Toys That Didn't Survive Our Childhoods...

[Guardian Prime]

Alright, my brothers and sisters of the Allspark. What toys did you have as kids that you really liked, but didn't survive your childhood? The kind of toys you wished you still had now, but think back and wonder, "why did I do that to it?"

Back in the 80's, I had a G1 Mirage. Aside from a small handful of Go-Bots beforehand, G1 Mirage was my first actual Transformer toy. I loved the thing and played with it a lot. And like most other kids, I was a bit rough playing with it. One day I was making him do jumps off my little desk in my bedroom, watching him hit and scoot across the floor. Sometimes he rolled along, and other times he crashed. But when he made that last jump, his arm broke off at the elbow. I took Mirage over to my dad and asked if he could fix his arm. Mirage got placed into a box in the closet with a few other broken toys from my other siblings. Sadly he never got fixed. As other toys ended up in the box in the closet, us kids started calling it the "box of never return."

This story does have a happy ending. In the late 90's, shortly after graduating high school, I was riding my bike around town. I hadn't stopped at any yard sales in quite a long time, but there was one that for some reason was calling to me as I started to ride past it. So I decided to stop and take a look. Out of all the stuff there, I found one toy. It was a G1 Mirage in his vehicle mode, still in one piece and still fully transformable. I put him back in vehicle mode and went up to ask how much they wanted for it. He was .50 cents.

I took Mirage home and proudly displayed him among my other Transformer toys, happy that I had my childhood toy back.

 

[Caldwin]

I still have my Bluestreak and Ratchet toys that broke the first time I transformed them. It took me a couple times to figure out how not to force things.

I had a GI Joe. I don't remember which character. I just remember those things had a rubber ring that kept the body attached to the waist... and it snapped easily if you twisted the waist around too much.

 

[Fero McPigletron]

Omg, our mom bundled up our collective Thundercats, Motu, various Transformers and donated them. Oooooh maaaaan.

 

[Haywire]

Oh, wow, what to list? I'm the oldest of 8 kids (20 year span between me and my youngest brother), and most of our childhood toys got passed down and played with hard. Virtually none of my toys survived intact, if at all, although I eventually got pretty good at fixing them when I could. My modern collection actually started from the idea that I could replace the Gobots I had and get the Transformers I didn't as a kid; if I had any parts of my original figures left, I would try to restore them with junker lots found online or at specialty stores.

I know I had got a G1 Ironhide for Christmas, and I think his arm broke off that same day; I have memories of playing with the combat sled part after that Christmas day, but almost nothing of Ironhide himself. Ironhide is one of my favorite S1 Autobots, but it was the Encore series before I got another one.

Gobot Scooter was actually my sister's, but I remember his chest breaking off and he went into a desk drawer, never to be seen again.

I traded my Gobot Turbo to a friend in exchange for 'fixing' a GI Joe (Cobra Gyro Viper) when I was around 7. It was not a great fix, and I learned how to properly fix GI Joes shortly after, but Turbo was long gone by then.

Gobot Flip Top was probably my favorite Gobot growing up (I pretended he was Airwolf), but his tail fin feet broke off after much play, leaving him unable to stand. Luckily, the black P2 Power Suit I had fit him well, and served as a mobility device to keep him playing. When I started buying Gobots, I was able to retrieve what was left of mine from my brothers and rebuild him. He's still pretty playworn, but he has feet, hands, and rotors now, so that one has a happy ending!

 

[MEDdMI]

Our family moved around a lot, so plenty of toys got donated/lost. My parents still have some of my old stuffed animals, some that got repaired. I miss an old My Little Pony I used to have, a white one with maybe pink hair. That one got played with in a sandbox or something, I remember it was permanently dirty/speckled and I still liked it. No idea what happened to that one.

 

[Exatron]

Not many of my childhood toys are still around, but that's mostly just been due to general wear and tear over years of play rather than due to particular events. I can think of a few cases, though.

Megatron was a fragile toy, so he probably wouldn't have survived my childhood regardless. However, the fact that he got broken while he was still fairly new when I let a friend play with him definitely had an impact on me.

I had an Omega Supreme, but he broke almost immediately. Since he was still new, my mom was able to take it back and get a replacement. That one also broke almost immediately. It was only then that I learned what I was doing wrong to cause the breakages. Again, he probably wouldn't have survived anyway, but I do wish I'd studied the instructions more closely.

