Check out this full scan of a Toys R Us flyer from 1988. It’s full of Nintendo, G.I. Joe, RC Cars, Bikes, board games, MASK, Atari, Sega, and more!
1988 Toys R Us Sale Paper
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Tag Archives: Nintendo
Highlights From a 1988 Toys ‘R’ Us Sale Paper
On this week’s episode of The Retro Network Podcast, Jason and I scoured through an old Toys ‘R’ Us sale paper from 1988. Even at just sixteen pages, the thing was loaded with all kinds of cool toys from the past. You can listen to us salivate over everything in the ad on the show, but here are five things from it that I want to highlight in this edition of Retro Ramblings.
Army Gear Playsets from Galoob
Until we recorded the show, I was completely unaware of the existence of these incredible looking toys. They’re kind of like Transformers in that they’re two distinct toys in one. Like the M-16…you could play with it as a machine gun while running around chasing the neighbor kids, but you could also open it up into a playset for the Combat Troops.
Besides the M-16, it looks like there was also a flashlight that transformed into an air defense station, a watch that transformed into some kind of missile base, and a pistol that turned into a 3-level silo…and they had sounds!
Not to mention the combat troops themselves which you would obviously need to ramp up the fun with the playsets. And for just $3.99 you got ten good guys and ten bad guys to battle it out. This is a line I’m going to have to look into further.
Bone Age from Kenner
Way back when, well I guess in 1988 as it turns out, I saw commercials for what I thought were pretty cool-looking toys. I never ended up having any of them, and they gradually slipped from my mind until just a few years ago. I searched high and low for a name for the toy line with no luck. Then I did what I should have done in the first place. I turned to Twitter for the answer and got it pretty quickly. Bone Age.
I had been enamored with the “vehicles” and the like from the line, and still am today. So when we flipped the page in the sale paper and happened upon these things, I was ecstatic. These aren’t even the best representations of the toys in the line. It wouldn’t fit this post if I started adding images from other sources, so you’ll just have to google them yourselves.
But the gist is that you’ve got these big skeleton dinosaurs and the cavemen that ride on them I guess. But some of the other toys in the line are net launchers and other such fancy weapons. Maybe the coolest thing about them was that you got to put the dinosaur skeletons together before you played with them, adding another layer of fun to the toy.
Crossfire from Milton Bradley
Raise your hand if you remember the badass commercial promoting this game. I can’t really see if you’re raising your hand or not, but if I could, and you weren’t raising your hand, I would pretend I didn’t see it out of pity for you. That commercial kicked seven kinds of ass and had more ass lined up down the street waiting to be kicked.
Besides Fireball Island, Crossfire may be the most fondly remembered board game from the era. It was pretty simple, as you and your opponent both were equipped with guns that shot small ball bearings across the surface of the board. You had to use those ball bearings to knock a couple of pucks into your opponent’s trench. At the same time, you had to keep your opponent from knocking them into your trench.
This game was just so much fun. It usually went quickly with someone winning after just a few minutes, but what a few minutes it was. Your hand would get sore from pulling the trigger so many times in just a short span. And loud. Holy crap was this a loud game to play with the ball bearings bouncing off the plastic sides of the game board at high speeds. I’m sure a fair number of parents second-guessed their decision to buy this for their kids.
G.I. Joe Toys from Hasbro
As you already know, G.I. Joe was my bag back in the ’80s. I had more than my fair share of Joes, Cobras, vehicles, and playsets, and I loved every one of them.
One of the bigger pieces I had was this Mobile Command center pictured on the left side of the image. That thing was massive with its three levels that would fold out. And when it was closed up, it actually rolled along. As Jason said on the pod, it looked like a sand crawler from Star Wars.
But the playset was filled with every kind of nook and cranny you needed. There was a jail cell for captured Cobras, a command center, gun turrets, missile launchers, and even a “trap door” that would allow the Joes to slide down from the top level to the ground in somewhat of a quick deployment mechanism.
I never had any hands-on experience with any of the other vehicles pictured in the ad, but I did have the Road Pig figure pictured in the set. He was instantly one of my favorite figures and was the resident badass on the Cobra side of things. He and Sgt. Slaughter went on to have numerous knock-down, drag-out battles in my bedroom.
