Toy-related dumb thing you did, or regret
 

Looking to start a humorous thread to reminisce on some of the stupid things you've done, toys you could've bought but didn't, or other things you're willing to share to laugh at yourself and let others have a friendly "ouch that had to hurt" kinda laugh at your expense. So if you remember blowing up a vintage Star Wars or GI Joe figure that's now worth hundreds of dollars, share it here. If you remember that time you almost bought that toy that's now worth 8 times retail, post away.

Here's some I can recall:

My earliest childhood memory of toy shopping is going to KMart, probably in 1983 or 1984, and passing a clearance bin of Star Wars toys all marked for $1. No telling how many of those now-rare later waves were in there.

I remember going to a Zayre's (yeah, remember those?) -- it might have been their going-out-of-business sale -- and seeing on clearance FOUR GI Joe Flagg battleships for $100 each. I asked, Dad said no, and I didn't put up much of a fight. I knew $100 was a ton back then.

More recently. . .Target couldn't seem to give away their Superion and Bruticus Transformers box sets. Retail was $40. They were still sitting steadily on the shelf down at $10. I BOUGHT at least 4 of each, thinking surely I could unload them for $20 on eBay. WRONG!!! No bites. Ended up unloading them for like $15. Then two weeks later Fansproject shows plans for Explorer and Munitioner. . .and those sets are going for over $200 now. :-(

And someone in town had that Bruticus box set on EBay for $80 like two months ago. I passed.

Long story short. . .when I left town for college, a lot of my stuff ended up at my sister's house. The stuff HAD to be moved while I was at college; they did what they could. My bag of G1 Transformers mysteriously vanished. Later, a rat died in my box of MOTU in the shed.

I remember throwing away several vintage Joes after they fell apart. . .not knowing all it would take is a screwdriver and a $0.10 o-ring to fix them. One was Firefly. One was Rock 'n Roll. Probably Zap too.


All right, now it's your turn. Tell us your stories. . .

Um, it's not so much passing up on toys because I never really got any to begin with but it was more like what I used to do to my toys that I regret. I used to get a lot of hand me downs from my nephew, yep, you read right, my nephew. We were close in age and my sister and I were like 20 years apart.

Anywho, I got his He-Man figures and his Voltron figures and the like and one thing I remember doing was I really wanted the Incredible Crash Dummies figures and so I tried to make my own "fall apart" figures and kept ramming a toy jeep into the fat pilot from Voltron until he cracked at the torso joint and would hold everything together when I snapped the two pieces back together but would fly apart when he was hit by various objects. That was dumb, but I got a lot of amusement out of it. LOL. Other stupid things I used to do was I would paint my vintage He-man figures with my sister's pink nail polish. I'd cover the bottoms of their feet with it and I remember Tung Lashor's chest was completely covered with the stuff.

I also used nail clippers and would clip off the fingers of my He-man figures as well as swap their arms around. I put Hordak's head on Rattlor's body. I also filled Spout Snout's water hole with sand and I filled Leech with water because I thought he sprayed water.

Man back in the early 90 I used to take my Joe and freeze them, then free then form their icy prison.

Passed on the Wolverine and Colossus set when it went on clearance for 6 bucks :(

Bought an Ultra Magnus for a quarter at a yard sale. Didn't know much about ebay or transformers at the time and sold it to a guy for $5. Facepalm!

I passed on TF Armada Overload, because the Ultra Magnus repaint was shown far before Overload was actually released.
Then came Energon, and he turned out to be the hardest toy of the entire line to find. The only time I saw him was in the hands of another collector, on his way to checkout.
And then all the countless shelfwarming overloads mysteriously disappeared as soon as I figured out Ultra Magnus wasn't gonna happen.

And, when Energon Cliffjumper came out, the Beachcomber repaint was shown off. I wanted that. It looked cooler in blue and white.
Never ever found it. Not even once. And to this day, I have never seen it in person. And like Overload before it... never saw Cliffjumper again.

Same thing ALMOST happened *again* with E. Bulkhead/Quickstrike. Passed on Bulkhead, and wanted Quickstrike. Because pale greel, grey, and pale yellow is nowhere near as good looking as red and black. However, I *did* find Quickstrike. Twice. And Bulkhead remained on the shelves for a good long time after.

...though history tells me if I didn't find Quickstrike, Bulkhead would have been long gone, too.

There's already a thread for missed buying opportunities regarding toys:

I can't believe I didn't buy it!!! - Toy Discussion at Toyark.com

But as far as dumb things I've done regarding toys, I used to put firecrackers in Hot Wheels cars to turn them into convertibles. Also I tended to partially bury my Joes a lot (they always seemed to get trapped in a bunker or foxhole for some reason).

And then there was this:

WARNING: Do not attempt what you are about to read. Ever. The stunt was performed by an idiot who was too young and gullible to realize that he was doing something incredibly stupid and was damn lucky he didn't get hurt any more than he did.

I had a "Cherry Bomb" toy that was basically a two-piece plastic ball (sort of like an Easter egg) with a hole at one end. The idea was you put a small firecracker inside the ball with the fuse sticking out. Then you lit it and ran away. When the firework went off, it would make a thundering CRACK! instead of the weak pop it normally did and the ball would be split in two, ready to go again.

The stupid part came when my "friends" dared me to light the firecracker and wait until the fuse was almost inside the ball, then throw it straight up so it would pop in mid-air.

It got about 3 feet above me before it popped.

I couldn't hear anything at first and my ears were ringing for about 15 minutes afterward. I thankfully didn't do it a second time.

Even as a kid I was careful with my toys. The only thing that comes to mind is when I painted a few of my M.U.S.C.L.E. figures with less than brilliant results.

I use to do that as well, especially with my Star Wars figures. The plastic bubbles that figures are carded with make the best carbonite slabs.

For me it's always been applying too much force to a toy to get it to do something and then hearing the inevitable snap, and the cursing that followed.

And I thought I was bad lol. As a kid I used to line up my matchbox cars under the leg of a chair and smash the roof's in. I did play pay too hard with my 83 SW land speeder and Joe Ferret smashing them into pieces against the wall. In my early teens I dabled with customizing. Used a vintageCrimson Gaurd to make SW Grand Moff Tarkin. Years later they would make the fig. I also attempted to make a Bane fig out of a MOTU clawfull and painted flesh tone over a Panthro. I salvaged the panthro and he is still in my collection.

My friend, who I later found out was steeling joes from a near by Sears/K-Mart used black cats to blow appart many a 80's Joe. I would pick up the pieces and make Fraken Joes out of them. later on with another friend we make a big battle sceen and set up fire crackers in the sand next to guys and lit them to simulate battle. beach head lost a leg that fateful day. We also lined a bunch of guys up and shot roman candles at then. none of those figs were mine at least. lastly I burried my original Stormshadow, lost him, found him several years later faking the yard.