I often times will give the youth of today a hard time for the amount of time they spend on tablets and smartphones and what not but i really shouldn't. Kids are simply the product of the environment that they grow up in. I am quite certain that if I were young right now I would be doing the same thing - this technology simply didn't exist when I was young.
What we did have was massive toy-stores with loads of plastic essentially garbage in them. Between Gi-Joe, He-Man, and Star Wars stuff that I collected as a kid there was likely hundreds of dollars a year spent at my family household. I saw a photo the other day about how much this stuff is worth now and of course it doesn't apply to the gear that I had which was abused by kids between 5-12 years old. We likely sold it all on a yard sale for 25 cents or something along those lines.
Here are a few of my favorites from when i was a kid in the 80's and if you had them, or others I would be interested in hearing about it.
Snake Mountain
This was another hideout for the bad guys in the He-man series. I don't remember who the boss of this was meant to be but it was likely an expansion pack of baddies. This Thing was collapseablle and the gate entrance served as a handle for you to carry it out to the yard or something. The snake on the top rotated to attack anyone who approached the door and the platform at the gate was also a trap door, which well, kids love trap doors. The coolest thing is the microphone that you can see on the right that actually changed your voice to sound spooky.
I have no idea what this cost back in the 80's because it was a gift to me. However, if you really took care of it and still have the box this sells for around $200.
G.I. Joe Hydrofoil
Like any other vehicle in GI Joe the weaponry on this thing was completely absurd. It had 4 missiles hiding under the hood, 2 massive torpedoes and a wide array of small arms as well as a turret up top. It unfortunately did not float, but that didn't stop us from putting it in water anyway. If in perfect condition this toy is worth upwards of $700 today.
GI Joe Tactical battle platform
I'm relatively certain this was meant to be controlled by the good guys and it was without question, one of my favorites. I never put it away and it was on display in my room at all times. It was released in a film right around the time that the GI Joe franchise was focusing on boats and this was meant to be a floating platform which if you think about it is completely impractical. It can't move and there really isn't anywhere to hide on it. Also, if you were to attack it, simply always attack from the back where there are no armaments. At least it has a bunch of oversized missiles for defense. LIke the others, it did NOT float. If you kept this gem in perfect condition and have all the pieces and the box it goes for around $1300
GI Joe Hovercraft
The yin to the hydrofoil's yang, this was the flagship battle-boat for the good guys. If featured the usual absurd on-board arms but also had a really cool "escape raft" on the front that could be deployed at the touch of a button. This particular model was introduced to the municipal public pool where once on the bottom of the pool could not be retrieved by 8 year olds because once filled with water it weighed 150 lbs. It took two full-size men the better part of 20 minutes to get it out of the pool. If in mint condition (which mine certainly is not) you can get around $200 for this gem.
Darth Vader collector's case
In a brilliant move to try to encourage kids to buy all the action figures, this case came with stickers to identify the slot for each one of the characters. All of us wanted to have a complete set but since there was no internet back then we were kind of at the mercy of what the toy store happened to have. They were probably only like $2 each back then (maybe less) but I am quite certain i never achieved a full case. it folded up and was a the bust of everyone's favorite bad guy.
I was surprised to find out that this thing, which was released in 1980 when the world had just been introduced to the world of Star Wars, in mint condition, never having been used, is only worth around $200. I would have guessed a much higher figure than this.
Truth be told I treated all of my action figures like crap and I don't even have any of them anymore. If i did I am quite certain they would be worth damn near nothing because we did things like intentionally swap the heads from one action figure to another, and at times even involved actual explosives in our playtime (we found it made it much more realistic.) It's amazing no one ever got injured, or maybe we did get injured but we just walked it off... i don't remember.
If you had any favorite toys from your childhood (and yes, I do realize that not all of your were alive in the 80's) I would like to hear about them. I had many many more than just the ones above but I wanted to keep this brief.