So, for whatever reason -- I think it's because I was listening to Final Fantasy's "Matoya" -- I was reminded today of a toy I owned when I was very, very young.  It was this: Fisher Price "When You Wish Upon A Star" Tote-A-Tune Music Box Radio: http://www.thisoldtoy.com/L_FP_Set/toy- … astar.html

I remember when I was a child, as early back as four, this was my most favorite material possession. I loved listening to the song, gazing at the "moving picture," and then turning to the back to look at that tender, innocuous image.  Although it made me happy, I think it triggered in me a sense of loneliness, too; the toys are smiling, but the lack of people in the picture, combined with the simple yet hopeful melody, washed me in sadness.  Like, perhaps the toys were abandoned a long time ago, and their wish was for the children who once owned them would come back. 

The toy is long gone now, but the song tugs at the corner of my memory - and then those powerful childhood memories come flowing back.  To this day, I don't think I've ever heard a version of When You Wish Upon A Star as sweet as that one, and I would do anything just to hear that beautiful, music-box melody again.  I'm not at all a vintage collector, but if ever I'm going to start, it would be for this.

Do any of you remember toys from your childhood that you were particularly fond of?  Are you still in possession of said toys?  And would you go to any sort of lengths to try and re-acquire them if you don't?

The Talking Teacher from Coleco. Still got it, still works.

I lost all of my Street Fighter/Mortal Kombat G.I. Joe action figures...

It's hard to say, since I had a ton of toys as a child, and I never stopped collecting them...

I was quite attached to my Pound Puppies for a while, two in particular (the "main characters" of about a dozen dogs), and I had a Mario bank that I used as an action figure since it matched the height of most actual action figures. I considered it the definitive model of Mario at the time, back when his overalls were red and the princess was known as Toadstool.

A lot of Ninja Turtles and such are long gone, but I've actually held on to most of the toys I loved as a kid, mostly Mario stuff. I sure wish I still had the Ghostbusters firehouse and Ecto-1, though... and the proton packs... oh, man, don't get me started.

I can think of some toys I had when I was younger that I no longer had because they either became hand-me-downs to my cousins or they broke but were and still important to me (memory wise):

My Buddy and Glow Worm dolls

a Big Foot power wheels my dad decked out with a car battery and old car stereo for me. I'd cruse town listening to the oldies

a action figure of Raph from the Ninja Turtles and an electric toothbrush with him on it as well... I always liked him because he was the smart ass of the group

a collection of batteries - I tried to collect as many different looking/brands I could find and I even had a blown up picture of an Energizer on my wall because I was so into electronics

a copy of the Mega Man II NES cart and Mega Man X2 SNES cart; Mega Man 2 was the first real game I "fell in love" with (but I sold this recently as it the memory of the game, not the game itself that matters and I don't have an NES anyway) and Mega Man X2 was memorable because I forked over $70 in bithday money in the 6th grade for a sealed copy. I still have it but have been pondering letting go of it as well - the game isn't as good as I though it was when I was younger.

Legos
Transformers
Star Wars Toys

Those were my favorite. Transformers and SW have become too collectible to be of real fun these days (at least for me). Lego still rocks

cheers,

-avatar!

Glow Worm
Legos
Speak & Spell (don't remember creator...Casio, TI?)

Ramza

My teddybear, Pooky, is by far my most cherished of the things I still own from childhood. He's got a chocolate milk stain on his snout from when I tried to give him a drink, he's got a small dish rag sewn into his arm to make up for stuffing lost when his arm came off, his marble eyes are all scratched up, and he smells very faintly of Kraft Dinner.

I've also got a teddy bear I found when I was 17 by the edge of the Bow River. I remember I was walking along the pathway late, late at night, and I saw it lying in the mud. A small bear, about the size of my outstretched hand. I was feeling morose that night, and picked it up, took it home, handwashed it, and threw it in the dryer. He's missing an eye, but I just refuse to get rid of him.

I think it was The Brave Little Toaster that made me such a packrat. I vividly recall watching that movie at a young age, and one scene still haunts me, when the appliances are in a pawn shop watching one of their own being ripped apart for parts by the owner. I remember the horrified looks on the appliances watching as it happened, and it's most definitely what made me anthropomorphize most of my materials at a young age (something that continues to this day with Pooky and the aforementioned small lakeside bear).