Nintendo Games from Various
I never get tired of looking at old Nintendo game ads. Whether singular titles or ads like this featuring a glut of gaming goodness. Nintendo was the undisputed king of playtime in this era, and these games are the reason.
I see several that I actually owned featured in this ad. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Double Dribble, Contra, Defender of the Crown, and my all-time favorite game for the system, Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest.
Blades of Steel always piqued my interest, but I never got to play it. Bayou Billy had a lot of hype around it if I remember correctly, but I never was around it either. Skate or Die was a perennial favorite of my best friend Geoffrey so I got to dabble with it a little bit too. But like I said, these games were the reason Nintendo was king, and I don’t even know if I could figure up all the hours I spent on the games I mentioned above.
So that’s just a little sampling from the sixteen pages of awesome that was the Toys ‘R’ Us sale paper that Jason and I covered on The Retro Network Podcast. You can give it a listen to hear us talk about everything in it and share old memories. Before you give it a listen though, you can view the entire 16-page ad here.
Tetris for Nintendo
We all know the story of this game. Several different odd-shaped blocks fall from the top of the board, and you had to rotate them, move them left or right to get them to drop into position to complete a line and make it go away. If you weren’t quick enough or smart enough to do that on a consistent basis, your board would be full and your game would be over.
My first experience with the game came with the launch of the Game Boy. A local department store had the Game Boy demo set up in their electronics department. Every weekend while my mother would do her shopping, I killed time playing Tetris on the demo machine. It wasn’t long until I had enough money saved up to buy the game for the NES, and then a much bigger, and full-color version of the game was mine.
It was so simple of a game, even an adult could play it too! And that’s exactly what happened at my house, and why this game is so high up the list. My father never would play video games. He didn’t even like to sit and watch me play a game. So when he saw how easy Tetris was, he wanted to give it a try. For months afterward, we would play it together, seeing who could get the highest score and the most completed lines. He would even be the one most times to suggest us playing. Those times spent with my Dad, doing something that I loved are ones that I’ll never forget, and Tetris gets a high spot on my all-time list because of it.
My Origin Story: Nintendo
Nintendo was a big part of most kids’ lives who are now my age. I’m sure we had all spent our fair share of time in arcades pumping quarters into machines, and probably even took a few turns playing Atari, ColecoVision, or other earlier systems. But when Nintendo came along, it turned the video gaming world on its head and changed the business forever. We probably have it to thank for the continued video game obsession today. But for every one of us who loved Nintendo, there was a singular point in time when we first got to experience playing a game on one. This is the story of my first time.
Let me set the stage for you. It was spring or early summer 1987. I’m 9 years old and hanging out at my grandparent’s house on some lazy day. My uncle Ernest is there visiting too, and somehow the conversation turned to him talking about this new thing called Nintendo that he had gotten for my cousin Tim. I’m sitting and listening in puzzlement and amazement at the same time.
I’ve not heard of this Nintendo thing. Somehow, someway, all the marketing and hype for it had completely eluded me. Heard about it at school? Nope. Talked excitedly about it with my friends? No, missed out on that one too. In what was surely a massive marketing blitz and rampant fever for Nintendo, I had somehow been completely oblivious to its existence.
So continuing to listen to Ernest as he spun intriguing tales of this game called Super Mario Brothers, I am becoming increasingly jealous of Tim and this “wonder box” that he now owns. Then it happens. Ernest looked at me and said that I should come over and play it with Tim. He promised I would love it. The man had no idea what he had just unleashed upon me.
Going to visit Tim wasn’t any kind of chore since he lived right beside me. When I got home that afternoon, I strolled next door, and what I found there left an indelible mark on me for the rest of my life. This slightly odd-shaped gray and black box had me hooked from the first moment I picked up the controller.
Tim explained to me the basics of how it worked….how there were cartridges that contained the games that you inserted into the system, and hand-held controllers with which to play the games. You didn’t need quarters or anything. You just turned it on and played arcade-like video games!
He gave me the basic rundown on how to play Super Mario Brothers, and let me watch him play for a while. A LONG while. Eventually, he asked if I would like to play and I’m sure my answer was something along the lines of “HECK YEAH!”. Sadly, he set us up in two-player mode which meant I would be Luigi. At that moment, I didn’t really care. What I didn’t know then was that Mario went first, and got to keep playing until he died. Tim had already gotten quite good at the game, so I had to wait impatiently for quite a while before I got my turn.
