The USS Flagg was and still is my Holy Grail. Never was there another toy that came before GI Joe in my eyes. It was the granddaddy of ’em all. I had most of the figures, the vehicles, the playsets, the action packs, and nearly anything else tied to the GI Joe toy line. But the one thing that always eluded me was this aircraft carrier.
When fully assembled, this toy was a whopping six feet in length! That goes beyond the realm of a toy, and into the realm of something more like a coffee table. It was released in 1986 with a hefty retail price of $89.95, so it was definitely not to be found in my house. My dad would have had an easier time giving birth to one than actually paying that much for a toy.
But for years I would sit and think about all the cool battles that could have been had featuring the Flagg at the center of the action. It was so big, that you could have incorporated many planes and helicopters on its deck. You could have loaded it with fifty or more figures without cramping things too much. Even while typing this, my mind is drifting away to endless assaults on Cobra Island with this thing as the centerpiece.
As an adult in the early 2000s, I tried again to acquire one. Searching on eBay, I found dozens of them, but none were complete. The incomplete ones there were going for several hundred dollars. I actually did see one in a comic book shop one time, still sealed in its original box, but with a price tag of $1500. If I could have ever decided which child to sell, I may have ended up with it.
But who knows, maybe one day I’ll run across a good deal on a complete one and be able to purchase it. Then my friends, the battle for the superiority of the bedroom will resume once more.
Throughout my memories of the mid-’80s, two action figure lines dominated my playtime. Masters of the Universe and G.I. Joe. The cartoon series and the Real American Hero toy line were a powerful combination. I lived and breathed G.I. Joe pretty hard back then. I mean, I still do today, but not nearly like I did back then. The toy line was full of awesome toys, and I still miss one in particular that I never had the pleasure of owning…the Killer WHALE Hovercraft
Like most things I salivate over in old toy commercials, I never owned the WHALE, nor did I ever get a chance to play with it. So watching the kids in this commercial put it through its paces makes me excited even today. The fact that it actually floats on water is a big drawing point, and watching the depth charges roll off into the water almost sent me over the edge. It was a stellar toy in a line full of them, and yet it still stands apart from the rest because of all its cool features.
I mean, it seems like the ultimate assault weapon during playtime. The twin guns, the depth charge feature, and the belly of the thing holds even more Joe figures. And check out the commercial for it below…what about that environment they are playing with it in? I wish I had had a place like that to take my Joes back then and fight out the battles between G.I. Joe and Cobra.
For this presentation from the Wax Pack Flashback series I do on the TRNTV YouTube channel for The Retro Network, I’m going all the way back to the beginning to the very first video in the series. In it, I open a pack of G.I. Joe trading cards from 1991 put out by Impel.
As you know, G.I. Joe may very well be my favorite property of all time and I’m usually all-in and anything and everything to do with it. But even though I was also into trading cards in a big way back in 1991, I never had nor opened a pack of these cards. So watch along as I open this old pack of cards and thumb through them to see what’s inside.
In an earlier post here on Retro Ramblings, I posted about how 1986 was the year Santa became real for me. I briefly talked about some of the things I got for Christmas that year, but those little snippets just don’t do all those wonderful toys justice. So here, in detail, is what I got for Christmas in 1986!
The big one that Christmas morning in 1986 was the G.I. Joe Cobra Terror Drome. At that time in life, my world revolved around four toys. G.I Joe, Masters of the Universe, Construx, and Legos….with G.I. Joe being at the top of the list. Knowing this, it was no surprise to my parents that the biggest hit of the holiday season would be this huge G.I. Joe playset.
It had room for plenty of figures, so massive battles were a foregone conclusion. I stockpiled this sucker with every bad guy I had in my collection and then began a full-on assault with all of the good guys I could find. Even Bo & Luke Duke in their 3 3/4″ figure form and the General Lee got in on the action on the side of the Joes!
The initial battle was a stalemate, with Cobra barely able to hold off the tremendous might of the Joes, as they retreated back a little way to regroup and plan for a second assault. Now of course this stalemate was only to ensure that the Terror Drome was intact to play with again the following day. I spent a while Christmas afternoon interacting with various parts of this set. The Cobra vehicles re-fueled at the re-fueling station built into it, while some of the top Cobra brass interrogated a captured Joe down in the holding cell area.
