Anyone curious what was popular/what process were like in central PA in 1987?Did you have any of these? (S friend had a ROB/NES in the 90s that he got at a yard sale with like 30 games for like 20 dollars, and my brother had a Popple)
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>>11761780I had the Ghostbusters, and my sister had some iteration of Barbie & The Rockers. I found a couple of those Alf plushes in a consignment place, and I think I still have one. Atari 2600, and an NES. My metal construction vehicles were Tonka, not Nylint.
>>11761791>Atari 2600, and an NESNice. I never had a NES, but my uncle did. I got one just recently - Mario 1,2,3, Zelda 1,2, Double Dragon, and Barker Bills Trick Shooting.There's an Atari 2600 for sale down the road with ~10 games for 60 bucks, but it was never my cup of tea. Except Pitfall.>>11761780I had the fischer price roller skates. They got chewed up pretty easily.
>>11761784I loved playing Don't Break The Ice. But what is going on with the art on the box?
>>11761806There was one where you pulled pins out of a tube... Kerplunk? Or was Kerplunk the one with the penguins? I used to like both.
>>11761780I enjoy old media, especially printed media like this and it's really fun when it's local. Wish I could chip in op but I don't have anything to add other than a bump and enthusiasm for the topic.
>>11761780I had those roller skates.
>>11761787>>11761784>>11761783>>11761781if toy prices were that low back then, does that mean thrift stores sold as low as like a quarter?
>>11762081I used to buy tootie frooties and tootsie rolls for a penny aty local store in the 90s. I can't speak for thrift shops at the time because I lived in the sticks.I remember seeing a mac plus for 30 bucks in 2002 though and really should've bought it...
>those pricesDamn. We'll never ever go back to that. It's kind of depressing, really.
>>11762223More depressing than the inflation is the sheer variety on display. You'd never see this many toylines on shelves nowadays, let alone for so cheap.
>>11762241The prices are killing the variety. Working parents with bills can't afford what action figures and other stuff cost now, and it's hurting the children who don't get to grow up enjoying the same things previous generations got to. And none of the toy-makers are willing to price-compete to bring prices down.
>>11762081>if toy prices were that low back then, does that mean thrift stores sold as low as like a quarter?Yeah, thrift shops and pawn shops were cheap until about 5-10 years after ebay. You used to be able to just make a loop on a Friday hitting all the shops and get a pile of things for $100 to throw up on ebay or build your own collection. Those days are over now. Lots of people on welfare going every single day to scrape those places clean and most used shops set their prices with ebay.
>>11762258>thrift shops and pawn shops were cheap until about 5-10 years after ebay.The local Goodwills in my area cherry-pick anything out that's worth more than a couple of dollars, and auction it off. Other local thrift stores are the same way. There is no more "treasure-hunting" where you'll randomly chance upon something really cool anymore. https://shopgoodwill.com
>>11762242>The prices are killing the variety. Working parents with bills can't afford what action figures and other stuff cost now, and it's hurting the children who don't get to grow up enjoying the same things previous generations got to. And none of the toy-makers are willing to price-compete to bring prices down.You can blame private equity. They killed KB and ToysRus. Also the death of Kmart, Montgomery ward, etc. When g1 transformers were on the shelf there were a lot of stores selling toys. A lot. Walmart, KB, toysrus, target, Kmart, freds, Montgomery ward, Sears catalog had them. JCpenny catalog might have had them too. 10, 15 smaller chains. Thats a lot of competition to buy, giving the manufacturer more power. Now it is what? Walmart, target, amazon? Maybe gamestop?
>>11762275Sometimes there is. Because the 16 year olds in the back pricing dont give a shit.You can forget finding anything with a barcode to scan or a big brand like star wars oe Transformers or boxed Nintendo games.
>>11762275They all have to do that now with anything they suspect can sell for more than 40 dollars.
>>11761877If you have any vintage toys feel free to share them.
>>11762358It would almost be a good idea if their shipping fees were not batshit insane
>>11762361Yeah. That's the issue with shopgoodwill. You can filter for 1 cent shipping, and can rarely find a decent deal regardless. But it's a chore.I have a script set up to search specific things I'm looking for (mostly retro games) because of you search more generally you'll get outbid to where the shipping makes it not worth it anymore.Helps to misspell things sometimes. Pokeman instead of pokemon. Nitendo instead of Nintendo. That sort of thing. If it's an older toy you're looking for it might be worth looking more generally. Instead of gundam look for robot toy or Japan robot or something ... It's a crapshoot tho.
>>11762275Out here they charge $6 for a damn t shirt. But I got a blu ray player for $30. Prices are all over the place, I much prefer church stores or junk shops since the variety is wider and prices tend to be lower. I got a few WWE superstar figures a rock lord abd a broken robo force vehicle last year. Not much but I don't go often.
>>11762364I should clarify. For PC Games searching "PC game" will bring up game lots and such. But searching I specifically for popular brands works to find oddly listed things that might get missed. Because the 27yo burnout in the back who knows how to work the computer doesn't know or care.
