Let’s take a trip down memory lane, shall we? I don’t remember what inspired this list, but I think it’ll be a little fun. At least for me. Depends on how interesting you find random childhood trivia about the guy who writes this blog. I was thinking about toys for some reason and came up with a list idea of random action figures I had from my childhood!

I grew up in the 1980s, so I had a ton of traditional action figures from the likes of the Ninja Turtles, Real Ghostbusters and G.I. Joe. They were the big ones for me. I had exactly one Transformer — Inferno the fire truck — and a ton of superheroes. I even had a phase of loving American Gladiator toys! Sprinkled among these average toys were some true gems. Some really random and obscure action figures that somehow found their way into my childhood and now my adult memory bank.

Join me after the jump for a trip down memory lane to some really neat action figures that have just stuck in my head all these decades later! And feel free to share some of your own in the comments.

6. No-Zone and Junkyard from Toxic Avengers

The Toxic Avenger is a pretty niche pop culture character, but he still got his own kids cartoon and action figures when I was a wee lad! I couldn’t care less for the Toxic Avenger himself. Give me No-Zone, who dripped slime through his oversized nostrils, and Junkyard, whose tongue rolled up into his open and shut mouth. I definitely watched a couple of episodes of this madness cartoon. Here’s hoping these random sidekicks get to show up in that Toxic Avenger remake you know Hollywood is working on.

5. Kong from The Ghost Busters

You’ll notice up above that I said I had a bunch of “Real” Ghostbusters action figures. That’s because, if you recall, the cartoon for the familiar movie Ghostbusters had to call itself the “Real Ghosbusters”. And that’s because there existed a Ghostbusters TV show before them, as well as a cartoon. The Ghost Busters starred comedians Forrest Tucker and Larry Storch, as well as an ape sidekick named Kong and a talking ghost car. It’s a whole thing! Don’t believe me, here’s one of the episodes on YouTube! I have no memory of any actual episodes, but I know I watched The Ghost Busters cartoon as a kid. And that Kong action figure stayed with us through many years and many lost limbs and heads.

4. Ninjzz from The Bots Master

Ho boy, brace yourselves for this one. Do you remember the cartoon The Bots Master? I hope not, because in researching this list, I had to watch this show opening — and now you do too! That is entirely a thing. It is also a pain to the eyes and brain. But I guess I watched that show at some point, because I had the ninja action figure: Ninjzz the Ninja Boyzz. All the good robots were apparently named “Boyzz”, don’t get me started. Anyway, he was this cool, three-armed ninja robot…and that was enough to impress me as a kid, I guess.

3. Condor from M.A.S.K.

I don’t think I ever watched the show M.A.S.K. Maybe a couple of episodes at random? It was not in my usual rotation, but I still had the Condor motorcycle figure. I apparently lost the figurine that came with the set early on, because it doesn’t look familiar. But that green motorcycle that transforms into a personal helicopter was a longtime staple of my playtimes. That thing was so versatile! It’s too bad none of my other action figures, not even GI Joes, could actually fit in it.

2. Boulder from the Rock Lords

Want to know something funny about this list? Looking up these characters now on various ancient wikis is how I’m learning their real names for the first time. Boulder was a Rock Lord, a Transformer that turned from rock to hero and vice versa. Apparently Boulder was the leader of the team? I had no idea! All I know is that he was this funky little rock Transformer. He was pretty sturdy, and the transformations were fun. What more can a person ask for?

1. Triceratops from Dino Riders

Why isn’t Dino Riders a thing in the modern age? Two alien species going to war in prehistoric times by putting battle stations onto dinosaurs? Hello! How is this not more of a thing? Does the Jurassic Park lobby have an edict against anyone else doing dinosaur things? At any rate, they were amazing toys as a kid! The dinosaurs that came with the figures were so realistic (for the time) that actual natural history museums asked the toymaker to just make straight dinosaur toys without the armaments and aliens! And they were indeed great. I had that triceratops for years, even after losing the little dudes that rode him. I think I also owned the Pterodactyl set, which was one of the good guys. The little nebbish dude in blue survived longer than the dinosaur in that set.

Never owned the giant T-Rex though…

——————–