Fitz’s Toy Chest #20: Three Up, Three Down

Happy Holiday everybody. This year has been totally f’d in the A so let’s get through this month and pretend like 2020 never happened.

As promised last month, this will be a special Christmas themed edition of the Toy Chest.

Instead of showcasing items from my collection, I’m going to run down the 3 best surprises and 3 worst disappointments from my childhood Christmases!

Before I start let me just say that I originally planned to just do the 5 worst disappointments, but try as I might I just could not come up with 5. This exercise made me realize just how stupidly fortunate I was when it came to Christmas gifts. I know now how little money we had growing up so it still baffles me how my parents managed to always come through with the best stuff at Christmas. I realize how good I had it, so even discussing the things I was let down by feels incredibly gross and very much like first world problems.

Now with that disclaimer out of the way, let’s get into the top 3 biggest Christmas disappointments from my childhood!

Number 3: Boulder Hill

In the post Star Wars world of the mid-80s, one of my new obsessions for a short time became the M.A.S.K. cartoon and line of toys from Kenner. I had several of the figures and vehicles already and by Christmas 1985 I had my eyes on the biggest prize from that series, the Boulder Hill playset.

Boulder Hill for those who don’t know (or even care) was the secret base of the M.A.S.K. team. It was built into the side of a mountain, and the facade was disguised as an innocuous looking service station. However when trouble came to town, that gas station would quickly transform into a heavily fortified command center complete with laser emplacements and a namesake boulder that could be dropped onto attacking enemy vehicles

The playset also came with 2 members of M.A.S.K. that were only available (at that time) with the set. This meant you could not complete the team without this enormous (and pricey) playset.

But it was Christmas right? Somehow I had convinced myself that my grandma was getting me this. Why? I have no idea. She played coy and I played coy back trying to get an idea of what my present would be. Hints were dropped, clues were giving, and somehow I just knew she was going to give me Boulder Hill. Forget the fact that she’d never given me a gift even remotely that expensive before, I was still convinced.

The day for gift exchanging came and when I saw the size and shape of my present, my suspensions were confirmed. It was the perfect dimensions to be Boulder Hill! I couldn’t believe I was right.

I ripped off the paper and immediately felt my stomach drop. The box underneath the wrapping was a plain brown non-descript cardboard box.

Huh?

I opened the top.

It was a rolled up sleeping bag.

A…sleeping….BAG.

I did my best to hide my disappointment, but I have to admit I was crushed.

Hope was still alive though, since the next day was actually Christmas. I knew my parents would come through like they always did.

But Christmas came and went with no sign of Boulder Hill. To this day I don’t know if it was too expensive, or if they couldn’t find it anywhere (this was way before Amazon, so if the 3 stores in town were sold out you were S.O.L.) or what.

I never did get Boulder Hill. Within a year or so M.A.S.K. faded away and I’m pretty sure the Boulder Hill fiasco was partially what cooled my interest.

Number 2: G.I. Joe Command Center

1982-84 was all about G.I. Joe. In 1983 Hasbro gave the valiant Joe’s a place to call their own with the awesome Command Center playset. Full of details and features to spark the imagination, this was the first of the Joe line’s famously awesome playsets.

Now, to be honest, I preferred the Joe’s base from the comics which was hidden beneath the chaplain’s motor pool on an army base. This seemed a little over the top and gaudy. However, it was what Hasbro decided to make for a command HQ and obviously this made a better design for a toy than a subterranean lair.

So of course I needed it.

Christmas came and I got a base of operations for my Joe’s.

But not the official Hasbro playset.

Instead what I got was a paper thin vacuum molded plastic mountain with a command center carved out inside. No Joe logos to be found, zero cool features, and it seemed almost out of scale for the 3.75″ figures. It seemed like it had been made for little green army men rather than action figures. It even came with tiny howitzers that I know for a FACT did actually come with green army men.

And, where the hell were the stairs supposed to lead to?

For years I assumed that this was some clearance bin cast-off that my parents found at a discount  store and said “Meh, close enough”.

However, while doing research and gathering pictures for this post I discovered a fact that shattered my fragile world view.

No this wasn’t THE G.I. Joe HQ, but I know now that this was no random discount bin find either.

I present to you exhibit A in the exoneration of my parents, a full page layout in the 1982 J.C. Penney Christmas catalog…..

