I’ve been feeling pretty nostalgic for Hot Wheels lately, so I feel like running down some of my favorite Hot Wheels toys in this edition of Retro Ramblings. Indulge me if you will.
There have been plenty of cool Hot Wheels toys that have come along in recent years, but my list is looking at Hot Wheels toys from the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s. I’m not including any individual cars this time out, because I hope to do a deep dive on those in the near future.
Sto & Go Playsets
Hot Wheels made their own play sets for a while called Sto and Go. You can’t see it in this picture, but these things folded up and made their own carrying case, hence the name Sto and Go. They made several versions of this play set, but the city one was probably my favorite. There was one at my grandmother’s house, and it became the main street area from The Dukes of Hazzard as we played with the Ertl cars based on the show.. I had a lot of various construction-themed vehicles and the construction zone Sto and Go was a great addition to those cars.
Master Caster Car Maker
The Master Caster was such a cool idea. It was a Hot Wheels car factory, that allowed you to make your own Hot Wheels cars out of wax! You could get colored wax bars to use in it, or you could just take the paper off some crayons and dump them in. That gave you the ability to create some cars with really custom colors. There were several molds you could use, and it came with wheel and axle sets to use. It would heat the wax, and with a turn of the handle, you could pour the melted wax into the mold to make the car. It was quite the next-level toy for Hot Wheels-loving kids. I never actually owned it, but my brother did, so I got to make a few cars of my own.
Snake Mountain Challenge
As a lover of all things He-Man, this Hot Wheels playset was awesome! I got it for Christmas in 1986 and spent a while that Christmas day with my dad and brother trying to “escape” Snake Mountain. The playset itself was really cool, but the exclusive Masters of the Universe car that came with it took the cake.
Color Racers
Cars that change color will always be cooler than cars that don’t. These color racers were like getting two cars instead of one. All you had to do was dip them in some water, and they would completely change colors! It was such an awesome gimmick. The pack of cars on the left in the photo is one of the sets I had. They all changed really well, and the last time I pulled out the jeep last year, it still changed colors.
Crack-Ups
Before these Crack-Ups came along, I would create “crashed” cars by taking a hammer to them. The problem with that method was that there was no way to undo the damage when you were done playing. Then Crack-Ups came along and you could wreck the cars, and they would show damage. Then when you were done, you could easily undo the damage and have pristine-looking cars once again.
So there are five of my favorite Hot Wheels toys from when I was a kid. As I said at the top, I hope to get to talking about my favorite individual cars in the near future.
Way back in 2014, Matt at Dinosaur Dracula unleashed on the world an idea to create a virtual Christmas tree. It was an awesome idea, but I didn’t heed his advice until this year. I’m glad I waited actually. 2020 has been such a year, that making this was a much-needed distraction. While he printed out the blank tree, used crayons to color it, and printed out the ornaments and presents to glue on, I opted to do it all digitally. The end result was still the same in that I probably had as much fun making mine as he did his.
So for my tree, I went with traditional green as the color scheme. I almost chose to go with white as a throwback to the awesome tree my grandmother had for the Christmases of my youth but felt that the green would make a better background for the ornaments. And speaking of the ornaments…when you’re doing a virtual tree like this, you’re not limited to traditional ornaments. So I went with ornaments based on the members of WCW’s Dungeon of Doom! I didn’t feature them all, but the main ones are there.
And then there are the presents. Oh my, what presents are waiting for me under the tree! The only thing featured there that I actually had was the Super Nintendo. All the rest are items from my want list that I never got. The Eternia playset and Horde Slime Pit from the MOTU line, the G.I. Joe USS Flagg aircraft carrier, and the Cobra Silent Castle, the cage for the LJN WWF wrestling ring, a Mad Scientist Monster Lab, the A-Team train set, and one of the pirate ships from LEGO.
Can you even imagine what Christmas day would have been like after finding all of that under your tree as a kid?!? Hell, not just Christmas day, but the entire week…and probably the month of January as well. Every day would have brought awesome playtime!
If you’re looking for some kind of easy and fun activity to squeeze out of this holiday season, I can’t suggest highly enough that you create your own virtual Christmas tree. Matt’s post has the tree image that you need to get started with. You can print it out or do it digitally as I did. Either way, if you do one, I’d love for you to show it off in the comments. Here’s hoping you make the most of the season by making your own!
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.
For this post, we’re going back to 1990 to look at an ad featuring a Nintendo game I found under the tree that year. That’s all the reason I need to consider this a Christmas-themed post.
Now as for the ad itself, it’s pretty swank. It does its best to make the game sound exciting by throwing out those blurbs about what you’ll face in the game. Unfortunately, some of those things just don’t sound exciting. The Karate Creeps and Combat Copters sound great, but when you have to start naming off things like Open Manholes and Vicious Dogs, it could be an indicator that your game isn’t exactly Contra.
But it does highlight some screenshots, and the shots they chose to show make the game look really good. The broken highway in particular makes it look like a game you’d want to play.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not knocking the game. I really liked it. The fighting aspect was fun in its own way, and the skating aspect added a degree of difficulty not often seen in side-scrolling games. Like, after you landed a jump you had to instantly react because your player would just keep going. While that doesn’t sound all that bad, think about all the spots in games where you have to make numerous consecutive jumps and land on little spots between them.
The problem this game suffered from was false advertising. I mean, if you were watching Rollergames on television, you were expecting a roller derby on a figure-eight track with the massive wall of death and alligators potentially on the track. But what you go was a side-scrolling fighting game. It’s like they had a game designed that they felt they needed to attach a brand to, and Rollergames was it.
They did keep the teams from Rollergames intact, as you had your choice of three playable characters. A girl from the Hot Flash, a guy from The Rockers, or “The IceBox” Robert Smith from the world-famous L.A. T-Birds. The managers of the heel teams were also represented, as they were featured as level bosses throughout the game.
The Rollergames TV show didn’t have a large following. I mean, it only lasted 13 episodes. So Konami was already drawing from a limited pool and the fact that the video game wasn’t like what was seen on TV further limited its appeal. But none of that stopped me from enjoying it. I liked the game for what it was and spent many hours on it. Especially on Christmas day in 1990. There…that last sentence reinforces that this is a post for Christmas.
