Toy line rumors on the school yard

[RG]

Some I heard about.
Transformer of the General Lee.
Cobra Commander, Storm Shadow, Firefly, Destro, Snake Eyes all with removable masks.
Prince Adam that could turn into He-Man with a push of a button


This one kid was great at obvious BS toy stories.

One was a new X-wing fighter that had real lasers that shot, but they couldn't hurt people but could burn toys. I remember saying something like "why would someone buy a toy that would mess up other toys"

same kid talked about GI Joe figures that had working guns.

Now looking back, he must have been a violent kid, he was always wanting toys to really "kill" each other. If I could remember his last name I'd google him and see if he's in jail

[huedell]

Maybe some of the kids who were claiming they saw a "Flash", actually had
seen "Shazam" and mistook him for Flash----I know, I might have back in the day
It's that dang red suit with a lightning bolt on the chest

[megoat]

There was much talk on the playground about the game Adventure for the Atari 2600. For a while there was talk about a secret "dot" that when found and brought back to a certain part of the game would reveal the game programmer's name...this actually turned out to be true.

But then these two twins I went to school with took these tales to a new level. They claimed that there was a "hidden" game within Adventure that you could find that was more elaborate and had better graphics and sound. According to them it was some mind blowing experience that bettered even the games that were in the arcade at the time......

[Adam West]

I really don't recall any toy rumors. I have said this many times before, I never saw the insides of a TRU or any other toy store when I was young...my parents were smart and I always picked my Christmas list from a JCPenney or Sears catalog.

But I also had a friend who seemed to have every single toy ever made. I knew which WGSH figures there were because he had every one of them along with every vehicle and set and when a knew one came out, he was always the first to get it.

I exchanged emails with him recently, hadn't talked to him for close to 20 years. We exchanged some funny stories about the Megos and our constant lame attempts of trying to be comic book writers or trying to raise money for comic books by going door to door selling pet rocks in his neighborhood that we had found just minutes before.

He had a huge Silver Age comic book collection and I distinctly remember that he had subscriptions to many different series. I asked him whatever happened to his collection and he said he sold most of it off as an adult which helped finance his law school education.

[tmthor]

Yeah, man I haven't thought about this stuff for ages! It seems like the Mego Flash story was a common one. I remember being told by a couple of kids that they had "seen" the Flash on the shelves at Toys R Us. I whined about it to my mom many times until finally one day she came home with....Kid Flash! Of course the kids swore that they'd seen an actual Flash, but I started to guess they were full of it. And to this day I meet people who tell me about their childhood Megos and insist they had the Flash, LOL. Was this some mass hallucination or what?!

The main fib that I heard from kids back in the day, was about how "someone they knew" actually owned a rocket firing Boba Fett. My best friend during grade school would swear up and down that his cousin got one of the rocket firing Boba Fetts in the mail during the mail-in offers. I actually wasn't sure if this was a complete lie or not until I got older and learned the whole truth behind the now legendary Rocket Firing Boba Fett story.

Another one I just remembered (that really makes me feel silly for believing it at the time) was about how there was a Gene Simmons doll that actually could "breathe fire" by shooting sparks out of its mouth, haha!! Again, it was my best friend who'd told me this. Come to think of it, he had many a tall tale to tell. I can't believe I actually believed the Fire Breathing Gene doll story though! But then again when I was 5 years old, I actually believed that KISS were superheroes

You know I still have people swear up & down that their Fett was a rocket firing one.

[ctc]

Hmmmm....

I always had the OPPOSITE happen:

-A friend of mine claimed to have seen Battle of the Planets figures when he went to Hawaii. I didn't believe him; but it turns out there WERE BOTP figures made at that time, in Japan, and Hawaii did a lot of importing of stuff from Japan.

-I knew a kid who claimed to have all sorts of Star Wars figures that were different from everyone elses' AND he claimed to have figures a year or so before they actually came out. I found out in high school that a lot of toy and model prototyping was done in this area in the 70's and 80's; so it COULD hav ebeen true. He always claimed his dad wouldn't let him take them out, so I'd never seen them.

Don C.

[Earth 2 Chris]

-I knew a kid who claimed to have all sorts of Star Wars figures that were different from everyone elses' AND he claimed to have figures a year or so before they actually came out. I found out in high school that a lot of toy and model prototyping was done in this area in the 70's and 80's; so it COULD hav ebeen true. He always claimed his dad wouldn't let him take them out, so I'd never seen them.

I'm surprised we didn't get that more around here. I'm only an hour from Cincinnati, then headquarters to Kenner.

These are some great stories guys. Sounds like everyone knew at least one kid who was full of crap.