The shine of this toy didn’t wear off anytime soon, but I had gotten quite a few other new toys this Christmas that required my attention, so I had to let the action cool down a little so I could get on to some of the other stuff like…..
Construx Super Set
Even though Construx was probably third on my list of favorite toys, getting a Super Set like this one requires almost immediate attention. I can’t remember exactly what the structure was that this set was designed to build, but I knew from the looks of it that would come in very handy to members of the Joe team on their next assault on the Terror Drome.
Once I had this thing put together, it could drive right up to the Terror Drome and lift several Joes at once to the top of the Drome and unload them right in the heart of the command center! What better way to strike right at the heart of Cobra than a direct assault on Cobra Commander and the Barroness?!?
Once the great battle of the Terror Drome was over, this set of Construx went on to be featured in lots of other playtimes. I used the pieces to create all kinds of new toys. I once built a scaffold to put over the top of my wrestling ring with which to re-create the infamous Scaffold match from Starrcade ’86. Along with building “steel cages” and assorted other wrestling-related toys, Construx seemed to go along with most other toys I played with.
I had a smaller set of Construx, but getting this Super Set for Christmas gave me plenty of pieces for projects all year long.
Tonka Steel Monsters Destroyer
I had plenty of hand-me-down Tonka trucks from my brother through the years, but this may have been the very first one that was mine first. It doesn’t quite look like your normal Tonka truck. This one seems to be more inspired by Mad Max than construction sites which were the norm for Tonka. And I didn’t have any of the other vehicles from this particular line, but that didn’t slow down the playtime.
Now I didn’t take the photo above, but as you can see, it was perfectly sized for G.I. Joe figures, and I made great use of it, as it became the main vehicle for my Dreadnoks figures. They themselves seemed to be inspired by the post-apocalyptic world of Mad Max as well, so it seemed a perfect fit. With the bladed grill on this bad boy, it seemed like the perfect counter-offensive to the new Construx weapon that G.I. Joe had in its possession.
G.I. Joe Tomahawk
One thing that Cobra didn’t count on that fateful Christmas day, was G.I. Joe achieving air superiority. And why should they? The Terror Drome had the awesome Firebat that could launch right from the Drome itself. But G.I. Joe had brought a new weapon to the fight in the form of the Tomahawk helicopter.
The Tomahawk held the pilot and a co-pilot in the cockpit, Two more Joes in the back manning machine guns, and room for several more who could repel out of the rear hatch right into the middle of any hot zone on the battlefield! It would go on to play a key role in the battle of the Terror Drome, and many other battles in the years to come.
The Tomahawk was one of my absolute favorite G.I. Joe toys through the years. It probably saw as much playtime as any other toy I ever owned, and I actually still had it years later when I was too dumb to hold onto all that old stuff and sold it off in a mass sale. If anyone is looking for a last-minute Christmas gift for me THIS year, put this on the list!
Masters of the Universe Grizzlor Figure
I had accumulated a nice size collection of Masters of the Universe figures since ’84 but had few Hordak figures. This was okay to me though, since a bad guy is a bad guy, and they could just easily align with Skeletor in his battles with He-Man.
Grizzlor was a cool one though because of all the fur. And as a side note, to anyone who still has this figure, I wouldn’t suggest having him get trapped in the Horde Slime Pit. That stuff is near impossible to get out of his fur.
I’ve mentioned before that I used G.I. Joe figures to simulate my wrestling playtime. I would rename them to popular wrestlers of the day like Tully Blanchard, Ric Flair, Wahoo McDaniel, and others. But I had always had a hard time finding any G.I. Joe figures that resembled my favorite tag team of the Rock and Roll Express. That problem was solved on Christmas Day 1986, and when the greatest tag team of all time arrived at my house that Christmas morning, Grizzlor had met his match!
G.I. Joe Tomax & Xamot Figures
This awesome 2-pack of Cobra figures was kinda highly sought after if my memory serves me. And if not on a national scale, it certainly was in the circles I ran in. I know I personally had been asking for them for months on end, and they finally arrived that Christmas morning. With the matching outfits and the silver boots, the minute I opened them, I knew I had finally found my Rock and Roll Express!
Now to this day, I have no idea why I chose this as the first way to play with Tomax and Xamot. I didn’t use them in the great battle of the Terror Drome. No, I held them back, and later in the day, they squared off against Grizzlor on my Dad’s pool table in a weird two-on-one wrestling match with Grizzlor. Come to think of it, I have no idea why I didn’t get out any of the MOTU figures for play with Grizzlor either.
Either way, this Rock and Roll Express went on to defeat their hairy tormentor that day, and for probably at least a year, didn’t lose a tag team match in my wrestling rings either. Still to this day, Tomax and Xamot are in my top five favorite G.I. Joe figures. Whether they were winning tag team gold in a toy wrestling ring, battling hairy beasts from another universe, or being their intended badass selves on the side of Cobra, they were some of the best action figures I ever had.
Hot Wheels Snake Mountain Challenge
I mentioned earlier how the Masters of the Universe was one of my favorite toy lines. Now, what a treat it was on that Christmas morning to find that they had merged that line with another favorite of little boys everywhere…Hot Wheels!
This was one of the cool Hot Wheels sets that featured the orange pieces of track, a launcher for the car, and some kind of obstacle. In this set, the obstacle was a cardboard rendition of Snake Mountain that the car had to jump through at the end to escape, hence the name, Snake Mountain Challenge.
It even came with a cool silver car with the MOTU logo on the sides of it!
My Dad set the short track up on the pool table, and he, my brother, and I took many turns that day trying to escape Snake Mountain with little success. While my Dad and my brother each picked other cars from our Hot Wheels collection to try and make the jump with, I stuck with the great-looking He-Man car for all of my attempts. It was a super fun way to spend part of Christmas afternoon that day. But as the hours wore down, it was time to take a little rest and watch some TV.
G.I. Joe VHS Tape – Satellite Down
The VCR was new in our home, and I hadn’t had anything to watch on it really. That is until Christmas morning when Santa saw fit to leave me my very first VHS tape. It was a single episode of the G.I. Joe series titled Satellite Down.
It told the tale of a G.I. Joe satellite that crashed in the wild, and both Joes and Cobras raced to the scene to recover it. There, they met with a weird group of creatures called the Primords who found it and had taken it as a God. When all was said and done, G.I. Joe came out victorious once more. I had to watch it twice in a row just to be sure they won both times.
After those viewings, it was time for the second offensive on the Terror Drome. The goal was no longer to destroy the Terror Drome, nor to capture Cobra Commander. Now the mission was to retrieve a downed satellite that Cobra had captured and was storing at the top of the Terror Drome!
I won’t bore you with too many details, but the assault was a success. Using the new Construx weapon to lift Joes to the top was a failure since the Dreaknoks new Destroyer dump truck rendered it inoperable. Cobra thought they were going to have the advantage when they launched the Fire Bat, but it was knocked out of the air by the Duke boys jumping the General Lee off a cliff and knocking it out of the air. That left the Joes and their Tomahawk with air superiority, and they used it to lower Joes to the top and hook up to the satellite and fly away. All’s well that ends well I guess.
I’m sure I went to bed that night with a smile on my face and hugging some toy like Ralphie did his B.B. Gun in A Christmas Story. The events and gifts of that Christmas are burned brighter into my memory than any other Christmas, because like I told you in the feature, The Year Santa Became Real, Christmas up to that point was somewhat lacking. But the mega haul of Christmas ’86 solidified my belief in Santa and gave me a lifetime of great memories of that day.
Christmas is coming up quickly, so I thought it would be a good time to open up an old Sears Christmas Wish Book and relive some great old memories from the past. I’m going back in time to 1988 with that year’s edition of the Wish Book to pick out some of the cool toys I wanted.
I was 10 years old in 1988, so it was right at that perfect time of still being into toys, but at the same time, starting to have an eye towards some gifts that were a little more “grown-up”. The 1988 edition of the Wish Book was loaded with so much cool stuff, and I want to share some of them with you in this edition of Retro Ramblings.
G.I. Joe Locker Bag Kit
Oh my goodness! If you’ve got to start a personal grooming habit as a young man, what better way to do it than with G.I. Joe?!? This kit has everything a 10-year-old young man would need too. G.I. Joe approved toothbrush and toothpaste (ADA be damned), mini soap with its own case to keep it from getting all slimy, a brush and comb for whatever stylish ‘do you are sporting, and a cup to go along with that toothcare set. To top it all off, there is a small pocket-size pack of tissue to take with you wherever you go, and a cool ass locker bag to store it all in. You would be the envy of your fellow gym mates if you walked into a locker room with that bag slung over your shoulder. And on top of all of that, how cool would it be to see this puppy hanging up in your bathroom at home. It would almost make coming in from playing outside to get cleaned up enjoyable. Almost.
