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Five of My Favorite Matchbox Toys

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Growing up in the ’80s and early ’90s, Hot Wheels, and Matchbox cars were a big part of my playtime.  Both lines produced a lot of really fun cars and playsets, and in this edition of Retro Ramblings, I’m sharing a few of my favorite toys from the Matchbox side of things through the years.  

Matchbox Super Spin Car Wash

After a long day of play in the dirt and mud of the hills around our house, a good car wash was just what the cars and trucks needed.  This car wash was kind of automatic…as in you had to get the car in the wash and then turn a crank and it would go all the way through.  It featured real water jets, a foam roller “scrub” brush, and a spin dry feature.  The perfect play set for getting all of your cars clean before packing them away for another day.

Watch the commercial for the Matchbox Super Spin Car Wash HERE

Days of Thunder Cars from Hardees

In 1990, Jerry Bruckheimer’s Days of Thunder movie starring Tom Cruise hit theaters to a great reaction, and merchandise based on the movie started to flow.  One of the better pieces of merchandise to come along were the replica cars from Hardees based on the stock cars from the movie.  The five main cars featured in the movie were in the set, which allowed us younger viewers of the film to recreate all the action at home.

Matchbox Cars Based on the Code Red Television Show

In 1981, CBS debuted the little-remembered Code Red TV Show.  It featured Lorne Green as the Father of a firefighting family in Los Angeles and the Chief of one of the many stations in the city.  The show only lasted one season, but Matchbox produced a series of cars featuring the iconic vehicles from the show.  There were two fire trucks, the Chief’s car, motorcycle, fireboat, helicopter, ambulance, and police car.  As a kid whose Dad was a fireman, this set was one of my absolute favorite toys to play with in the ’80s.

Matchbox Connectables

One of the cooler concepts that came along in the 80’s toy landscape were these Connectables cars from Matchbox.  Each car was in at least two pieces and connected in the middle.  This allowed you to interchange parts of different vehicles to create all new cars and trucks to play with.  There were also packs of other car parts available so you could even extend the new cars into total monstrosities if you wanted to!  You could make a big rig limo or a drag car with tank treads!  With these cars, you could take your imagination and play to a whole other level.

Check out the commercial for Matchbox Connectables here.

Matchbox Trains

Matchbox released a series of train cars in the early ’80s to go along with all of their already awesome car collection. There were various engines in different colors, along with box cars, passenger cars, flat cars, and cabooses.  The really fun aspect of this series was you could hook any of the cars to any of the other cars, meaning you could make many different configurations with varying train cars.  They weren’t exactly in scale with the rest of the line, as they were each about the size of one of their normal cars.  I used to love these things!  My brother and I would hook all of ours together and make an imaginary track all through the house.  We could get hours and hours of fun out of these trains.

So what about you?  Did you have any of these awesome Matchbox toys?  Did I leave out your favorite Matchbox toy?  Tell me in the comments!

How I Remember Christmas

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Like I’m sure it was for most kids, December 25th has always been one of those benchmark dates on the calendar. Alongside my birthday, and the last day of school, it has always been a measuring point for the year. And for good reason, as I’m sure I’m not alone in enjoying the gift-giving, gift-getting, food, and fellowship that the magical holiday brings. So in this special edition of Retro Ramblings, I want to share some of the things I think of when I think about Christmas.

For me, the highlight has always been about the time I get to spend with family. Especially my Dad. All through my years of growing up, my Dad traveled. He would be gone for roughly 300 out of the 365 days of a year. But his work always slowed down in December and he had a lot of time at home that lined up so well with our Christmas break from school. And while he himself never got overly excited about Christmas, he did so many little things to make it special for me. Things that most would not think are overly special but so special to me, that I’ve tried to do the exact same things for my daughters every year now.

There is so much nostalgia built into the holiday season for me. So many different things about the holiday that trigger vibrant memories of some of the happiest times of my life. So here in this article, I want to share with you a lot of the little things that I enjoy during the Christmas season, their origins in the past, and some of the strong memories associated with them.

(In no particular order)

MY COUSIN TIM COMING OVER ON CHRISTMAS MORNING TO SEE WHAT I HAD GOTTEN

Every year around mid-morning, my cousin and his parents would stop by to see what Santa had brought, and to show off some new toy he had gotten as well. He and I would play with whatever new things we had while the parents sat and talked, drank coffee, and just enjoyed each other’s company. The fireplace would have a nice crackling fire in it while some low Christmas music played in the background. It was just a wonderful setting for enjoying the mid part of the day.

In recent years, my daughters had the pleasure of being visited every Christmas morning by their great grandparents, who would come see what they had gotten for Christmas and join us for a simple breakfast of orange cinnamon rolls and ham…..just like we always enjoyed on those Christmas mornings so long ago.

