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Post by Icctrombone on Jan 14, 2024 12:59:51 GMT -5
If I never opned any of my toys and kept them in the box, I'd be a millionaire. (Or a thousandaire) My older brother used to have all his toys with the box. He played with them but placed them back afterwards.
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Post by tarkintino on Jan 14, 2024 13:07:36 GMT -5
If I never opned any of my toys and kept them in the box, I'd be a millionaire. (Or a thousandaire) My older brother used to have all his toys with the box. He played with them but placed them back afterwards. I did that with some toys small enough to fit in the box (if it did not require some sort of assembly), and held on to model kit boxes, so I still have a ton of AMT, Aurora, Monogram and other manufacturers' boxes. Very great memories associated with building those kits.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jan 14, 2024 13:12:30 GMT -5
If I never opned any of my toys and kept them in the box, I'd be a millionaire. (Or a thousandaire) Yeah...me too. My Mego's alone would be nice boost to my retirement.
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Post by kirby101 on Jan 14, 2024 13:19:29 GMT -5
If I never opned any of my toys and kept them in the box, I'd be a millionaire. (Or a thousandaire) Yeah...me too. My Mego's alone would be nice boost to my retirement. Original full size GI Joe.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jan 14, 2024 13:31:18 GMT -5
Yeah...me too. My Mego's alone would be nice boost to my retirement. Original full size GI Joe. I had a number of those as well...tough most were inherited from my older brothers (10 and 8 1/2 years older) including the original G.I. Joe Marine. I also inherited a huge amount of Johnny West stuff.
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Confessor
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Post by Confessor on Jan 14, 2024 21:25:45 GMT -5
If I never opned any of my toys and kept them in the box, I'd be a millionaire. (Or a thousandaire) Sure, but you'd also have had a much less happy and rewarding childhood.
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Post by codystarbuck on Jan 14, 2024 22:24:16 GMT -5
Original full size GI Joe. I had a number of those as well...tough most were inherited from my older brothers (10 and 8 1/2 years older) including the original G.I. Joe Marine. I also inherited a huge amount of Johnny West stuff. I got a Geronimo, for a birthday. Those dolls came with a TON of accessories! My next door neighbor had Johnny West and his sister had Jane and they both had their horses. My Geronimo had to hoof it. He also had a Lone Ranger figure, from Gabriel. I don't think we ever kept the packaging for anything. My memory is vague; but, I think we even got some toys, as presents, out of their packaging.
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Post by sunofdarkchild on Jan 15, 2024 2:32:34 GMT -5
I've come up with a term to describe what I think has gone so wrong with comics over the years, 'Batman and Robin syndrome.'
When Batman Returns had so many gross moments surrounding the Penguin, it hurt WB's ability to sell merchandise to children based on the movie, leading to WB getting more directly involved, kicking Tim Burton out, and forcing Joel Schuelmacher to go in a more child-friendly direction. I think the Burton Batman movies are very flawed, overrated, and that Batman Forever is actually the best Batman movie and movie in general from that original 4-movie series. But this thinking of putting merchandising considerations over everything else led to Batman and Robin becoming nothing more than a 2-hour toy commercial, destroying the franchise altogether.
This kind of thinking had infected Marvel comics a decade earlier. The first example was Jean Grey's return, which ruined the Dark Phoenix Saga and the character of Cyclops and was the beginning of the 'death means nothing and everything resets to the status quo' phenomenon that has made comics not worth caring about. One of the reasons was that its easier to sell toys of a character who hasn't been dead for 5 years, regardless of whether the return was a good idea. A new editors who only looked to the past took over in the late 80s, the writers of the Fantastic 4 were forced to essentially rewrite the original FF stories from the early 60s and regress the characters. In protest, the writers created clones of the FF and had the originals fight them over whether it's better to stay stuck on the 60s forever or be allowed to grow up. Then in the early 90s they forced the X-Men to regress to an older status quo, crippling Xavier again and undoing Magneto's 50-issue redemption arc because the former sells more toys in a futuristic wheelchair and the latter sells more toys as a villain.
When Bob Harris and Dan Didio came to DC in the 2000s, they brought this ruinous attitude with them. Didio had a vendetta against one of DC's best characters at the time because he didn't like how complicated the bio at the queue line of a Six Flags rollercoaster was. He saw comics readers as a whole as having the intelligence and attention span of a six-year-old aimed to create a DC that appealed to the lowest common denominator and not anyone else, so any character who he didn't see as selling action figures to children was pushed out, killed off, or erased any time he had his way.
We saw this again in the 2010s where Marvel tried to replace the X-Men with the Inhumans because FOX had the movie rights to the mutants and so there was less merchandising potential in the X-Men, leading to one of the worst eras for both franchises in the comics. This is also why I am not excited about the new Tom Brevoot post-Krakoa X-Men era. With the expected synergy with the pointless X-Men 97 cartoon it looks like the main point of this new X-Men era will be selling toys based on the classic and marketable 90s X-Men cartoon and not story and character.