Now that I think on it, that movie, along with Transformers: The Movie (1986), and The Land Before Time (the original) did a great deal in shaping certain aspects of who I am today. It's not really a surprising thing to realize, because most of our early childhood experiences profoundly affect us in subtle, sometimes undetectable ways that don't really hit us until later on.

Dino Riders were my favorite when I was a kid.  Those and of course my set up with plastic army men.

How could I have neglected to mention? Long after I had forgotten about Dino Riders themselves, I came across one of the alien figures that came with the dinosaurs (human body, cobra head) and made up a character based around him. Ninja Turtles and pro wrestlers and Gargoyles alike joined together to fight the evil Ultimo (and his occasional McDonald's Happy Meal Koopa Paratroopa lackies). He could never be killed so they froze him in a cup of water usually.

Kinda like Lisa from Resident Evil...
minus the cup of water.

i used to have this toy called spacewarp made by Bandai... what it was was a bunch of bendable plastic rails (along with connectors, curve joints, etc) with which you could design your own roller coaster and then run metal balls down it. id spend a whole day building one track, but it taught you a lot about physics too.. trying to recreate actual roller coasters was always fun too. the excitement was kinda similar to building a cool domino chain, except onee it was built u could run it as many times as u wanted, or until the cat found it...

heres a utube video of someone else's track. i think its just the standard track layout thats in the instructions
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXeNq85rEU0

holy crap they rereleased it in japan! dud i am so getting me one!
http://www.karakuricorner.com/servlet/t … ler/Detail

When I was a child, I had these storybooks with audio cassettes.
Whenever there was a chime sound on the audio, a page would have to be turned.
I don’t know if they still do that today with kids’ books and read along CDs nowadays.

My favorite storybooks were the DC Comics story books; in particular was the “Batman and the Case of the Laughing Sphinx” book.   I lost this one but I still have the Superman book minus tape from years back.

I remember that I played the Batman cassette over and over again.  So I remember what music is on there quite well.  They used a lot of classical music so I was always trying to figure out who was the composer and all.

“Nightmare on Bald Mountain” was the Batman’s theme music.
I didn’t see Fantasia until I was like 11 and all I could say was “hey that’s from Batman”.

I just found out recently that some pieces are from Stravinsky’s Firebird.
I also had a Care Bears storybook tape and the She-Ra tape too.
They’re really not that special/valuable anymore since there are DVDs available now; and the audio could easily be ripped from there... 

I ended up finding the Batman book AND the cassette tape on Ebay for a fair price.
Cassette was damaged but playable.
Someday I hope to rip mp3s and make scans of these books.

I still have several Care Bears plushies:  Bright Heart Raccoon and Lotsa Heart Elephant with a broken nose.

They have new Care Bears plushes out now; but some of them are really ugly.
But I ended up getting this jumbo-sized Love-a-Lot Bear from a UFO catcher machine recently in one try.

It's actually called Night on Bald Mountain, not Nightmare. Although Nightmare on Bald Mountain does sound like a cool title for a Batman episode... although truth be told, I believe the original Russian should actually be read "A Night on the Bare Mountain"...

cheers,

-avatar!

That scene is scary, but equally scary is the song "worthless" where broken-down cars sing of their past glories and how depressed they are now, right before they get sent into a compactor and DIE, becoming a tiny scrap cube of their former selves. GOD Brave Little Toaster is a scary movie.

Ramza

Hahaha! We still have one of those! It was a Disney thing with Mickey Mouse and Donald and Goofy. Cassette still worked, too, last time we tried it, though we haven't played it for years now so it might be warped. We read that book so much that not only did we memorize how the narrator's and characters' voices went, we also had stupid little comments that we made at the same places in the story.

As for me, my most cherished toy, at least according to the stories my parents loved to tell, was this stuffed cat. I still have it, although the whiskers have been cut off (I still distinctly remember a time when that thing HAD its long whiskers) and one of the seams is tearing.

The other movies I mentioned before had similar effects on me. Optimus' death in the movie, and Littlefoot's mother dying were my very first experiences with death. I just rewatched the referenced scene on Youtube.

I've never seen a live action movie that moves me like animation can. Maybe I'm just weird.

