10 Retro Toys You Wish You Had

December 18, 2018

There are at least ten retro toys you wish you had. Your friend had it. Your brother or sister had it. Your friend’s cousin had it. Why didn’t you have it? Because you just didn’t get everything. It’s likely your childhood was rich and full, and you had a bedroom full of toys the above mentioned kids wish they’d had. Envy is a child’s best asset. It’s what drives us to grow up and become self reliant. We don’t want to grow up and get a job so we can pay rent or the mortgage. We want to grow up and get a job because we want our own TIE fighter like that dumb kid down the street had. Heck, he had two! He had Darth Vader’s TIE, and didn’t even know who David Prowse is.

You managed to grow up without that one thing, but you probably bought it within the first few years of being independent. I bet you’re glancing at it, or at least picturing it in your head as you read this. I also bet that once you got it you moved down the list, and put that other toy you wish you had on the top of your list. Maybe you tumbled down the rabbit hole and you’re reading this list to confirm you’ve got all the things. If that’s you, wanna ride bikes later? This is a list of ten retro toys you wish you had, though. There are about a million. This list never really ends.

1Big Trak

If you were a kid in the ’70s and ’80s, you either had Big Trak or you wanted it. What kid doesn’t want to program a tank to shoot at the dog and then drop off an apple in the living room? What? The transport attachment is sold separately! I guess we’re only going to do destruction, Roomba-style. Big Trak is first on this list because it’s the only one of two on the list I actually had. It was a miracle.

https://youtu.be/u6V-tuOf3dE

2The Green Machine

Only big brothers and the spoiled kids down the street had The Green Machine. Somehow, you and I were lucky if we got a Big Wheel. My “Big Wheel” was a knock-off version. There was no compartment behind the seat to put my lunch. It’s what turned me into a pragmatic adult. Where was I going to go, to the end of the driveway to eat my lunch? By the next summer, we were all on bikes anyway. The Green Machine lost value the minute you drove it off the lot. Be glad you never had it. Wait, there are custom adult versions now?

3Mego Hulk

Mego missed an opportunity to market this 12-inch Hulk with the rest of the smaller posable superheroes. Most of the other heroes in the latter scale were made from the same sculpts, wearing a Speedo-like pelvic region. The Hulk in that collection was too small, a homunculus, even compared to the teenage Spider-Man. Hulk and the rest of Marvel were being merchandised everywhere in the ’70s. The Herb Trimpe and Sal Buscema Hulks were on my cereal bowl, my Colorforms®, my t-shirt, and not my, but probably your, Hulk Utility Belt. But we wanted him in our hands with the rest of the dolls. Don’t get defensive. We called them dolls back then.

The 12-inch Mego Hulk “with a face that’s mean” made so much more sense. He was the right proportion to the ones that came on blister card packaging. And when my big brother was not around, my Hulk would kick the snot out of his Iron Man.

4Mouse Trap

You can still get this. Mouse Trap is one of the retro toys you wish you had, so why haven’t you gone out and bought one of the new versions? It’s because you never play with it. You imagine you will. You think you’re going to build some amazing contraption like a Rube Goldberg machine that goes from the living room to the kitchen, but you don’t know how the game part is played and you’re sitting at a table with a moldy box and a pile of pieces that you can’t MacGyver. Put down the box. Pass it on to another victim. You wish you had Mouse Trap, but you’ll have more fun watching one of Joseph Herscher’s videos at josephsmachines.com. Trust me.

Related Article: 9 Retro Board Games Remembered

5Rock’em Sock’em Robots

The commercial is what got us. I want to punch a robot in the face, and make his head go, “Bzzzzzzzzzt!” Rock’em Sock’em Robots was the future. Thumb wrestling be damned to kids of the past. We have robots in a ring who will do the fighting for us. Never mind that the ring was moving all over the floor and half the time the head would just go, “Bzz…” stopping halfway up after a good jab. “I win!” you yelled. “No, you didn’t! His head didn’t go all the way!” Then we went analog and fought each other like real kids. Transference of violence doesn’t work. These vicarious bouts were only fun for a few minutes. How did they sell so many of these in the ’60s and ’70s? The answer is marketing. You wish you had Rock’em Sock’em Robots, but you get as much tactile satisfaction from video games these days. Put down the eBay listing.

6Baron Karza & Force Commander

Before Transformers, there was Biotron, a Micronaut with a Micronaut in his chest. He folded into a tank with a boring drill for Journey to the Center of the Earth-style adventures. That was what I got, and I loved it! Then my brothers opened their comparable gifts: Baron Karza & Force Commander. They could trade body parts and become completely different characters! To capitalize on my envy, one brother tried to convince me that this Baron Karza was cooler than Darth Vader. I believed him because he could replace his fists with missiles. He could replace his legs with his arms, and vice versa. These two characters are two of the coolest sculpts ever made. Who cares if Force Commander is a Stormtrooper knock off? You need a Wookiee to take the arms off a Stormtrooper, and you can only do it once. Baron Karza and Force Commander are held together with magnets. You can tear their arms off all day long!

7Lawn Darts

Lawn Darts are an iconic piece of history. It’s the toy that heralded the age of litigation and toy safety regulations. A kid actually died. Here, we have a toy that has proven it’s dangerous, and it’s probably the first toy we think of when someone mentions banned toys. We want it because we can’t have it. People have even made home-made versions just to have the thing they can’t have. Safety regulations make sense for choking hazards and hazardous materials, but can’t a kid be killed with a 2½ lb. horseshoe as easily as they can with a Lawn Dart? Horseshoes are not toys, kids, and now neither are Lawn Darts.

8Millennium Falcon

I had to wait for for other kids to pare down their toy collections before I ever got my piece of junk, literally. Mine was a garage sale special, missing the cover for the secret compartment and the game table. My mom somehow knew it’s the only way to get your Millennium Falcon. You could win it in a game of Sabacc or you could pick it from a box in someone’s driveway for two dollars. I went off to college and when I got home again, I found out Ducain had run off with it. Then the Irving Boys took it from Ducain. There isn’t a Rey of hope I’ll ever get it back.

9Shogun Warriors

I never had any of these, but the kid a block away had all of them. We’re still friends to this day. Maybe it’s because I’m holding out hope he’ll give me his Shogun Warriors collection. Nah. He lost track of them, as typically happens. These characters were some of the coolest plastic robots a kid could ask for (and never get, thanks, Ma). They shot missiles from their fingers (those missiles are probably worth the price of half a Shogun Warrior), they launched fists, they expanded wings, and they activated jet packs powered by imagination. Early versions of the Great Mazinga had his v-shaped chest plate extending over his pectorals. If you’re shopping for me, that’s the one I want.

10GODZILLA Shogun Warrior

You might consider this last retro toy you wish you had to be the same as the one prior, but the Godzilla Shogun Warrior is a prize all its own. This is probably the most important of the ten retro toys you wish you had. There isn’t a kaiju fan who doesn’t know this one, or have this one. It’s a terribly static pose for our beloved Godzilla, but it’s tough to move in that suit. Godzilla always looked like that until Hollywood had him jump an ocean of sharks.

The giant-sized Godzilla Shogun Warrior came complete with spit-fire tongue, firing fist (just like in the movies? Uh, no) and wheels on the bottom of his feet to navigate difficult kitchen floor terrain. If you were a really lucky kid, you might have The Rodan Shogun Warrior. If you didn’t know that one existed, join the club. If you have it, let’s hang out.