Rock Tumbler
This rock tumbler is still my holy grail of never gotten Christmas gifts. I circled this thing in every Wish Book from as far back as I can remember all the way up through the early nineties. Never once did I find it waiting for me under the tree at Christmas. I had all these dreams about using it to start a profitable business making gemstone jewelry and price gouging the other kids at school. Just yesterday I was out doing a little shopping and had to make a stop at Hobby Lobby. I’m browsing the aisles and minding my own business when I turn a corner and BAM! There’s a display full of Rock Tumblers! I couldn’t believe my luck. After all these years I could finally have one of my very own. But then I saw the price tag. $119.99. Are they serious? How is anyone supposed to turn a profit on cheap gemstone jewelry with overhead like that? Not this old boy, no sir. I’ll just have to continue to circle this thing in every catalog I come across hoping one day to be gifted one.
Slot-less “Slot” Car Track
Now here we go! I am an old slot car fiend from way back, and this track just looks awesome. Now I know it doesn’t have all the cool twists, turns, loops, and the other bells and whistles that various other slot car tracks have, but it has one feature that one-ups all of those. Do you see any actual slots on this track? Nope, not a single one. That’s because you have to steer these cars yourself. There’s no slot to guide you on your way or to keep you from slamming into your opponent. You have to have the skill to avoid, or ram, your opponent yourself. That makes this track set so awesome. I can totally see myself mimicking “The Intimidator” Dale Earnhardt and “rattling some cages’ to put other racers in the wall….or cheap plastic guard rail as the case may be here.
Now while I never did get an awesome slot-less track, I DID actually get the slot car track above. It was a pretty badass track in its own right though. I thought the lap counter was just the coolest feature I had seen on a track before. You could set it to however many laps you wanted to run (up to 50 I think), and then the first car to clock that many laps would have a little winner’s flag pop up on their timer. I’m pretty sure I got the track for Christmas ’88, so there is a very good chance it was ordered from this very catalog.
LEGO Sets
LEGO was really my cup of tea throughout my whole childhood. Heck, my kids still play with all my old LEGOs even today. Luckily, it was one of the toys my Mom kept for all those years. Some of the pieces still in my childhood collection come from that Hospital pictured at the top of the page. It was a pretty cool set as it gave you a building to add to your LEGO city.
But while that was cool, it’s the bottom two sets that really get my motor running. First of all, that Truck Stop is just dripping with manliness. If you had this set as a kid, you probably grew chest hair before all you’re friends who didn’t have it. With two rigs and a big rig wrecker, you were ready for some heavy hauling. And when the hours got too long, you could pull into the truck stop itself for a hot cup of Joe. Life couldn’t be much sweeter. Since my Dad drove some big trucks like these, this thing was on my list for a couple of years. I had to make do with creating my own versions though. Since I never had it, it’s going on my list again.
To finish it off, there is the Super Speedway. My old man picked me up the small version of this one at some point. It had only one base plate though instead of two, and only two race cars instead of the four pictured here. My small set was super fun, so I can only imagine how much fun this mammoth set would have been.
Nintendo Games
How could any self-respecting kid not just circle the entire page? Do you see the selection of games just ready for the taking? And this is only one of a two-page spread! Even though a kid can’t restrain themselves, as an adult, I can. That, and I don’t have the space or time right now to write about every game on the page, so I just circled a select few.
A couple of my absolute favorite games featured on this page are Castlevania 2: Simon’s Quest and Pro Wrestling! I had gotten Pro Wrestling the night I got my Nintendo, and I saved my allowance for what felt like forever and bought Simon’s Quest. So to narrow this list down a little further, let’s just go with the rest. There’s RC Pro-Am, Rad Racer, Ghosts and Goblins, and the legendary Legend of Zelda. Those are some hall of fame titles right there. And I’m sure every game on the page has its hardcore fans, making this a page with probably more circles than any other in the whole catalog. Back in this time period, if you were a kid whose parents had any means whatsoever, you generally found a new Nintendo game under your tree. I know I was fortunate enough to find one most years, and any of these games I had circled would have entertained me for the rest of Christmas break.