Chris

[Surfsup]

I always remember my cousin telling me he saw a Palitoy Green Goblin whose glider really flew. A Torch that had tiny little lights that looked like flames, a Mr Fantastic that really stretched, a clear Invisible Girl and a Daredevil with a working billy club! I took the whole lot in of course and searched for them, I was so disappointed when I saw the FF figures

I always remember the time I was ready to swap my entire comic collection for what I was told was Kryptonite (turned out it was only mint sauce)! Those were the days!

[pooper_prez]

New guy here, but this seems like good place to join in. I remember a kid telling me he'd seen a model kit for sale of the Close Encounters mothership. He even named the hobby store where he saw it.

[txteach]

A hot wheels mechanic, dang Buk that's priceless.

[brannon86]

FIBS

I remember some kid told me back in 77-78 era after Star Wars came out, that he had the Falcon, which had the chess game, and the training ball where Luke used his light sabor on it. He told me his lit up. I freaked out of course, but later found out it was all BS...

[Sweep Secondhand]

Wow what memories! I had a Star Wars liar in my school too. His name was Anthony S. and he claimed to have the caped Jawa and a figure of Grand Moff Tarkin (SP?). This turned out to be a Jawa with a cut down cape from Obi Wan Kenobi and the Death Star Commander! He also claimed to have 12 inch figures of Darth Vader, C3PO, and R2D2. These turned out to be the ideal Starhawks figures! He claimed his cousin had a scale full sized Death Star that you sat inside to play with! This little liar even claimed to have gone on a tour of the Kenner toy factory with his mom and been able to buy prototype figures! Needless to say he got beat up a lot and eventually no one would belive anything he said!

I actually did see a Darth Vader Tie Fighter on the shelves months before it finally came out. It was at a Playland store in the mall and they only had one. I begged my mom all through the mall to buy it for me and when she finally agreed we went back and it was already gone! I called that store every day for weeks after that asking if they had another but it took a long time for any more to show up. I was branded a liar over that one but I swear it was true!

[DocDrako]

I heard various toy rumors as a kid. A kid told me he had a removable mask Cobra Commander, another kid claimed to have a real lightsaber, and one kid had the Star Wars figures whose lightsabers really worked. I believed the Cobra Commander lie, but not the lightsaber fibs.

My cousin Donald, who some might remember threw my other cousin Cliff's Mego Fonzie onto the roof, was a big time liar, although his lies weren't just centered around toys. His lies encompassed the entire universe. I still remember one of the lies he told about this motorcyle he rode that didn't have a battery installed but that it "still had enough power left in the wires" to run. He also lied big time about my Empire Strikes Back trading cards, telling me about the scenes pictured before I had actually seen the movie. Turns out none of the lies he told were even remotely true. The one I remember most vividly was about the card with the heroes standing around the carbon freezing pit. He told me that it was a hole that opened up into space and that they were all forced to jump in to their deaths. "They all die" was his remark. Liar.

Fun Thread!

Oh, by the way, when I was a kid I had a removable mask rocket firing sarlaac pit screaming Boba Fett with an actual working jetpack and blaster rifle. I also had his Slave 1 which really flew and fired real lasers that wouldn't harm people but would only blow up other Star Wars spaceships. Cool, huh?

[Cosmicman]

I remember this little weaselly kid everyone called, "Worm". He used to tell us that he had a Green Lantern mego doll. I was so ****ed off, I kept dragging my grandmother into Woolworth's trying to find this Green Lantern Mego. Everytime I would go over to "Worms" house he conveniently didn't want to play megos when I asked about his Green Lantern mego.
It wasn't until years later I learned "Worm" was full of crap and Mego never made a Green Lantern.

[kryptosmaster]

Oh, I have a good one.
There was this kid in my village that sounds a lot like the kids in the stories listed here already. One that just needed to lie to impress or gain friends or nobody would play with him.
Well, my sister and my best friend and I always kind of hung out together and one day this kid comes by and starts telling his fibs.
This was just after the original Star Wars figures came out in 1977.
Well, all 3 of us wanted them so this kid, Brian Wagner, told us that his brother worked at the factory where they made them and for us to tell him which figures we wanted and he would have his brother get them for us FOR FREE!
So we were all excited and waited....and waited....and waited....
Well one day we confronted Brian; "Where are our Star Wars figures you promised us?".
This is the good part...LOL
Well, it seems that the plane that the Star Wars figures were on crashed and he couldn't get them for us now!
We knew he was full of spit at that point and figured him for a fabricator after that. We didn't really play with him too much, especially after that.
Of course maybe had we been a little more in-the-know, we would have realized that these figures were probably made in Hong Kong or somewhere like that and of course his brother (if he even HAD a brother??LOL) couldn't possibly have worked there. But the plane crash story was just so classic! LOL
My sister and I still laugh about that to this day.

Rich