I started with Masters of the Universe and still love it to this day, but I think my absolute favourite was Teenage Mutant 'Hero' Turtles.

They were the first and last time I was ever caught up in a toy phenomenon. A lot of the MOTU 'throw the kitchen sink at it' mentality was with the characters and figures (one guy was internal organs in a jar with arms and legs). They had a standout look, they were ninjas, had cool weapons, and possibly the last truly great cartoon villain in Shredder (voiced by Uncle Phil from The Fresh Prince).

My other favourites were Lego, Thundercats, Ghostbusters, and Transformers. I still buy a lot of those today as you probably know

So what caught your eye back in the day?

Lego and Corgis.

I think my most played with toy was probably the Corgi Kojak Buick Regal, it had a "gun sound" by rotating a wheel built into the rear bumper. At some point the roof got scratched or crushed by my brother and I turned it into a cabriolet.

Sad I know but we were too poor to be able to get any of the action figures. Most of the time, I'd just look in catalogues from Argos and Index and looking at the figurines. I wanted MOTU including Castle Greyskull and Snake Mountain. I wanted TMNT and the Battle Shell and Blimp toys. Thundercats and the thundertank. Yes! Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers - who didn't want the Zords?

Alas, the closest I got was one of the neighbours very occasionally got his MOTU toys out to play with, and one of my cousins had Mumm-Ra. Another, more distant cousin had the 80s Batman toys - I remember Batman with the retractable belt winch and he had the Batmobile too. Toys that I do remember having: a couple of Transformer-type toys (I think it was GoBots), and some Knight Rider related stuff.

When eBay was still relatively new and shiny, I did start looking at collecting 80s toys. But I realised it'd end up being a money pit, and I didn't have anywhere to store them.

In the 60s and early 70s: Lego, Action Man, Meccano, Airfix kits and model railways. In that order.

I got into Lego very early on helped by the fact that I won a massive set of it when I was 5 in a building competition organised by the local Gem superstore as part of their 1st birthday celebrations. Also having German relatives meant that I got a lot of the new items before they were available in the UK, including some sets that never appeared to make it outside of mainland Europe.

My Action Man collection was fuelled by the fact that you could save up "stars" on the accessory sets and when you had filled a card (with 21 IIRC) you could send it off a get a free Action Man figure in return. I think I had acquired another 4 figures (all of the original design - no realistic hair, Eagle Eyes or gripping hands on my Action Men) before I moved on to other interests.

Meccano. Never quite as satisfying as Lego. It was possible to build far more exciting models, but you needed a lot of Meccano to make anything really complicated, and while my local toyshop sold individual pieces they weren't cheap - and seemed less good value for money compared with Lego.

Airfix (and other makes) kits. At one point I think all my pocket money was spent on these. Mostly WW2 planes and tanks. Eventually moved on from 1/72 Airfix to 1/35 Tamiya models. This led into my interest with model railways. I discovered that if I pooled both mine and my best friend's track and rolling stock we could come up with some quite impressive layouts. Unfortunately we had very different interests when it came building and running the layouts. I liked building them and pretty much as soon as a design was completed all I wanted to do was tear it down and start something new. He was much more interested in running the trains on the finished track. Eventually when I was 14 I sold all my railway stuff to him and used the money to buy an amplifier and pick-up for my acoustic guitar...

That's how I got into modern collecting, £2.87 for a Battle Cat lol.

My current obsession is the Transformers War for Cybertron trilogy. But check out McFarlane's new DC figures in videos (nobody takes good promo shots now), Bats and Supes are especially good. Ordered those and Batgirl, plus the 'Bat-Raptor' vehicle. I'll maybe get the animated Bats but I need to see the face sculpt up close. Amazingly, Smyths will actually sell them.

I was given the 38 tank there and the rocket-launching vehicle on the left as a kid and I'm pretty certain my idiot of a father binned them.

Lego

Still a class act.

Set 6931 was my favourite as a child.
Two space ships in one, with a rover too.

Mostly I had the smaller 'white' space sets and then the later 'Black' ones, whatever they were called. They were a bit heftier.

It's months before I can ship it but I've ordered this and the two versions of Skeletor from the movie...

https://youtu.be/MinMtpIx7Bc

Even I'm not buying these but they're amazing lol

https://news.toyark.com/2020/02/07/extr ... oda-378241

https://www.engadget.com/2020/02/19/has ... yV-NTRjPZp

Those will be in B&M soon enough.

What I love about them is they were like old game box art; your imagination always overrode the actual gameplay

Lego, Airfix and James Bond DB5 with the ejector seat