I can’t be sure now whether my recollections about getting this instead of the official G.I. Joe HQ are accurate because of the simple fact that this catalog page suggests to me that I received this for Christmas in 1982. The official G.I. Joe HQ was not released until 1983. If I did get this in 1982 then I couldn’t have had it on my Christmas list because it wasn’t even released yet!

That also means that my mom probably saw this as in the Christmas Catalog (which we got every single year and was poured over for weeks prior and months after Christmas) and she probably “oh this is a cool thing for his little soldier guys”. Not realizing the poor quality of the item or that she was being suckered by questionable advertising.

What an ungrateful dick I was. I’m sorry for doubting you mom.

Number 1: Superion

Long time readers of this blog already know the tragic tale of Superion eluding my grasp, so won’t do much in the way of re-hashing a prior Toy Chest entry other than to re-iterate that this is truly my white whale. The only miss that truly broke my heart.

I managed to get Air Raid at some point, but the rest were never to be. But I swear by the Toy Gods that I will one day complete the set. Oh yes. It will be mine.

If you would like to hear the complete story, check out that edition of Toy Chest right here: https://nerdblitz.wordpress.com/2018/12/20/fitzs-toy-chest-9-superion/

Ok. Now that we’ve gotten that unpleasantness out of the way I’m going to quickly run down the top 3 greatest Christmas toys of my childhood. And since I will be featuring my actual toys at some point in the future I will be using pictures of mint examples from the internet for this.

Number 3: Optimus Prime/Megatron

Christmas 1984 saw one of the greatest scores of my childhood. Not only did I land the Autobot Leader but his Decepticon nemesis as well.

Each were cunningly disguised within a shirt box to maximize the surprise factor.

Transformers were never the cheapest toy, and to get the two biggest and highest priced bots of the line (at that time) was a shock and a golden day in my book of memories.

Number 2: Empire Strikes Back AT-AT

The summer of 1980 saw the release of one of the greatest movies of all time The Empire Strikes Back, and Christmas 1981 would see the arrival of one of the greatest TOYS of all time to my collection.

This was the peak of my first run Star Wars obsession, and this toy which was literally the size of a small dog was glorious to behold.

Back then Santa Claus delivered our gifts unwrapped and unboxed for convenience, and to see everything out in the open under the tree all at once was sensory overload. Especially when things like this AT-AT were included.

I can distinctly remember being made to take a nap that day (since obviously we barely slept the night before) and while I lay there on the couch snoozing, my AT-AT was parked right next to me, my hand resting on top of it the whole time.

And as a special bonus, this is an actual picture of said AT-AT lumbering across my parents’ lava themed shag carpet on Christmas morning 1981.

If you look closely in the top right corner you can see the box for a Dagobah snap together model kit as well.

Number 1: Kenner Large Size Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader

Finally we come to the first Christmas morning that I have even the faintest memory of, and while it grows a little fainter every year, it will never be fully gone. As silly as it is to say, I feel like it is imprinted deep into the fabric of who I am.

As I said in the last entry, when we were very little, Santa would deliver our presents unboxed and unwrapped. The living room lights would be off when we drug our parents from bed and made them lead us in to the dark room (it would always be hours before the sun came up). There would be a second or two of breathless anticipation, and then they would flick on the lights for a magical reveal of the gifts around the tree.

This year in particular I must have been very young indeed because I can remember feeling like I wasn’t sure what to expect, I had no preconceived notions about what I could be getting, I don’t even remember making a list. My guess is this would have been 1978 or 79 at the absolute latest so I was definitely no older than 6.

I could make out the silhouettes of small human figures in the dark, and when the lights went on I was blown away by the sight of “large size” Kenner Star Wars figures.

I had only seen the normal 3.75″ figures before and I don’t think I even knew these existed, which only added to the surprise.

But there, standing side by side were Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader in all their glory.

What I felt at that moment, that spontaneous emotion, was the toy collecting dragon that I chased for the rest of my childhood and then on to this very day. I’ve come close to that feeling many times over the years, but nothing in my toy collecting (or gift receiving in general for that matter) has ever quite reached that level of pure joy and surprise, and it’s the reason why I find myself overdoing it for my own kids every year in the hope that every one of their Christmas mornings are magic.

Well. That’s about all for this time guys. I think I’ve waxed poetic for long enough. I hope everyone has a safe and happy holiday season, and a bright, promising New Year. We all deserve it after the dumpster fire of 2020.

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