Category: Toys & Collectibles

I have been on a bit of an X-Men kick as of late. There was my blog post about Wolverine for the NES, which you should probably check out if you haven’t already. I finally got around to starting X-Men ‘97, which is absolutely phenomenal. I didn’t think a reboot of a 30 year old cartoon series could capture the nostalgia of the original, but it’s about as close as you can get without figuring out how to go back in time (if you know how, please contact me). I also picked up a really nice lot of Toybiz X-Men goodies, which really  jump started all of this for me. 

If you grew up in the 80’s and 90’s, you were probably exposed to the X-Men in some fashion. Either through trading card sets, pogs, video games, comics, or cartoons (remember Pryde of the X-Men, with Australian Wolverine?). The comic books are what really got me into the X-Men  as a kid. I remember the grocery store we used to go to had one of those rotating comic display stands in the toy section, and all the comics were in individually sealed bags. I would pick up new comics based on their cover art, and just hope for the best. Then I discovered a place called Comic Castle, which is sadly no longer open.  It was there that I started collecting the 1988 Wolverine comics. They had issue #1 displayed on the wall for a whopping $10! Way out of my price range back then. Some time later I saved up enough money and got myself that Wolverine #1, which I still have to this day. 

In my Wolverine blog I mentioned a card shop called Bat Boy, which is where I spent most of my allowance and lawn mowing money back in the day. I was all about those card sets. Man, I spent so much money and time trying to piece those together as a kid. The 1992 Marvel Universe set was HUGE on the playground at my school. I would do some serious wheeling and dealing just to be able to search through someone’s pile of doubles. I can’t tell you how excited I was when I finally got the last card I needed to complete that set. 1992 was the same year the animated series came out, which really sent me to the next level of fandom. I now had my favorite comic characters come to life. I could see their personalities, their powers, their epic battles all played out in beautiful animation with that rad intro music. It was quite the event for me. 

With a new cartoon, comes new merchandise. The action figure line had actually started in 1991, a year before the cartoon even came out. All the figures had their classic John Byrne era outfits though. I’m not sure what they were thinking with that decision, as the comics had started the new run that same year with the now iconic Jim Lee era costumes. The same costumes which would be prominently featured in the new animated series. However, come 1992, the Toybiz X-Men line exploded. Figures started hitting the shelves that looked just like they did in the cartoon. Not only were they pumping out all the popular characters, but even the obscure and lesser known ones as well. I know every kid was clambering for a Quark, or a Rictor figure. Maybe even Gideon, or Tusk too? Even if you hadn’t heard of them, it was still pretty awesome to see them on the pegs. Now that I think about it, that must have been a pretty big gamble for the time. Especially since this was well before Star Wars set the precedent of making an action figure for every single mundane background character that ever existed. 

The toy line really called to me. I’m not sure what it was about the line specifically. Maybe the awesome artwork on the carbacks? The comic accurate look of the characters? I can’t really place it, but I am sure some of you out there know what I’m talking about. For some reason, some random thing just gets you, and now you’re all about it. I used to beg my mom for these figures. I used to beg my friends to let me borrow what they had. I remember letting one of my friends borrow all of my Crash Test Dummies stuff in exchange for a bunch of his X-Men things. I tried to see if he would do a straight up trade with me, but he wasn’t interested. And I don’t blame him. He let me borrow the Danger Room playsets, Cyclops, Omega Red, Weapon X, and a bunch of other figures. I wouldn’t have given that up for Crash Test Dummies either. Though I still wish I had all that Crash Dummies stuff, but that’s a story for another day. 

Unfortunately, a lot of my X-Men figures didn’t make it through my childhood. Honestly, I really don’t know where they all went either. I am not sure if I sold them, or traded them off. I can usually remember what I did with stuff like that, but for the life of me I just can’t remember what happened to them. The Danger Room playsets made it, along with the Sentinel, a couple 12” figures and some mini playsets, but that was about it. Lucky for me though, the illustrious KB Toys came to the rescue. Like I wrote about in my KB Toys post, they always had random figures in bargain bins. You never really knew what you would find. Well, sometime in the late 90’s I stumbled into a gold mine of X-Men and Ninja Turtles figures one day, and absolutely stocked up. Thinking back, I wish I would have grabbed more, but I got all my favorites and a few obscure ones as well. 

Since then I have picked up a couple odds and ends here and there, but my biggest score came a few months ago when I found a handful of vehicles that I had always wanted but was never able to get. This lot included the incredible Wolverine Jeep, a Mini Blackbird Jet, and the full size Blackbird Mobile Air Command Jet. All in their original boxes! I can’t tell you how excited I was to get those, especially the full size Blackbird Jet. I remember seeing that as a kid, and drooling over it in the toy aisle. And now it’s actually sitting on my shelf, and I get to look at it every day. And that’s what got me back on this X-Men kick. A nice dose of nostalgia. I have so many memories attached to the X-Men. Jamming out to that awesome intro on Saturday mornings. Pumping quarters into that amazing arcade game. Hunting for trading cards, comics, and action figures. Even begging the rental store guy to let me buy his copy of a goofy NES game. It was all such an amazing time. It was one of the last big toy lines and cartoon series that I was really into as a kid. I have always been a collector of things, that’s never stopped. But toys hit differently before a certain age. I don’t know if I can really explain it. You just grow out of that childhood mindset, you know? You always try to relive it, but it’s just never quite the same.