Wow, I had fun as a kid! I grew up with my twin brother on a farm in Ohio, and just up the road was another set of twin boys our age. Between the four of us, we had gonzo toys, including tons of action figures. Here's a few of the ones I really had fun with:
About the age most kids stopped playing with action figures, I started
to really get
into them. The Return of the Jedi toys were just coming out. I would have
been crazy to stop then!
I loved the movies but I didn't like recreating the scenes from the movies with the toys like the kids did in the commercials did. (Though I once tried to do some weird "E.T." plotline using Hammerhead and a jawa) For the most part, the action centered around my "Main Man."
My Main Man rotated for a while, from Zuckuss, Dengar, Bossk, the AT-ST driver, and the At-At driver. (I really liked the Bounty Hunters, but not Boba Fett 'cause he was "too popular"). When I got Admiral Ackbar, though, it was love at first sight!
I'm not sure what I saw in the potato-headed fish guy. (I didn't even get the joke in his species name, "Mon Calamari", what is he, a He-Man figure!?) but he was, to me, the coolest figure ever. Everyone tried to do him in, from the Rancor Monster to all of the other, bigger He-Man figures. None of them had a chance, he was just too bad-ass! (Though I did break one's head off with a dirtclod one day)
The last figure I ever bought was Amanaman, sorta a walking banana-snake guy. He was really cool to have as a villian, because he could hypnotize any other action figure just by looking at them. I lost him somewhere, and was really depressed until my pal, Chris, who was one of the twins I grew up with, bought a mint condition Amanaman still on his card for me as a gift when I was well into my 20s!
I got Kraken as a Christmas present and was about the happiest kid on the block. I didn't try and recreate anything from Clash of the Titans; I just used the giant monster to wail on my much smaller Star Wars toys. Kraken was the ultimate "You better put away your toys" toy. If you tripped over this giant rubber beast, you were going to go down. Hard.
It seemed so much bigger when I was a kid.
Next is Charon, the Boatman. This figure was special and unique to me because I only brought him out when one of my other figures died. Like, died died. No coming back. So I'd pull Charon out of my special little trophy shelf thing and have him appear to the figure that was about to go to that Big Toybox In The Sky. There was no going back, no matter how much an action figure begged, and usually a visit from Charon was quickly followed by a trip to the woods, where I'd whack a figure in two with a hatchet or douse him with gas and burn him. See ya, lame Cloud-City guy with the stupid bent arm!
Spooky! I get scared...
