interrupted when my sister got home, and wandered into her room to find two boys there, doing unspeakable things with nude Barbies and naked GI Joes. Well, not completely naked. It was such a pain to get their boots off and on that we just left their boots on.
She stood there and stared at us in horror and shock. What the hell? No doubt we permanently stained her li’l eight-year-old mind, that day.
…particularly when Li’l Bobby, totally unthinkingly, pulled Talking Commander’s cord all the way out… and let go.
“Mission accomplished. Good work, men!”
Wang-Ka, you were a twisted, twisted little boy with twisted, twisted little friends.
I like that.
I also liked Teddy Ruxpin.
Teddy Ruxpin was a robot teddy bear. He came with a series of cassettes that you stuck into a player in his back. Then he would “tell a story.” His eyes would blink, and his little teddy bear mouth would move as he did so.
They weren’t really synchronized, though. He would just move his mouth and blink occasionally while his tape played, which gave Teddy Ruxpin an odd Japanese-monster-movie-out-of-synch feeling as he told his little teddy bear bedtime stories.
Note that I never actually OWNED a Teddy Ruxpin. In fact, I was, like, thirteen or fourteen when they came out. But they had a display model at the local department store, wired to one of the endcaps, where he would endlessly spout saccharine fairy tales by the hour.
One day I got curious, so I figured out how to remove him from his display and examined him. There was a trapdoor in his back where you put the cassette in. It looked like an ordinary cassette tape. WAS it ordinary?
I wired him back to his perch and left, and came back later with an ordinary prerecorded cassette tape. “Magical Mystery Tour,” as I recall. I unwired Teddy from his perch again, and swapped out the tapes, just to see what would happen.
Sure enough, Teddy was as happy to sing old Beatles tunes as he was to sit there and tell puerile bedtime stories. I grinned widely. This would be fun.
That weekend, some friends and I went to the department store. We carefully chose hiding places in and around the toy section… close enough to hear and see the fun, but not so close as to be blamed for it.
I unwired Teddy and switched out his tape, and then quickly wired him back into place. I’d left a good five minutes of leader on the cheap cassette, so it took a while, and gave us plenty of time to disperse to proper vantage points.
“Hi,” said Teddy Ruxpin, sounding remarkably unlike he had earlier. Totally different voice, in fact. “My name is Teddy Ruxpin. Would you like to hear a story? Sure you would! Once upon a time in the Friendly Forest, there lived a Magical Elf named Daisy Bumble.”
(Anyone who’s ever seen Eric Idle’s classic fairy story segment from “Monty Python” will immediately see where I stole the idea).
Teddy continued with his children’s fable. The first clue came when someone walking by jerked his head suddenly at Teddy. Did Teddy Ruxpin just use the word “contraceptive?”
Nah, couldn’t have. The woman kept walking.
Shortly thereafter, a little boy and little girl stopped to listen to Teddy’s story. The boy got bored, and wandered over to look at the new Mego action figures, but the little girl stayed to hear what happened to Daisy Bumble. Apparently, Daisy had a problem that involved popping out of her brassiere whenever she sang a high C note…
The timing was perfect. Mom showed up about the time Daisy Bumble was meeting the Salty Sailors down at Three Ball Frankie’s. Mom listened for a second, slapped her hand over her mouth, seized the little girl’s hand, and RAN.
It was all we could do not to collapse laughing. It was even better that the last we’d heard of the little girl was “Mommy, I wanna hear what the Salty Sailors did!”
The manager and two other employees showed up about the time the Salty Sailors had Daisy Bumble spread-eagled on the pool table and were singing a song about harpoons. Their reaction was GREAT. The manager was utterly outraged, whereas his two teenage assistance were having a hell of a time keeping their faces straight while they nodded and said, “Right you are, sir.”
Alas, Teddy was soon upended and silenced. Within a few moments, he was back in position telling the same old boring stories he always told. The tape, of course, we never saw again. A shame. I kinda wish I’d hung onto it. I recall that the story was quite good.
We did it again, the next two weekends. The third time we did it, Teddy gathered quite a crowd before the manager finally showed up, in an utter rage, and yanked Teddy’s tape again. I wondered what he was doing with those tapes. Destroying them? Saving them as evidence for the police? Taking them home and masturbating over the Erotic Adventures of Daisy Bumble, late at night?
The following weekend, we went out for a fourth adventure… but noticed way too many people in the toy department. Several looked like employees, but they were dressed in ordinary clothes. One guy – fortyish – dressed in ordinary clothes – struck us as WAY wrong, for some reason. What was he doing in the toy section? Why did he seem like he was more interested in the people wandering around than he was in the toys? Something about the guy just screamed COP.
We casually cruised through the toy section several times. For some reason, Teddy Ruxpin wasn’t speaking today. No batteries? Turned off? We could never get alone with him long enough to unwire him and find out. There was ALWAYS someone in visual range, and that fortysomething guy was just WAY too interested in us. We chickened out, and lammed, without switching the tapes again.
Teddy never spoke again, to my knowledge. Before summer’s end, he’d been taken down and replaced with a display of Star Wars toys.
But it’s nice to know he went out with a bang, so to speak…
Yay, more Wang-Ka stories! Man, I loved your posts in the culinary disasters thread. 
I remember one of my friends had a talking doll rather like the aforementioned Teddy Ruxpin. I always wanted one so I could put music tapes in her and see if she could sing… my friend just used the tape that came with her IIRC.
Sounds like theKrazy Kar. I had one of these. I used to hide behind my dad’s car and then ram into any Big Wheels that were coming down the sidewalk. Loved having that bumper Lot’s of fun spinning around in circles until you were sick too!
What a great thread, it brings back so many memories. In the mid 70’s I remember this cool toy I received for Christmas one year called Seadiver. It consisted of an upright plastic bottle filled with water that contained a yellow and black diving bell with claws on the bottom. When you squeezed the sides of the bottle the diving bell would sink or rise to the surface depending on how much pressure you used. As the bell sunk the claws would open so you could grasp objects at the bottom and bring them to the surface.
There was also a Teddy Ruxpin speakerphone. The eyes rolled and the mouth moved when the person on the other end of the line spoke.
knarf! That’s it! I LOVE YOU!!! I had a blast with that thing, although in my mind I always thought of mine as being “thicker” or just bigger. I guess that’s just a child’s memory for you!
Thanks again!
I think someone already mentioned it, but I really dug the ROM the Space Knight action figure when I was a kid. But now looking at it online, it looks pretty crappy. Oh well, simpler times.
Also, there were the old Mattel hand held video games. I loved the Football version. All it has was simple LED “players” and the only thing you could do was move up,down,forwards or backwards. Classic. Shockingly enough, when I was Googling to find a picture of the game to link to, I see that Mattel is selling these products again as “Classic” handhelds.
GI Joe with Kung-Fu Grip and lifelike hair!
I had a Vertibird, Major Matt Mason, AND Billy Blastoff. I still have his little crawler thing, but Billy himself was probably killed in a horrible firecracker accident when I was about 12.
A while ago I got a hankerin’ to play with a Vertibird again (my mother threw mine out just a couple of years ago), so I decided to see if people were selling them on Ebay. Boy, were they! Not too long ago Vertibirds were selling on Ebay for several hundred dollars. Since then some company has marketed a slightly different version, and prices seemed to have dropped back again.