If you live outside of the UK or live on another planet or whatever then let me tell you about this shop called Argos. Its quite a fucked up place if I'm honest and my only explanation is that the management one day decided that all the shelf stackers should be let go for cheapness. They dont need shelves full of products oh no, just big lamenated books everywhere and pens! If a costomer wants to purchase something they should write down what they want on a piece of paper then give it to a miserable member of staff. Then the costomer waits for half hour while the staff go out the back into some magical door and see if they can find the item written down. Eventually they bring out your item and call your reciept/ticket number out and you can claim your goods (kinda like bingo but not as fun).As a kid seeing the Argos man bring out my Castle Greyskull and having to wait my turn for the bastard to read my ticket out for before I recieve my toy which had been paid for brought an inner rage out in me which I still speak of in the shrinks to this day. I wanted to brain that cunt! And its not as if the granny in front of me in the que was gunna be having the Castle Greyskull even if she did look like Skeletors nan! When I got my ipod from there recently they were a bit quicker so maybe I might let it go!
Anyway heres the 1991 catalogue and the toy section which was and still is all i care about! you could say I'm a big kid but then again i could say your a big twat!
PLEASE CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM
By 1991 the Ghostbusters had really fizzled out with kids it was a new decade and after having a pretty good five or so years run at it the Ghostbusters ended up flopping like most toy lines do. I mean those items at the bottom of the page I have no idea what they are or why I would rather buy them over a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles playset. One looks like some form of car for disabled people and the others are just shit guns and unless they can fire real bullets or seriously mame or injure someone no kid would have wanted one. In fact if you brought this into school in 1991 you would have probably been told to "fuck off back to the 80's" and then been thrown in some bins by a kid wearing a MC Hammer T shirt... ok it happened to me but i dont wanna talk about it!
Above was one of the more popular toy franchises of the year which was based on the (at the time) "epic" Robin Hood movie with Kevin Costner. You know the one? the one with the shit Brian Adams song, where everyone in Sherwood Forest has an American accent, Christian Slater is put in it becuase he is Christian Slater, Morgan Freeman is the token black guy and Alan Rickman steals the show. At the time this movie was huge but now it hasnt aged well and its fucking shit! So shit infact I would rather sit through 6 hours of them gay Twighlight movies with someone pouring battery acid over my balls with my eyes clamped open to keep me awake during the horror.
By 1991 the Ghostbusters had really fizzled out with kids it was a new decade and after having a pretty good five or so years run at it the Ghostbusters ended up flopping like most toy lines do. I mean those items at the bottom of the page I have no idea what they are or why I would rather buy them over a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles playset. One looks like some form of car for disabled people and the others are just shit guns and unless they can fire real bullets or seriously mame or injure someone no kid would have wanted one. In fact if you brought this into school in 1991 you would have probably been told to "fuck off back to the 80's" and then been thrown in some bins by a kid wearing a MC Hammer T shirt... ok it happened to me but i dont wanna talk about it!
Above was one of the more popular toy franchises of the year which was based on the (at the time) "epic" Robin Hood movie with Kevin Costner. You know the one? the one with the shit Brian Adams song, where everyone in Sherwood Forest has an American accent, Christian Slater is put in it becuase he is Christian Slater, Morgan Freeman is the token black guy and Alan Rickman steals the show. At the time this movie was huge but now it hasnt aged well and its fucking shit! So shit infact I would rather sit through 6 hours of them gay Twighlight movies with someone pouring battery acid over my balls with my eyes clamped open to keep me awake during the horror.
Anyway the movie did have quite a good toy line though as it goes and I had both the varients of Robin Hood and that was all. I didnt need the playset (even though it looked pretty cool) becuase I had real trees in my garden so smoke that!
OK now we are fucking talking!!! For me as a kid this page was the be all for me! Where do I start? well I will go from the top of the page.
The Bartman playset! Now why the fuck the kid modelling the bart simpson costume has his shorts so fucking high up is beyond me. I know the cathphrase is "eat my shorts" but this is somewhat extreme. The Simpsons where the newest tongue in cheek thing to hit TV and they were red hot. The action figures were cool and i had the Bart one and none of the others (if your into the Simpsons check my review of the arcade game from the same year thats further down on this page).
Now brings me onto my personal fav of the whole thing the wrestling figures. If anyone knows me, they know I love wrestling and I always have done. Even as a kid I knew it was fake but there was just something about men on steroids that go around shouting all the time who pretend to beat eachother up in their pants that really appealed to me and still does to this day! 1991 for me I believe was the best roster that the WWF (now WWE) ever had. They had Hulk Hogan, Ultimate Warrior, Jake Roberts, The Undertaker, British Bulldog, Ricky Steamboat, Earthquake, The Legion of Doom, the Big Bossman, Mr Perfect, Ric Flair, Sid Justice, Sgt Slaughter, Macho Man Randy savage, Roddy Piper and not to forget the fucking Mountie!! Hasbro made action figures of all of the WWF roster from 1989 through to the mid 90s (Im gunna be doing a top ten of these soon). When you look at the price of these figures compared to todays (which start at like £6.99) its amazing that these were just £3.49.
Then next to WWF products was their arch rival company WCW and their figures. Now the WCW figures were just solid plastic and didnt move and were rubbish really. The WCW ring was something I had on my wishlist as a kid and was an anti-climax! The ring came with a cage, a bell, and some odd giant launching platform which catapaulted wrestlers in mid air normally no where near the cage. It confused me as a kid and when I tuned in to watch WCW I would always be hoping that they were gunna bring out the catapault for the main event. I would love to have seen Sting launch the Black Scorpion into the rafters that would have been awesome. