Ghost of Christmas Wishbooks Past - 1986

We now reach the end of our trip down Sears Wishbook memory lane with the joys of 1986, which was a veritable explosion of TV show related action figure goodness. Of course, by this point in time, while my interest in the toys was great, my drive to own them had waned, whether due to lack of funds or a decision that 6th grade was a good enough time to move away from toys as any. So, most of the following will be more "ooo, I always thought that was cool" rather than "oooo, I loved having that one!"

• I'd like to take this opportunity to apologize to any of my family members who spent any money on any of the items listed on this page; I was the stereotypical boy who cries "Wow, it would so cool to have a microscope/chemistry set/insert-science-based-hobby-here" only to briefly look at the kit a couple of times and then stick it away on the shelf to gather dust.
• Ah yes; Photon is to Lazer Tag as Betamax was to VHS, I believe. Of course, I never had either of them.
• I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but I have never owned a video game system of my own; all of my video game experience comes courtesy of arcades, game consoles of friends and roomies, and the occasional bit of software that gets installed on my computer. Still, I look at this page and just have to wonder: how many people out there actually bought Item #3?
• Two pages of Rambo inspired toys. Two. Pages. Meanwhile, the force of nature that is Chuck Norris only gets a quarter of a page. Wow, this is just mind bottling*.
• This page gets included just for my current roomies, who were both fans of the show/toys; afraid it never aired on any of the stations we got.
• Back down to just one page; Masters of the Universe were slipping, eh? Oh, and look, I actually own one of the figures pictured, Buzz-Off . . . not that it's actually offered for sale anywhere on the page, mind you.
• Oh, look: Over the Top official arm wrestling toys! I bet those were a hit that Christmas huh? Can you imagine the joy and wonder the children felt as they opened up their gi . . . BWAH-HA-HA-HA! Sorry, tried to keep a straight face, but couldn't hold it in.
• And in addition to all of the above, we also had pages for cartoon inspired toys like Thundercats, M.A.S.K., Inhumanoids, Transformers, Defenders of the Earth, etc. Got to play with some of the stuff thanks to Ol' Vick, who I was still friends with at the time, but seeing them all laid out like that makes me realize that by 1986, I had started to move away from action figures and onto . . . well, books. Lots and lots of books.
  

Well, that may wrap up Sears Wishbook posts, but it has really just opened up a cornucopia of nostalgia that's sure to result in a flood of related posts . . . and by "a flood," I of course mean "one or two, if I get around to it."

*You know; like your mind is trapped in a bottle.