The biggest one, though, is Fort Max. I still have him, in pretty good shape and with all his accessories... save one. I have absolutely no idea what happened to Cerebros. I'm missing his body, his gun, and Spike. So clearly, I had Cerebros in robot mode somewhere. I have absolutely no idea where or when that was, though. I have virtually every accessory for all the figures that I do still have, and even a bunch that I no longer have the bots for, but a whole figure just vanished without a trace. That one really hurts. For years, I held out hope that he would just turn up at my parents' house one day. Doesn't seem like that's ever going to happen at this point, though.

 

[CoffeeHorse]

My mother sometimes purged stuff, declaring "You're not into that anymore." Not asking. Not saying "I thought you're not into that anymore." It was an instruction to pretend to believe something. "You're not into that anymore."

Anyway, I had a decent Hot Wheels collection. All loose (I was a kid) but I kept them in cases, so they were in good shape. Multiple cases. Suddenly all gone.

 

[Fero McPigletron]

That's what happened to our family toys

 

[Stepwise]

My blue Zybot wasn't made for Hot Wheels tracks. Found that out the hard way.

My original Bumblebee is in a storage box, but his arm hasn't stayed in place since I was a little kid, and, one of his feet fell apart. Every so often I've thought about staging a "Prime's death scene" parody with that 'Bee on the table instead of Optimus.

 

[Toolala]

I used to have this incredibly weird and unique robot that had an entire castle that would come apart into two sections and combine ontop of him as armor. I've never been able to find it or anything information on it again, I wish i still had it just so I'd have a shot at reverse image search it or something. I'm betting it was either a booyleg of an extremely niche japanese or korean robot or some sort of cheapo-original, but I'd love to have it again.

 

[CoffeeHorse]

I hope you find it because that sounds awesome.

You are never too old to find castles cool.

 

[Toolala]

I hope you find it because that sounds awesome.

You are never too old to find castles cool.

yeah and it sucks the idea really hasnt been explored at all. the only real castle robots come from Sentai, Muteki Shogun is only styled like one but doesn't turn into one, and there's that one Kingohger one but it doesn't look like much of a castle.
the one I had was very much a boxy old-school looking castle with sculpted bricks and doors and such.

 

[ZakuConvoy]

Hmm...it's a longshot, but maybe something from RPG Densetsu Hepoi?

reddit.com/r/PrintedMinis/comments/102q7ht/its_inconceivable_that_these_robots_came_from_35/

I think most of the original toys were more of the "model kit" variety, and it doesn't really fit the description, but it's possible it's some bootleg based on them? And it's one of the few "castle robots" that have come up in my searches.

Can you give us more details? About what year did you get the toy? Was it more of a "cool" or "cutesy" robot? What color was it? (I'm assuming grey.) What country were you in? (I'm assuming the USA.) Any more details might help.

 

[CoffeeHorse]

Actually, this suddenly rings a bell, but nothing in that picture does. I never owned it or handled it but I saw something like this. It wasn't cutesy. It wanted to be cool. I'm pretty sure it was a cheap original. Pure dollar store stuff. The castle barely turned into armor.

 

[Donocropolis]

I follow a weird vintage robot page on Facebook, and I swear that I remember seeing a castle-former a while back. I may have to see if I can search back through old posts.

EDIT:
found them. Any of these look right?

 

[LBD "Nytetrayn"]

"Alpha, Rita's escaped. Are the anti-alien attack assault mecha ready?"

"Yes, Zordon, but I really think something like dinosaurs would be more --"

"No, Alpha. We're using castles, and that's final."

"Aye-yi-yi, I should never have hooked you up with those 'Game of Thrones' books..."

 

[NovaSaber]

Of course, then the Shogun Megazord from season 3 really is partly based on a Japanese castle.

 

[The Predaking]

Sadly most of our Starcom toys didn't survive. We had the space shuttles, space stations, evil space ship, and several land vehicles. Dozens of little space guys that would get stuck to any and all metal around.

Our GI Joes got the worst of it though... Tons of outdoor play, and a lot of surgery when my brother figured out how to swap the parts around.

 

[Donocropolis]

Sadly most of our Starcom toys didn't survive. We had the space shuttles, space stations, evil space ship, and several land vehicles. Dozens of little space guys that would get stuck to any and all metal around.

I was totally unaware of Starcom back in the day, but I would have loved it. I did have one Xpanders toy, which worked basically the same way, and I played with that thing all the time.

 

[LiamA]

When I was a teenager I let my dad give my Transformers to Goodwill. It was a stupid thing to do that I still regret. Fortunately I have recently bought some of the figures I had from my local comic shop.