The original Ninja Turtles toys were awesome, I used to have a ton of those, but my momma gave them all away a number of years back.  I remember finding a Rahzar at the store and being so happy, it was the only one I ever saw, that was a badass action figure.   I was also into Battle Beasts, there were like a bajillion of them and you could basically only find them at places like flea markets.  Luckily, I think I actually still have a few of them around here.   Not really toys, but as an older kid I started collecting Marvel Flair trading cards.  They were only issued 2 years, and they were the sickest cards, ever.  Still have all of those tucked away, and I actually need to get around to finding the last few bonus cards I need to complete the sets.

Mine was Teddy Ruxpin.  He read stories when you put certain casette tapes in his back and was always kinda fun.

Oh, another big one was Z-bots.  You know, those little figures that are about 2-3 inches tall?  They came in packs of three and made awesome battleground figures.  I think I still have them all in the same chest with my TMNT action figures.

This is along the same lines, does anyone remember a album entitled Mickey Mouse Splashdance? It had a song about "Gyro Gearloose" and a bunch of other songs; I had the tape, unfortunately I spilled a drink on it when I was younger ruining it and I cried cause I loved that album so

http://cgi.ebay.com/Mickey-Mouse-Splash … dZViewItem

http://cgi.ebay.com/Mickey-Mouse-Splash … dZViewItem

Also, the "novelization" of Pete's Dragon was pretty big with me when I was younger to:

http://cgi.ebay.com/Petes-Dragon-Walt-D … p1638.m118

http://cgi.ebay.com/Disney-Petes-Dragon … p1638.m118

Ooh, I had a lot of these read-along books, pretty much all of them Disney... except I had records, not cassettes! I wonder whatever happened to them...

A basketball.

Well, I still have a blanket that I got when I was born (I am almost 32 now).  It has gotten a little ragged over the years, so a couple Christmases ago, I had another blanket made with the same dimensions and the same essential weave pattern.  I retired my old blanket at that time, but I still have it.  I still sleep with the new blanket every night, tucked between between my head and my pillow, just as I had with my old blanket.

Mine was GarbagePail Kids for awhile, those were kinda cool. 5th & 6th series they started sucking and everyone lost interest.

I also liked the MAD SCIENTIST line where you could Dissect a pour little alien  and then rebuild him. He was cute.
( :

My fondest memories are of my little plastic sharks. They looked like real sharks, so I was impressed considerably. One was definitely a hammerhead and I believe another was a great white, but I'm not sure about the rest. I mean, the colors were dead on. Such dedication. I'd like to meet the artist.

A Ziggy doll. I don't know so much as it was actually supposed to be Ziggy, but it looked enough like him that the name stuck. Living in the apartment complex of my youth, there weren't a lot of nice kids around to play with. So he was the Hobbes to my Calvin for a while. I've still got him somewhere, but I still haven't unpacked fully yet. Alas.

I found an online seller of vintage toys that carried my music box, so I said what the hell, and went for it.  It just arrived today; it's in surprisingly good physical condition, but the true test was if it still played.  I wound up the dial with great anticipation, and then.... time just stopped as I was awash with sweet, nostalgic bliss.   Oh, how I yearned for that moment; the $16 it cost me was worth it to hear that beautiful twenty second melody just one more time.

I've been listening to it for a good half hour straight, and naturally made a recording for the sake of preservation:

When You Wish Upon A Star (BEST. VERSION. EVER.):
http://www.mediafire.com/?apz9xt7gvaf8sbo

EDITED with a new link.

PS: I love TEH INTERNETZ.  ^_^;;

It made me nostalgic, but for a markedly different reason. Listening to the sample, I could hear the internal mechanisms winding, and the gears turning. They don't make toys like that anymore.

What's the website for the online seller?
$16 seems amazingly cheap!

I don't know if the music box is designed that way or you painstakingly wound it just right, but I like how your recording loops twice and "fades"/slows out.

I got it at Silversnow Antiques.  Ten dollars, plus six for shipping and handling, the site's owner is Geraldine Plaza, who was very nice in helping me to acquire the item.  It was the last one she had available, so it's only showing up as a cache now:

http://tinyurl.com/yvdn4b

Heh, no, I just wound it up normally.  It actually looped thrice, so I cut out the first loop -- but the ending is absolutely genuine, where the wind-up ended JUST before it was about to loop again.  That's where I faded out the recording.   

(It is SO good when a music box plays just right, doesn't it?  ^_~)