The 1982 Sears Wish Book!
It’s almost Christmas Eve, and I have so much left to do. None of the presents are wrapped. Half of them haven’t even been purchased. There are mushrooms to stuff, clothes to wash, cookies to bake and hair to cut.
So, like a big dumb idiot, I made one more Wish Book review the first priority.
Hot off the heels of yesterday’s post, today we’re going back even further. Below are eight highlights from the 1982 Sears Wish Book, and oh my God are they good ones. I know “1982” sounds too long ago for some of you, but a lot of this stuff is downright timeless.
Get ready for He-Man, Glo Worm and Frankenstein’s Monster. I wish I could introduce all of my posts that way.
Star Wars AT-AT!
($49.99)
If you’re not big on Star Wars, AT-ATs were skyscraper-sized robot “dogs” used by Imperial forces to attack the Rebel Alliance’s base on the ice planet of Hoth. Granted, saying so has just made you more confused.
I have firsthand knowledge of how incredible it was to get one for Christmas. I believe it would’ve been 1983. Our family celebrates on Christmas Eve and opens presents at midnight. Even at that late hour, nothing could stop me from immediately opening the box, and immediately dragging all of my Star Wars figures out of the bedroom. I was up until dawn with that thing!
Towering over the line’s 3¾” figures, the AT-AT had battery-operated lights and sounds, and a neat little compartment where several Snowtroopers could gather to make “nyah nyah” faces at the poor suckers down below.
It was the largest toy I’d ever had up to that point, and believe me, size mattered. AT-ATs are big, but in the cradling arms of tiny kids, they seemed enormous. Read More…
The 1985 JCPenney Christmas Catalog.
Oof. Christmas caught me by surprise this year, and I didn’t write nearly as often as I would’ve liked to. Can’t do anything about that now, so I’ll just try to make this an extra good one!
Today we’re gonna look at some highlights from the 1985 JCPenney catalog, which was basically another Sears Wish Book, serving as a veritable bible of that year’s hottest toys and games.
I actually covered this exact same catalog way back in 2007, but it seemed criminal to stop at a mere twelve items when the book had hundreds of things worth celebrating. 1985 was an absolute banner year for toys, as I think these seven selections will prove!
Gobots “Mobile Command Center” Playset!
($26.99)
Remember the AT-AT from Star Wars? This was like the its rad kid sister.
The Mobile Command Center was easily the crown jewel of Tonka’s Gobots collection. Starting off as a four-legged transport not unlike those behemoths from The Empire Strikes Back, the playset then transforms into a multi-level headquarters that doubles as a giant robot. TOO COOL, and not in the Brian Christopher way.
Oh, and speaking of Star Wars, one neat thing about Gobots playsets is how they worked just as nicely with those figures. (Same with G.I. Joe, or any of the other 3-4” lines.)
I’d like to say that I used the Mobile Command Center for that purpose, putting Darth Vader in charge of a futuristic apartment complex with a loft shaped like a robot head. The truth is, I never had one as a kid. A friend of mine did, and I was so jealous. He was one of those friends that I only had scattered after-school play-dates with, while our mothers forced awkward conversation over cups of bad coffee. That guy had everything. His bedroom looked like Toy Fair.
Through him, I saw enough of the Mobile Command Center to know that I was seriously deprived. This as close as we’ve ever come to the fictitious skyscraper robot from Big. Read More…
This $5 dinosaur playset is the best.
Every Christmas, various department stores dedicate whole aisles to those super cheap “generic” toys. You know the kind. They always come in the same-style boxes, whether they’re sets of dominoes or princess baby dolls.
Shown above is one example. The “Dinosaurs Play Set,” a 21-piece assortment of Not Quite Jurassic Park toys. I found it in Walmart, sandwiched between a similar set that replaced the dinosaurs with tigers, and a stack of “Rad O Control” cars that appeared to come with purposeless mock remotes.
The Dinosaur Play Set leaves us with much to discuss! Read More…
Happy Mother’s Day!
Guys, we need to talk about this Mother’s Day card.
I made it for my mother in 1986. 1987 at the absolute latest. Considering the card’s enormous size and use of strange paper, I can only assume it was an art project from grade school.
The cover looks innocent enough, or at least as innocent as a cover featuring a shark swimming through blood could look. It’s what inside that troubles me. It’s very curious that both my teacher and mother saw this card and never thought, “hmmm the boy needs help.”
Who knows, maybe they did. Read More…