Toys Retrospective: How Terrible Yet Awesome Toys Used To Be

By Dan Murray | Follow on Twitter

Seems like you can’t go onto any nerd related sites these days (and by that I mean the sites that we shameless steal all our content from…Em…Thanks again guys) without coming across some new toy/play-set/model from one of the upcoming blockbusters.

Before I begin I should point out that one of my favourite toys was a Swiss army knife that was set down just out of reach when I was left hand-cuffed and blindfolded in the woods as the wolves closed in. Although that was part of a training mission during a school student exchange program I did in North Korea called “Operation: Western Sleeper Agents”. Hmmmm, I’m pretty sure I’m not supposed to talk about that about until I hear my activation code word so I’ll move on quickly. Here’s some of the newest and best toys available:

 There’s sexy models of the characters from The Dark Knight Rises:

There were rumours that these models would speak but then the toy company decided that if you wanted a toy that mumbled incoherently at you, they’d release their “Grandparents with Alsheimers” collection.

There’s a mountain of merchandise for The Avengers (that’s Avengers Assemble if you live in the UK and are an idiot) with the latest being this talking Hulk figure. He has a string of phrases to go with him but I think the one below is my favourite:

Hulk: ” Ah, Captain America. Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of death but once. Of all the wonders that I yet have heard, It seems to me most strange that men should fear; Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come”.

Captain America: What?

Hulk: Em…..HULK SMASH!?!

There’s even strange toys that bear no relation to anything. Like the, as I’ve renamed it, ‘Zard Mobile form The Amazing Spiderman. I like that it in no way tries to hide the fact that’s he’s actually The Lizard but instead declares it for all to see.

This seems unfair to me. How’ Spidey going to catch him, it’s not like he has a Spider Mobile….

……Oh right.

Of course, it makes sense he’d have an alternative form of travel in case the appeal of having the abilty to websling through New York city ever got boring.

Having seen all these I was forced to reminisce about my own childhood and toys that helped make my life a little more bearable as I grew in “St Mongo’s School for unwanted social reprobates and future Psychopaths/Wall Street Bankers”

Here’s a trip down memory lane as I recall the good, the bad and the downright weird: