Let's see where this thread goes. I'm hoping it will be based on your favorite, if perhaps slightly unusual, Joe collecting memories, of things that you bought in-store. Maybe it was something you didn't expect to find, or the circumstances were somehow unusual.

Here's my contribution.

It was when I found the LUNARTIX ALIENS. It was 1994, and there had been some concern and confusion, even at the Convention, as to whether they were going to come out. Being a science-fiction fan as well as a Joe fan, I was very interested in this oddball trio. But I wasn't especially hopeful.

Then one day in Target -- THERE THEY WERE! I could scarcely believe it. And there was a generous supply. Having the money at the time to do it with, I decided to get several sets. I raced to the front of the store, fast enough so that I think my sneaker tread marks were visible right up until they completely overhauled the place, grabbed a shopping cart, headed back to the toy section, and tossed three of each of Predacon, Lobotomaxx, and Carcass into the cart.

They're still among my personal favorites.

So I really left the whole Joe world for a long time through college and grad school and the rest of my twenties, but when my wife got pregnant and I found out it was a boy about two and a half years ago, it lit a fire and I went to my parent's house and climbed into the attic. I am a recent member to this hobby, but my favorite memory as a collector is opening up those old boxes and pulling out all my childhood GI Joe stuff. The memories flooded back. Definitely for me, rediscovering all those old memories and repairing and recompleteling those vehicles to save and pass on to my son when he is ready and mature enough not to destroy them, was very enjoyable.

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Two really stand out:

I remember being late 1985/early 1986 and going to one of those discount bargain stores. They had a whole slew of carded figures. I looked through every single one, and hanging on the last peg, right at the very back, was a single MOC minty white Storm Shadow! I have never seen a carded Storm Shadow before and all my friends had theirs loose that were always yellowed/missing weapons. My mother bought it for me after some convincing!

And for my birthday I got was a sealed Terror Drome back in 1986. It came with 2 AVACs and extra pieces for another half of a Terror Drome 

Both of mine were more recent.

I bought a couple figures from sgcaper on an eBay auction. V1 Mutt & Junkyard and v1 LowLight. Lowlight was the first out of the mailer. I never had him as a kid, but a friend did and I always liked him, and he was in great shape. Then I pulled out Mutt & Junkyard. V1 was always my favorite as a kid and Mutt has always been my favorite character. But when I pulled that figure from the mailer, I can only compare it to almost passing out as my vision blurred and I was suddenly, instantly brought back to me childhood, all those memories of this figure came racing forward in my mind. It was indeed a great moment. I haven't had that feeling with any of the other figures I've bought that I'd had from my childhood. Whenever I pull that figure from the bag, I still just hold it for a moment and look at it.

The other is about a HISS, it's a two fold story. When I was a kid, mom would never buy me Joes or Transformers, she didn't like war toys, so I had to buy my own. I set aside flag points and part of my allowance so I could but a few items from the Mail In Offers. One day I came home from soccer practice and found a box waiting for me in my room. I opened it and inside was the HISS, MANTA and Hooded Cobra Commander. I couldn't believe it. Mom had actually bought these items for me. She told me I had been a "good boy" for a while and was doing well in school, so she bought these items as a reward. Drawback was that now I had to continue to be a good boy and do well in school...
The second part of this is that since I often played with a friend of mine who had a huge Joe collection, mom didn't want my HISS to get mixed up with his, so she puled the turret out and painted my initials on the bottom "KOP." Fast forward a few years and I put a bunch of my stuff in storage. The book keeper screwed up on my account and made it seem like I hadn't been paying storage fees, so my unit was sold off and I lost everything I owned, including all my childhood toys. And fast forward again to 2009ish. I decided to "troop build" some HISS tanks. One of them came from western Colorado. When I got it, I noticed that, looking from above, the 788 decals were not aligned, something my childhood HISS had wrong with it. I thought just for a moment, doubting the possibility, but I pulled out the turret, and sure enough, there were my initials "KOP" still painted on the bottom.

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well im not sure if its a happy story but here is something i wrote in a blog i had back in 2007.

a life of crime avoided.

i work at a wal mart supercenter and when i went in last night i caught 3 brothers around 8 to 11 stealing literally about $300 in yugioh cards.
so the managers took them up front and scared them a little then called their father to come get them.and i couldnt help but wonder if it would in any way make a difference in there lives?

and it made me remember when i was 12 in 84 i lived with just my very ill father and we were dirt poor white trash. i was desperate for a G.I.Joe stinger driver, i wasnt even really that concerned with the stinger i just wanted that cool looking gray cobra trooper.i remember my best friend chris at the time use to go to a TG&Y everyday after school got out and would steal figures.he always asked me if i wanted to go and i was terrified by the thought and would always say if i go you cant be taking stuff so i would never end up going with him .so finally one day i got some allowance money which didnt happen very often and i was so excited and all i could think of was that stinger driver, it was just enough to buy it.
so me and chris walked to the tg&y and i kept telling him the whole way not to steal anything while he was with me.
and once we got to the store i just stood there holding the stinger in my hands staring at that cool driver through the little window.
and i just started thinking how if i bought it i would be totally broke again and theres no telling when i would get an allowance again.
i must have just stood there holding it and looking at it for 20 minutes, and chris started saying just take it, just take the figure out its so easy.and i started thinking about how it seemed he did it everyday and never got caught and i started making excuses for myself thinking its just this once just this one figure its no big deal. and slowly i started picking at the tape and i would set it down and look around at other stuff for awhile, then pick it back up and pick at it some more and set it down and look around thinking i was being sneaky.and after what seemed an eternity i had the whole inner sleeve pulled out of the box and laying on the shelf, all i had to do was grab the figure and pull.
and i just kept staring at it i just couldnt do it i was terrified, and then chris getting impatient said just do it lets get out of here and he grabbed it and pulled it out real quick. and at that very moment this big tall teenage stock boy walked by and looked at us and kept going and we freaked out, we didnt know what to do so we just started walking for the door as fast as we could looking all around us and seeing no one. i remember stepping out that door and we started walking down the sidewalk and the relief just washed over me then we hear this voice boom from behind us HEY KIDS STOP! and chris just took off running and i stood there frozen in fear as this stock kid grabbed me and these 2 others went tearing after chris he didnt have a chance.
and as i stood there watching the other 2 drag chris back to me slowly down the sidewalk i thought my life was over.
they took us in the backroom and scared us talking about getting out the rubber hose, i didnt know what that meant but i did not like the sound of it.finally some police showed up and drove us both home and came in and talked to our parents.
me just sitting there as the cop told my exhausted sick father i was caught stealing.

and i sometimes wonder what would have happened if i had not been caught that first time?would that one adventure have been enough for me or would i have started going every day like chris and getting more till i got into some real trouble.

but you know what the strangest part is? my absolute most wanted and looked forward to figure right now is the new 25th anniversary stinger driver!

i cant wait to have that guy in my hands, maybe reliving one of the not so great times of my youth.

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: Christmas 90 which was bitter sweet as my grandmother passed away on the 10th of December, so Christmas wasnt much of a exciting thought at the time. On Christmas Eve we all sat around the tree handing out presents. I was perking up as I had just gotten a real swiss army knife, so I could be just like Macgyver. Then I was handed this huge box and was rather confused. I gave it a shake and it rattled like it was full of something.as I peeled back the paper I could see the gi joe logo and tore into that bad boy. It was the Cobra Hammerhead, after about 2 minutes of me yelling triumphantly over the success of getting it, I was handed one more which I opened much slower, once I got into the actual box it was a set of Sonic Fighters figures. I think that was the point that I realized my Grandma had gotten me everything I had asked for that Christmas. I kept the boxes and cards to the figures and vehicle, still have them. Just one of those things where It was kinda like even though she had passed away, she was still there.

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Suburbanator's HISS tank story has always been one of my favorite collecting stories, but this one just became my favorite.

So many cool Joe related moments. There was the time Lady Jaye and Flint came to learn about customizing in Indy. The time in Orlando playing with Dreadnoks on a man made beach while watching the sunrise at Disney at a Joe convention with my wife. Getting to watch the GI Joe movie with friends with one of them actually being in the movie. Watching everybody play with traveling Shipwreck.

Here's one specifically about toys. When I lived in California, Sledge Hammer, batdan, and I used to sell at a toy show together. Well, batdan had a huge box of vehicles he hadn't gone through in forever. He tried to sell the whole box for $50. Nobody was biting, especially one dealer who scoffed at the price. After a couple of hours Sledge and I got bored and we started going through the box putting pieces to the vehicles together and then setting them out on the table. I can't remember the final tally but I think we pulled 12 vehicles out of the box with 7-8 of them being complete or close to it including a Mamba helicopter and Vector jet (with paint on it) that sold individually for way more than $50. I remember the Vector because a kid bought it and Dan threw in a figure because he felt bad it was painted. But that isn't why I remember it so fondly. It was 3 guys sitting around a box of toys, talking, joking, and playing a game of Indent-o-Fun in real life.

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I remember you telling this story before -- it still amazes me -

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My favorite is of Alpine's gun. I was playing with Alpine at a friend's house in 1986 and his gun fell out of his hand. It disappeared and I couldn't find it. I had my friend and his brother look, but we never found it. Two years later, we were playing football in their yard when the ball went into the bushes. As I dug the ball out of some weeds, I found my Alpine's gun sitting in the dirt.

Between 1988 and 1991, I lost the gun again. I had no idea where it was. In 1997, I put some Joe vehicles on display. While reading a book one night, I looked up and noticed something odd sticking out of my SnowCat. I investigated and found it was that Alpine's gun.

After that, I was much more careful and I still have that gun today. You can still see the dust in the cracks from sitting in my friend's yard for two years.

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My parents divorced in 1984, and my mother and I had moved out of the house a year earlier. I visited my dad over Christmas and he told me he was moving out, so I had one last chance to grab anything out of my room, otherwise it was getting pitched. At that time I was primarily into 3 3/4" Joes, and since I had taken them with me, I didn't grab anything.

Looking back, that was a huge mistake. I let my dad throw out my 12" Joes, all of my Mego figures (Super Heroes, Star Trek, Planet of the Apes, and all of their vehicles and playsets), my Evel Knievel stuff, Adventure People, and all Star Wars vehicles and playsets up to 1982 (Though I did take all the figures when we moved out), and the list goes depressingly on.

Fast forward about a decade and I am getting heavily back into action figure collecting. I see pictures of all of the stuff I had and I wished I would have grabbed it all, as it was now sitting in a dump. Then I started thinking maybe I could get some of it back. We lived out in the country, so there was a chance my dad just went out into the woods and dumped everything, and if he did they would still be out there. This notion of looking for my toys wore on me for a few years until I finally decided to take a look. So on night in 1997 I get in my car in the middle of the night and drove 200 miles to our old house. I walked out to the woods where we dumped our trash and started rooting around. I found old cans and bottles, but nothing of my old toys. After a couple of hours I was ready to pack it in and forget about it. I Decided to try one more little area on my way out, and that's when I found things. I first found my old Evel Knievel figure, all dirty and faded, I didn't care one bit about his condition. A bit later I found my old die cast Star Destroyer, still with the Rebel Blockade Runner inside! Then, I hit the motherlode! I found 2 of my old 12" GI Joes: a painted head Joe and Mike Power, Atomic Man! After 13 years their clothes were gone and their elastic cord had dissolved, but they both had all their parts. I went home happy that I found some of my childhood toys. The Joes cleaned up nice and were easy to restring, and now stand proudly with the rest of my collection!

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I bought a cobra tank once from a guy, and he told me the story behind it. It was actually used in the Sears catalog shoot, and the guy never came back to pick it (or the other toys with it) up afterwards. I ended up buying it off him about a decade and a half or so later, and no one had ever played with it.

It was one of these:

http://www.yojoe.com/vehicles/85/cat/



- R

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Dude, that is just awesome.

Yea, Suburbanator has the coolest story, with the HISS tank. But it's funny because I totally relate to the story about Mutt too. Never a favorite of mine as a kid, but one of the first figures I acquired when I got back into collecting as an adult, and I've loved him ever since. He's just COOL, and a lot of fun. And I to this day don't care for the GI Joe animal statues, but I loooove Mutt. It's weird.

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My favorite unusual memories was a case of mistaken identity. I got straight-arm Breaker and Hawk from my father, a big military buff. I was 5 or 6, so I was really a shade too young for them. My parents both loved M*A*S*H, and I never liked that show. So at first I thought the Joes were M*A*S*H figures, despite the GI JOE banner on the card, until I started to see the cartoon later. I was not a bright child.

Again, not toy related. Atlanta Con, the Joe board trivia contest. This wasn't the worst Club run event ever (the painful Orlando Con dinner and bus break down still holds that distinction), but it was close. Anyway, skip to the end, JOECUSTOMS WINS! JOECUSTOMS WINS!

bithomas goes running up the isle cheering and waving his hands in the air in excitement. As Brian Savage is putting the medals on the trivia winners, they start singing the medal ceremony music from the end of Star Wars.

THAT isn't even the best story to come out of that Atlanta Con. Someone who was there needs to tell the VP story (nova, GeneralHawk).

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