The Tomfoolerous Times of The Tired Old Toys - 1: The Boxes Open

I've come to the conclusion recently that I may still own just about everything I ever owned, save for some broken or lost things.  Right from the beginning!  With that in mind: My dad brought over boxes 'n boxes of all my junk I lazily left behind at his house.  It is full of memories and junk! 

...but mostly junk.  So lets turn that junk into something mildly humorous and interesting, shall we?

I have no idea where these came from.  There's two of them, and obviously based on Godzilla, or so I assume.

What you're seeing is carried over from elementary school, as far back as I can remember.  These stole away in my desk (you know, the desks with the cavern in them where you shoved all your books 'n things).  Many times they were in my hilariously pretty pencil box (I'll make sure to get a pic of that later) but most of the time they were right in the front of the desk hold where I kept currently-in-use-pencils 'n such. 

They're obviously erasers; for whatever that is worth.  I mean I don't think these guys would have ever been able to erase things.  I think they confused "rubber" with "eraser" back then (and may still continue to do so today).  Anyway, as you can see, I liked to customize things.  You'd think many of those divots and gouges were accidental and I just covered them up - and I'll admit, some of them were - but most of that junk was totally administered by my sadistic ass.

Well...lets not say "sadistic."  It's not like I was laughing to myself as I slowly cut gouges into my erasers.  I'm sure most of you understand where I'm coming from: These are badass monster dinosaurs!  They need cuts and scars and BLOOD AND BATTLE DAMAGE YYYEEEAAAHH!!  So that's what I did.  (Granted, I totally did that to everything, so these guys weren't the only ones.  It wasn't even limited to things that looked like animals:  I messed up my mechanical pencils and wrapped paper clips around them and customized just about anything I owned). 

Why do these still exist?  Pretty simple: I never threw anything out, and neither did my parents.  My brother somehow avoided this penchant for hoarding and adopted this Buddhist-like ability to not attach memories and fondness to objects, but HO BOY did I miss that superpower!  I think that is no more evident than right here in my blog about toys and how much I love them OMG.

So with that said; I think you can understand where these "Tomfoolerous Times of the Tired Old Toys" posts will be going (TTotToT for agonizing short). 

I'm basically pulling things out at random, so each episode should have a nice range of totally ridiculous junk from across the years of the late 80's and early to mid 90's.  Some of them may need some help, like this little guy!  He's a part of a toyline with these transformable vehicles (I have yet to dig out).  They start out as normal enough vehicles, then you press a button and they automatically (albeit slowly) open up into a little base of operations.  Each one came with these tiny men to man the stations 'n such.  This one appears to be the last of them, until I find the vehicles and inspect them.  No idea what they're called!

ADDENDUM: After a thorough search of the Virtual Toy Chest, I found that the little guy is from a toyline called Xpanders.  In fact, the very first two pics on that page are the exact vehicles I had!  I'll cover it more if I manage to dig out either vehicle.

Anyway: look at the detail on this tiny thing!  He's seriously small and so cool looking.  They put a lot of work into this tiny sculpt - you can see bullets strapped to his leg, even!  I of course didn't put much thought into that back in the day.  I mean when I pulled him out he had glue from a hot glue gun stuck to his legs, so I'm assuming I used him in one of my old frankenstein projects (I swear I wasn't Sid from Toy Story.  I was just...creative.)

I uh....huh.  I guess I'm telling a story here.  Who knew?  I really intended to just look at old things, but I suppose we can tell an ongoing adventure.  Anyway, it's hard to say how far apart these figures are.  I want to say that the erasers are the oldest, but who knows?  Maybe someone else out there has those old eraser molds and can give me a date.  Same with the little guy!

Oh.  There's a car.  And a California Raisin. 

UM well the car is possibly the oldest here, I can't really say.  My mom seems to think it's a model built and painted by my dad, but the plastic doesn't feel like model plastic.  What do I know, though?  Maybe that stuff was thicker back then?  Anyway, upon inspection it appears to be a Mercury Comet.  As you can tell from the wear and tear (and the missing windshield) this sucker was used A LOT.  It's hard not to when it was one of the few toy cars I had that was convertible, which means that if you've got toys that are small enough you can fit 'em in there! 

The California Raisin you may be familiar with, since they were a sort of icon.  Maybe they still are?  He's hollow plastic with these rope arms and a saxophone that was originally glued in to his hand until I pulled that sucker out because because.  Why should any of my toys be limited to one thing when they can do more?  Anyway, an interesting ability he has is that you can pull the arms right through him.  They're only stopped by the hands - otherwise you'd be able to pull 'em right out.  I think the Raisins had names, but I have no idea what they are or who this one is.  He's...just the one with the sax.

Who is Wood Man?  Why is he so cool?  Why did the Raisin steal his car? 

No seriously: I have no idea where this Wood Man is from.  I know I drew that junk on him, but I don't know where he could have hailed from.  Possibly wood shop back in high school?  Maybe before that?  One of my friends may know, but I doubt it.

I seriously didn't intend this to turn into a thing, but it just sorta went that way as I was taking pictures.  What'll happen next?  Tune into the next TTotToT to find out what other old toys I drag out and how they fit into god awful mess!