Just Can't Get Enough?

This is my biggest plug for consumerism since my 8/27/08 post. But if you like yesterday's post, may I recommend a book I got this week called Just Can't Get Enough: Toys, Games, and Other Stuff from the '80s That Rocked (Jensen Karp & Matthew Robinson, 2007). What you're looking at above, if you can read it, is the table of contents for the book. If you can't read it, the book covers such classics as Masters of the Universe action figures, Choose Your Own Adventure books, My Buddy dolls, Garbage Pail Kids cards, and the Crossbows and Catapults game. Each chapter has multiple big, color pictures and the descriptions are snarky and not too scholarly. The Napoleon Dynamite-looking notebook doodle artwork (shown above) can be found throughout the book. "It's... incredible."

This all ties into "the box" (for details, see my 9/11/08 post). I have a manila folder therein marked "toys," and it contains the foldout seasonal product guides that came in vehicle boxes for G.I. Joe, coloring books, and lists of my favorite toy lines that I don't want to forget. The most important toy I never had but always wanted was Zartan, the master of diguise (pictured here). There's an inside joke in my family about my Christmas lists and the item that I continued to include even years after I first saw it in the Sears catalog: Goonies slippers. They looked like regular feet, but with neon, green hair on top. I have no idea what they had to do with the movie but you can see the actors wearing them in the Cyndi Lauper "Goonies 'R' Good Enough" music video. Alas, I never got those slippers, nor did I get a lot of things that I have since forgotten. Here are my top ten favorite '80s toys (each with their own cartoon series of which I've seen none) that I don't want to forget:

1. Sectaurs - I had Warrior Prince Dragon with Dragonflyer and I dreamed of the Hyve

2. M.A.S.K. - I had the Slingshot van with driver, Ace Riker (my favorite childhood name)

3. Centurions - I had the green Max Ray but I really wanted Hacker, the bad guy in blue

4. Inhumanoids - Metlar stood about two feet tall and cost more than a few months' savings

5. C.O.P.S. - Rock Krusher, Berzerko, and Dr. Badvibes inspired a whole notebook of sketches

6. Visionaries - inspired my very own comic book character, Lazerman

7. Disney's Wuzzles - I liked Eleroo and I have a miniature plastic Moosel in "the box"

8. Popples - really for girls but I guess not so much as Jem or Rainbow Brite, which I liked too

9. My Pet Monster - finally, a plush doll just for boys

10. Boglins - large, rubber handpuppets that probably didn't have their own cartoon series