>>11762368Hr"So...do you know how to use the internet?""Uh...like...yeah. I text and stuff. And use instaaa""Hired"
>>11762399P much. I think they usually send laptops off to a specific warehouse to be processed or something because they mostly come out of one place. They don't trust the <30's with the face tattoos with them. But they don't have anything like that for toys and games so there's a lot of mislabeled, or exactly-what-it-says-on-the-label listings. sometimes instead of game they'll use "gaming", so searching for "game" doesn't pick it up because the search engine is bare bones and doesn't do any associative terms.Anyway. It sucks, but you can dig and find good deals rarely. Could also set up a script to search for certain terms for you once a day or something.
>>11761787Miss those indestructible Tonka style pressed-steel toys.
>>11761806made a super fun battle platform for your random figure fights but once the cubes all fell out you didnt want to refit them
>>11762621I remember getting one as a kid, I loved it. But I took the indestructible advertising line too seriously, I really thought it was indestructible and threw it off a tall hedge repeatedly and it broke kek.Important life lesson really.
Anyone got the time machine working yet?
>>11763071My brother had some of these.
>>11761783Interesting how figures had the same prices even though there were some size differences. But all $5 Silverhawks were a typical 5 inch figureGo-Bots were little 3 inch onesAnd Centurians were Ken Doll sized.
>>11763184$5 is and was the magic toy price for a very long time.You'll notice that transformers the movie, for example took special care to not kill characters that were $5. And intrudced even more $5 toys afterward.. It says a lot about how bad inflation is now that the real ghoatbusters reissues are like 18 to 23 when they were $5 back in the 80s. Even adjusting for inflation, 5 is $15 now. So only about $3 of that is hasbro being gready shits
>>11763426>You'll notice that transformers the movie, for example took special care to not kill characters that were $5Yes they did with Brawn and Windcharger.>So only about $3 of that is hasbro being gready shitsIf it's a reissue of a toy that paid for itself four decades ago, then a lot more than $3 is them being greedy.
>>11763889>Yes they did with Brawn and WindchargerOh man, they killed 2 mini bots that they released as new colors/characters while leaving the constructicons, airelbots, stunticons, most mini autobots, tapes, etc alive. You really proved me wrong.
>>11763889>If it's a reissue of a toy that paid for itself four decades ago, then a lot more than $3 is them being greedyI think they had to make new molds. Sounded like they got old figures and stripped the paint, then scanned them. Then had new molds made wirh the scan. Been rumors for years that they lost the molds when hasbro purchased kenner
>>11761780As soon I got a job I ordered Pin Art like in Toy Story. Coller than my bootleg buzz
>>11766046They threw away a lot of them when the two companies merged, but they did keep the ones they deemed to be "the essentials." It requires physical space to store all the molds, and after decades both Hasbro and Kenner had massive stockpiles of molds, printing templates for packaging, etc that had piled up while execs decided that it was costly to keep storing stuff they (at the time) though they'd never use again. So in the merger they heavily down-sized. For G1 Transformers it's already known that they threw away the dinobots, Mirage, Shockwave, Jetfire, Omega Supreme, and around 90% of all Transformers from 1987 on out. In 2001 - 2005 Takara did do a heavy amount of reissuing G1 Transformers with the molds they still had, which was most of the 1984 - 1986 catalogs as well as a few outside of it like Fort Max, Powermaster Optimus/God Ginrai, and Meister.
>>11761780From the Carolinas here, so a bit different but we had Kaybees. Every mall had a Kaybee or a K&K Toys and they were identical in layout and how much was packed into them.The real kicker is that these were mall stores and their prices were on the higher end.-Except Toybiz figures were always on crazy blowout prices but they never had any of the ones that anyone really wanted. There was a Kaybee clearance place at Waccamaw Outlets in Myrtle Beach and it seemed to have good 12" Toybiz figs. I think they went away around 2000 or so.
>>11761806>But what is going on with the art on the box?Early Corporate Memphis?
>>11761784I had that Uzi. It was bad ass
>>11769873The nearest mall to me had a Kay Bee and a Toy Box. But Toys R Us played dirty, and in my city there was a TRU within one block and often just across the street from most malls in the city.
>>11761781Oh shit, I didn't know Gummi Bears had plushes! Now I get to search eBay for probably overpriced vintage plush.
>>11761780>what was popularYes>in central PAFFS
>>11762258>most used shops set their prices with ebay.Yep and you can actually get deal, compared to scalpers that insist on their bullshit pricing, because unlike the scalpers, the pawn shop doesn't want to carry dead weight on their stock and isn't going to store junk indefinite just because they stupidly think some shitty bit of plastic will make them richI still paid more than $50 but I got a factory sealed boxed set of figured that other idiots are still, today, trying to get $200 or $300 for that originally sold for about $39-$49. >>11762311>They killed>Also You can add Big Lots, since the BL that's left is essentially just a close out for one of the lenders, and only in parts of the country, and 99 Cents Only, and since Ollie's isn't in the west/south west, and Dollar Tree/Dollar General don't really carry many classes of toys both did, ditto 5Below which barely exists in the west/south west, half the country is fucked over as far as toy bargains.
>>11761781Oh my god. Wrinkles....
>>11762081Yeah. Early 2000s I got my [spoiler]ponies [/spoiler]for 25 cents [spoiler]canadian [/spoiler]at garage sales.
