80's toy memories

Life With Fandom is featuring all month long an interesting theme called "80's Toy Awareness". In conjunction with this theme is a contest where you can win a sealed package of OMFG figures. As a toy blogger the contest was right up my ally. All you had to do was e-mail Life With Fandom and share your favorite toy memory - preferably something related to the 80's. Being a kid in the 80's I was exposed to lots and lots of great toys. Many readers may think the memory I shared for the contest would be Transformers oriented, but before I was introduced to TFs in 1984 I was Yo Joe! all the way.

I'm a huge Transformers fan, but oddly enough one of my favorite memories revolves around my 6th birthday (1983) when I received the massive GI Joe ARAH Headquarters. Before my parents bought me the HQ my grandmother had taken me earlier for lunch and to pick out a toy for my birthday. I always thought that was cool of my grandmother to let us choose opposed to buying us some random toy for our birthday. After a quick lunch at Wendy's we went across the street to a store called Rose's (very similar to the early days of Walmart). I had my choice of a lot of different toys, but ended up going w/ the GI Joe M.O.B.A.T. tank.

Already having the tank in hand it made my excitement that much more upon unwrapping that large HQ. I wanted to immediately rip into the box and start setting up the playset right there in the middle of my birthday party, but alas my dad made me wait in fear of losing any parts. I swear for the rest of the party I wasn't the best behaved 6 year old as I was ready for my friends to go home so I could set up the new Joe HQ!

Once I had the chance to finally sit down and pull out all the parts I was in heaven. One thing I liked about the old Joe toys was building the vehicles and playsets. As cool as the inner workings of the base were I loved the two bays on each side. Once it was set up I was quick to park my new M.O.B.A.T. tank in the repair bay. It was much later before I was able to get the V.A.M.P. jeep to park in the other side of the base.

I kept all of my Joe toys for a long long time, but like a lot of kids growing up my parents sold most of my toys when I got older. It wasn't until a few years ago when I bought the HQ again to "Cobra-ize" that these memories were re-kindled.

(all pictures courtesy of YoJoe.com)