THE TOWN CHRISTMAS PARADE

One of my favorite days of the year…seeing the vehicles decorated for Christmas, seeing Santa Claus riding into town high atop a town fire truck, and then following him to the local grocery store to get a treat bag. That bag usually consisted of an apple, an orange, a few pieces of strawberry candy, and a full-size candy bar. The whole town would usually show up for the parade and treats, even though that number was roughly only about 600 people. It was a day that I can think back on and not really remember anyone being anything but happy.

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Five of My Favorite Halloween Treats

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The Halloween season is upon us, and I thought it would be fun to go back in time to the days of trick-or-treating and look at just what were some of my absolute favorite things to find in my treat bag at the end of the night.  Now, don’t get me wrong, it was hard for any treat to be classified as “bad”, but we all had the favorites that we hoped to get a sack full of by the end of the night.  Here in this Retro Ramblings, are five of my favorites!

Nerds Candy

When I was young back in the ’80s, there wasn’t much more revered candy amongst my friends than Nerds.  We all loved these things.  We’d carry the normal-sized boxes of them to school with us and compare flavors.  So when the snack-sized boxes came along, we were all stoked.  It was a big deal for a few years though to get these on Halloween night.  We’d all bring in our Nerds haul to school and see who really hit the jackpot. 

Candy Cigarettes

I know these things aren’t exactly politically correct these days, but back then, people didn’t see anything wrong with them.  A lot of Dads smoked then, and one of the coolest things you could do was to imitate your Dad.  I’d “puff” on these things for a while trying to look cool, but it didn’t take long for that chalky flavor to overcome me and I’d have to gobble them down.  Not only that but in school, we treated candy cigarettes like prisoners do real cigarettes.  You could trade these things for all kinds of stuff between classes. 

Gift Certificates

Now I’m not talking about things like a $10 Starbucks card.  No, I’m talking about the ones for free cones or fries at McDonald’s.  While you couldn’t necessarily enjoy these the night you got them, it was like having money in the bank, and you anxiously waited for the day you got to go cash them in.

Packs of Baseball Cards

At that time, collecting and trading baseball cards was a rite of passage.  All my friends were into it, and so was I, so anytime you could get a pack of cards was great.  On the street where I did all of my trick-or-treating, there was an older fellow who was really into cards, and to pass along the joys of the hobby to the next generation, he gave out wax packs of baseball cards as Halloween treats.  This world needs more folks like that man. 

Treat Bags

While getting all the individual items mentioned above was great, it was always more exciting to get a full little treat bag that held untold treasures inside of it.  Historically for me, these things usually had a mini candy bar in it, with some Tootsie Rolls thrown in, and usually another item like a spider ring.  These treat bags were the epitome of the phrase, “more bang for the buck”, and still would be my favorite thing to find in my treat bag.

Some of My Favorite Saturday Morning Cartoons of the ’80s

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For today’s installment of Retro Ramblings, I’m you with a few of my favorite Saturday morning cartoons from the ’80s. I put a couple of stipulations on myself for this one. First, only Saturday morning cartoons. No before or after-school syndicated cartoons, so that knocked stuff out like He-Man and G.I. Joe. Second, all the cartoons on this list had to debut in the ’80s, so no Scooby-Doo either. I’ll tackle all of those missing cartoons at some point in the future, but for now, let’s get into these Saturday morning cartoons of the ’80s!

The Smurfs

To me, The Smurfs were not only one of my favorite cartoons, but I think the case could be made that it was one of the best cartoons to come out of the decade. I loved the medieval setting along with all of the forest stuff in it as well. For some reason, I was always a fan of seeing stuff get built, and The Smurfs had a lot of that. I remember when Handy had to get everyone together to build a dam. I’m sure I pulled out some LEGOs and tried to recreate that at some point during that Saturday afternoon.

Disney’s Adventures of the Gummi Bears

A lot about why I loved the Smurfs also applies to why I loved The Gummi Bears. Medieval theme? Check. Lots of forest action? Check. Getting to see them build stuff? Check off that one as well. Beyond the Smurfs though, the Gummi Bears had such rich colors in its animation, and the lore behind it I found more engaging than that of The Smurfs. It hit on all cylinders for me and was a cartoon that I dared not miss on Saturday mornings.

Hulk Hogan’s Rock ‘n’ Wrestling

Being into pro wrestling like I was, there was no way I wasn’t going to watch this one. I can remember knowing about it well in advance of its debut, probably from constant hyping on WWF Superstars if I had to guess. But even though most of the plots had little to nothing to do with actual wrestling, it was still a really fun cartoon. As much as I enjoyed the animated part, I believe I enjoyed the live-action comedy scenes just as much.