Eventually, my time came. I was so excited and barely able to contain myself. The only thing I can even remotely compare that moment to is the first time I got a girl in the back seat of my car. The nervousness and awkwardness of the moment were overwhelming. Much like when I had the girl in the backseat of the car, I hit the wrong button and it was over just as quickly as it had begun. I had watched his moves intently and thought I was ready to run through the same levels I had just watched him complete. I mistimed the first jump and died a horrible death at the hands of a mutated mushroom. After roughly 5 seconds of play, I was relegated back to the sidelines to sit and watch Tim and Mario dominate the playtime for another 15 – 20 minutes.
The afternoon continued on like this up into the evening, and when it was time to go, I was feeling a lot less enthusiastic about the whole video gaming experience. In 4 hours of time spent with him, I had amassed about 20 minutes of total play. I went home thinking that it seemed fun, but I wasn’t really sure since I didn’t get very much hands-on time with the game.
The following day, however, was a different story. I showed back up at his house early and wasted no time in asking if he wanted to play Super Mario Brothers some more. He darkened my whole world when he said, “Nah, I don’t want to play Mario today.” Just as quickly as he darkened the day, he lit it right back up when he said: “Let’s play Pro Wrestling instead.” PRO WRESTLING?!? There was a game for Nintendo about Pro Wrestling?!?
Tim and I were both HUGE fans of pro wrestling in general and the NWA in particular. We watched it together religiously and were huge fans of the Rock & Roll Express. He showed me the cartridge, and I’m surprised I didn’t wet my pants with excitement right then and there. I may have, but I don’t really remember. When that game started up, it was like a choir singing Hallelujah!
We went through the cast of characters and were excited about the possibilities of matches we could have. Since Tim hadn’t played the game much yet, we were pretty much on even footing when it came to experience. And throw in the fact that this was a game that both players played at the same time instead of taking turns meant that I got a whole lot more hands-on time with this than I ever would have gotten being Luigi on Super Mario Brothers.
We spent the entire day playing Pro Wrestling and I personally didn’t care at all about not getting to play Mario anymore. The next several days were like that, with us playing Pro Wrestling by day, and me begging my parents for my own Nintendo by night.
About a week later, my family went to the Hills Department Store in Bristol where my Dad picked up my first Nintendo Entertainment System for me, along with the Pro Wrestling cartridge, and a Space Invaders-type knockoff called Alpha Mission. But I’ll save the details about that game for another time.
I can remember getting it home that night and being anxious as hell for my dad to get it hooked up to the television. By the time he had gotten everything hooked up and in place, it was getting late into the night. My mom let me play one quick match on Pro Wrestling, but then it was time for bed she said. I was like a kid going to bed on Christmas Eve with so much excitement coursing through my veins that it was hard to sleep. I’m sure I spent the night with visions of brain busters and somersault kicks dancing in my head.
I got up the next morning before the sun was up, and was immediately in the living room to play more Pro Wrestling. This was a Saturday, so that meant I was choosing Nintendo over my Saturday morning tradition of watching cartoons. But that was ok. I had watched cartoons my whole life. Nintendo was a new thing, and it wasn’t going to take a backseat to anything that day, even the glory that we now refer to reverently as ’80s cartoons.
I probably spent the entire day playing Nintendo. Most likely I played Pro Wrestling for most of that time, but I also popped in that Alpha Mission cartridge and gave it a go as well. My dad bought it because he thought he might enjoy playing it. I can only remember him giving it a shot one time, and from then on, it was mine all mine. His interest in Nintendo faded within the first 24 hours of having it in the house.
Within a seven-day period, I had gone from not knowing what the hell Nintendo even was, to playing one, owning one, and becoming obsessed with it. I bet if I thought about it, I could put that week in my life up there in the top 10 weeks in my life overall. I’ve been a Nintendo enthusiast since that point in time, and it all started with that first trip to Tim’s house. And Pro Wrestling will forever hold the distinction of the game that originally stole my heart, and I still keep a pristine copy of it on display in my home. Right behind it, you can see pictures of my kids.