There's obviously more to it than just that, but it seems to me to be a major contributing factor in why the quality of the writing of comics has been dropping so much over the last 30 years at Marvel and 20 years at DC.
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Post by impulse on Jan 15, 2024 8:43:25 GMT -5
I can't tell you how many toys I ruined over the years by repurposing them for little skit shows that I filmed on my camcorder. The ones that I still have I try and take better care of even if I don't really play with them anymore and just basically use them for display purposes It sounds to me like you used them properly. It's better to play with a toy than keep it locked up in a box on a shelf*. It just creates fewer boxed units preserved on a shelf. *If that's what you want to do but feel otherwise trapped by preserving it. I don't mean to dictate how other people should enjoy their own things, and if they want to keep them boxed, by all means.
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Post by jason on Jan 15, 2024 14:32:28 GMT -5
Of course, then you have certain toys where it was probably a better idea to keep them in the box, just because it wasnt fun to play with. The Hall of Justice playset from Super Powers was that for me, was hyped up to get it and then I got something that was decidedly mediocre, at least to me (of course, I had lots of fun with the Masters of the Universe Snake Mountain playset, and that was basically a hollow shell with a microphone, so,,)
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Post by shaxper on Jan 15, 2024 14:42:34 GMT -5
It's funny how the things that make certain collectibles so desirable are the things that collectors don't want in them. Periodicals were meant to be consumable and disposable, so preserving them in their original pristine state wasn't on anyone's mind compared to functional things like stamping for easy tracking of status, removing annoying inserts that degrade the reading experience, etc. As a result, there are very few that are intact and well-preserved, so those few are in demand and hard to find. It's just a funny thing. I threw broken scraps and pieces of old Transformers and whatnot toys in the trash that would sell for hundreds/thousands if they were unopened in their box, but I was a kid. Why would I not open and play with them? On the other hand, everyone and their brother bought multiples of every Power of the Force Star wars toy released in the 1990s and kept them on their cards and in their boxes. As a result, they're all worthless now. I proudly opened and played with my toys then, and I proudly open and play with them now. If I find an accessory burdensome, I toss it in a box for safekeeping and continue with my fun. If something breaks, I Krazy Glue it. Honestly, they still look pretty good even if I absolutely play with them and worry very little about their collectibility. I just have to be very careful in describing condition if/when I sell them, but they still get good money. Just not crazy money. I have no problem explaining to people why this 44 year old still plays with toys. I think I'd have a far harder time trying to explain why I buy toys and don't play with them (keep them MIB).
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on Jan 15, 2024 14:44:29 GMT -5
Of course, then you have certain toys where it was probably a better idea to keep them in the box, just because it wasnt fun to play with. The Hall of Justice playset from Super Powers was that for me, was hyped up to get it and then I got something that was decidedly mediocre, at least to me (of course, I had lots of fun with the Masters of the Universe Snake Mountain playset, and that was basically a hollow shell with a microphone, so,,) The Hall of Justice and Tower of Doom WERE my childhood. I adored those playsets!
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Post by driver1980 on Jan 15, 2024 15:12:42 GMT -5
Of course, then you have certain toys where it was probably a better idea to keep them in the box, just because it wasnt fun to play with. The Hall of Justice playset from Super Powers was that for me, was hyped up to get it and then I got something that was decidedly mediocre, at least to me (of course, I had lots of fun with the Masters of the Universe Snake Mountain playset, and that was basically a hollow shell with a microphone, so,,) The Hall of Justice and Tower of Doom WERE my childhood. I adored those playsets! You’re a great man. You are so right.
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Post by jason on Jan 15, 2024 15:19:37 GMT -5
Of course, then you have certain toys where it was probably a better idea to keep them in the box, just because it wasnt fun to play with. The Hall of Justice playset from Super Powers was that for me, was hyped up to get it and then I got something that was decidedly mediocre, at least to me (of course, I had lots of fun with the Masters of the Universe Snake Mountain playset, and that was basically a hollow shell with a microphone, so,,) The Hall of Justice and Tower of Doom WERE my childhood. I adored those playsets! For me, the best playsets were Castle Grayskull (loved the throne and trap door) and the GI Joe Mobile Command Center (though I never used it as a vehicle, just made it into the default base). Still upset I never got M.A.S.K. Boulder Hill or the Cobra Terror Drome.
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on Jan 15, 2024 15:39:52 GMT -5
For me, the best playsets were Castle Grayskull (loved the throne and trap door) and the GI Joe Mobile Command Center (though I never used it as a vehicle, just made it into the default base). Still upset I never got M.A.S.K. Boulder Hill or the Cobra Terror Drome. I loved the second floor of the Mobile Command Center but found the rest to be a waste of space. Never understood the appeal of Boulder Hill (though I love M.A.S.K.), and the Terror Drome is truly the king of 1980's playsets. I just wasn't fortunate enough to own one until adulthood.
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