Mr. T

I didn’t know any boy at school around my age who didn’t watch The A-Team. And I also didn’t know any boy around my age at school whose favorite character on that show wasn’t B.A. Barracus played by Mr. T. We were all totally enamored with the guy. Hell, I still am. I even wrote a feature for The Retro Network about 12 Things You May Not Know About Mr. T. So the cartoon was just a natural extension for me. I don’t know how or why they landed on the concept of having Mr. T coaching a teen gymnastics team, but whatever, it worked. The stories were simple, but the action was fun. And much like Hulk Hogan’s Rock ‘n’ Wrestling, I loved the live-action segments with Mr. T himself.

Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends

My older brother had been into comic books since the late ’70s, and I would see his books and want to read them, but I was just at an age where they couldn’t hold my attention long enough for me to actually read them. So having this cartoon to watch at that time filled my need for comic book characters in a much easier-to-digest format. I loved it then for what it was, but now as an adult, I appreciate it even more when I go back and watch it because the show featured so many cool characters over its run. If you haven’t watched it in a while, I suggest you give it another look on Disney+.

That’s it for this edition of Retro Ramblings. But don’t worry, there’s plenty of more posts here for you to go explore.

Thoughts on Masters of the Universe: Revelation

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I finally got a chance to sit down and watch the new Masters of the Universe: Revelation series on Netflix this weekend. I had been under the weather all week and didn’t want to start the series until I was well enough to really pay attention to it and soak it in without being in a medicinal stupor.

While I managed to avoid actual spoilers all week long, I wasn’t able to avoid reading all the negative thoughts and comments on the series. I saw takes that decried how the property was now dead thanks to what Kevin Smith had done with it, and takes blaming the “wokeness” of the times taking over and causing the series’ focus to be changed, and takes on how the whole thing was one big bait and switch. But because I love the franchise so much, I was determined to watch it and decide for myself how I felt about it. And boy am I glad I did. For this edition of Retro Ramblings, let me share with you my thoughts on it.

*Spoilers Ahead*

First, let me just get my overall take out of the way… I LOVED it! I feel like some of the folks complaining about it are only upset that it didn’t fit their expectation of what they were wanting to see, and not judging it on what it actually is. What it actually is is a very well-conceived and executed next step in the Masters of the Universe mythos. Like, if you think of the original series and the 2002 series as an era in the history of Eternia, then Revelation is the next era, and it’s a really exciting and intriguing era. The beauty of it though is that it wouldn’t be near as enjoyable without all of the history we already know. If Revelation is your first foray into this universe, there’s probably not much that is going to stand out to you. But for longtime fans, there is so much greatness highlighted that every episode has numerous things that catch your attention. Here are some of the things I enjoyed most about the first five episodes:

  • The battle at Castle Grayskull in the first episode. So many warriors on each side made it look like a scene from a Lord of the Rings movie.
  • Learning that Castle Grayskull was just a facade put up to hide the Hall of Wisdom.
  • Having the power sword broken in half, bringing back the mythos of the two swords from the original mini-comics
  • Preternia being represented on screen by what the huge Eternia playset looked like
  • The conflict between backers of both magic and science and how the two are at odds. The original toy line and series was based on the fact that Eternia was where magic met science. I love this concept.
  • The alliance of characters that set out to find the two halves of the power sword. Blurring the lines of good and evil by putting them all together with great motives for being involved.
  • All of the characters that got screen time like Scareglow, Mer-Man, Clawful, Stinkor, Fisto, Roboto, Whiplash, and of course all of the usual suspects like Evil-Lynn, Beast Man, and the rest.
  • Portraying Man-at-Arms Duncan as the real most dangerous man in Eternia.
  • Tri-Klops as the leader of a science cult.
  • Orko finally getting to show what a badass he could have always have been.
  • Teela getting the spotlight.
  • Showing what a powerul and deep character Evil-Lynn really is.
  • And that scene when Prince Adam is calling down the power of Grayskull only to be struck down from behind by a returning Skeletor. That was certainly an unexpected by much appreciated moment.

As you can see there, I found a lot to love about this new series, and now I can’t wait for the next five episodes to drop.

If folks out there want to see more stories in the same mold as what we’ve always gotten featuring the struggles and battles between He-Man and Skeletor, I guess this probably does disappoint them. But we already have so many of those stories, and while there is probably a limitless amount of more of those stories that can be told, I genuinely appreciate this bold new direction. It’s like we’re no longer stuck in the endless loop of battle that we’ve seen so many times, and now we’re rocketing into the future with new and unexpected developments.

From all I’ve seen online, I guess this puts me in the minority, but I really dig this new series and look forward to seeing more of it. For the first time in many years, I have no idea what to expect from the Masters of the Universe, and that makes me feel like a kid again.