My Childhood is on Ebay!
Rewatching Popeye and typing up the blog last week got me in a nostalgic mood. I was tooling around on Ebay looking for those Popeye newpaper reprints and I came across the listing pictured here. It was advertising the 6 bendable figures featured in the picture and the freaky thing to me is that I had EVERY SINGLE OF THEM! Even the two creepy rabbits (I used to pretend the carrot was a microphone and he was the host of whatever show I was putting on at the time. I figured he already had the suit). It was as if someone had reached back to 1980 and dipped into my toy box, placing the booty on Ebay for anyone to purchase.
I had a huge collection of those bendable figures. Pink Panther, Popeye (of course!) and Olive Oyl (the smaller ones came together inside a plastic spinach can), Easter bunnies, cowboys, Santa...you name it. I even had a bunch of Bullwinkle bendables. One early memory was that of leaving poor Mr. Peabody behind in a highway rest stop bathroom. Needless to say, Mom was not too thrilled that I made her turn around and go back for it. In fact, I seemed to leave toys
like that all over the place. I had a great Underdog who was permanently frozen in "flying position" with a wheel on his belly. You could pull him back and rev up the wheel and he would scoot along the floor. I think that one is at a Woolworths somewhere in Mass. I may have had the whole set and I'm sure that they would be worth some cash except for one small fact: I played with my toys.
Man, did I ever play with them. I beat the hell out of them. All of the bendable figures would eventually need replacements because the skeletons would weaken and snap, causing Pink Panther to suffer a compound fracture of the tibia with a metallic, almost adamantium "bone" poking through his rubbery skin. I think I went through about five Panthers.
Star Wars figures were another passion of mine. I was actually one of the first people to purchase the figures. If you've ever seen the documentary "Empire of Dreams" they speak about the first batch of Star Wars figures not being ready for Christmas, so you got a cardboard standup and certificate that says "you will get the figures in March" or something like that. So I had the stand and around my birthday, I got the figures. There were four: Luke, Leia, Chewie and R2D2. Not too exciting as no one thought to create a bad guy for them to fight with. So the early days weren't so thrilling. 
I had a ton of the figures. I had Boba Fett and Yoda from Kenner giveaway before Empire Strikes back came out. I even had people who were barely in the movie. I have no idea what possessed my young mind to want a General Nadine figure. All he did in Jedi was show the rebels where to attack on Endor. Fantastic, he can point at stuff.
I always had fantasies of owning thousands of Stormtrooper figures to stage immense battle scenes. Instead, I could afford one or two at most and had to have them die and come back in battle like extras in a low budget movie. Thank God they made those "accessory" packs because I think I lost every gun that ever came with the figures. They all looked pretty much the same anyways, except for Han Solo's gun, which was very unique. That one I took extra pains to not lose. Plus he had the cool bent arm that actually meant his gun pointed forwards. Everyone else had these curved hands the guns pointed off perpendicular to their bodies. Awkward. I still say it was the GI Joe figures, with their articulated elbows and knees, that killed the Star Wars figures. The Star Wars ones were really stiff.
I got this flood of memories rushing back to me as I was checking out that Ebay auction. I didn't make a bid, though...they look kinda nasty.
I'd love to hear any other childhood toy memories from people reading this!
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