Now from this page, I’ve circled several of the ones I really want. You’ve got the all-time classics Contra and ExciteBike, the much-adored Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out, and the underrated Goonies II. But the one on this page that would really pique my interest is Tag Team Wrestling. Pro Wrestling is one of my all-time favorite games for the console, so I really want to give this game a go.
You really couldn’t go wrong getting any of the games on either of these pages for Christmas. Let’s face it, a Christmas day spent playing a new Nintendo game was going to be one hell of a day regardless of what the title was.
Merlin the Magician Magic Kit
I’ve probably talked about it before on here somewhere, but I’ve been fascinated with magic ever since I saw Lance Campbell perform in the 4th-grade talent show at school. Matter of fact, a lot of the tricks he performed can be found in this very set. They may even be a good chance that this is the set he used in the show.
Regardless, this thing is full of cool tricks that would amaze your friends. That is if your friends are eight years old. But if I had this thing, I’d force my kids to sit on the couch and pretend to be amazed at the astounding acts of magic I was performing.
Willow Toys
When the movie Willow hit, I was all about it. Even though I never saw it in the theater, I was hooked by the trailers alone. Well, that and those cool Willow Magicups that came in Wendy’s kid’s meals as part of the promotion for the movie.
Even though I hadn’t seen the movie at the time, I would have LOVED to have all of these toys. I’m a sucker for fantasy realms and their toys, so these look like they’re right up my alley. The only problem I see with them is that they don’t appear to be articulated. I still like the idea of setting them up in battle settings, but it would be even cooler if you could “play” with them.
Micro Machines Toys
If you know anything about me at all, then you should know that I simply adore Micro Machines. I have ever since the day Marcus Callis showed up at school with a pocket full of the little things. It only took a few moments of marveling over them to know that I wanted some of my own. And while I had my fair share of the cars, I was always enamored with the play sets that were available for them. There are a couple of the small playsets pictured at the top of the page, and those were the ones that you could connect together to make much larger sets, construction a whole town or small city if you had enough of them. Let’s go ahead and put both of those on my list.
There’s also the Micro Machines Transport Truck pictured. I had it once upon a time, and it was great as a carrying case that you could also play with. It would hold 11 cars, so it was a nice option to tote along when I was heading to Grandma’s house for the day.
Playmobil
Oh, how I loved Playmobil toys. Especially their western-themed sets like this. It seemed like I only ever got Playmobil toys at Christmas, and usually only from aunts and uncles at the annual family Christmas party. I had a lot of the cowboys and Indian-themed sets, and the toys shown above just go right along with them.
That train would be awesome, but it came with a very hefty $219.99 price tag. That’s $462.00 in today’s money! That sucker was one expensive toy. But it does look really cool, and I know from experience that Playmobil toys were as durable as they came.
Besides the train, there is the Western Station which comes with 8 figures! It has a big price tag on it too though. Anyway, I’m going to just circle this entire page and hope for the best.
Marvel Comics Pack
You’d always find listings like these every year in the wish books for things like comics, baseball cards, stamps, and other collectibles, but this collection right here looks astounding! This pack is brimming with cool 80’s properties. I can see ALF, Willow, GI Joe, Silver Hawks, and even Transformers comics. Those alone would probably make the pack worth the price of admission, but then you throw in the classic Marvel titles like Avengers, Hulk, Thor, Spider-man, Fantastic Four, and Iron Man and you’ve got yourself a super fun way to spend a few afternoons.
PXL 2000 Deluxe Video Camera
And this my friends, is one of the coolest Christmas gifts I ever received. This thing was a real, honest-to-goodness, video camera designed for kids. But the really unique thing was that this camera recorded onto cassette tapes. Don’t ask me how. The description says it records a unique black-and-white image called Pixelvision, with sound. I remember it having decent quality on playback, and the whole thing was really easy to set up and use. I sure wish I still had the tapes I recorded with it, as I would set it up and record myself dancing to 1989 hip-hop tracks. I’m sure that would be a sight to see today.
Whew. That just covered a lot of ground, but in truth, I could fill this blog with nothing but things I want from this 1988 catalog. We better cut it off here before I overload the server.
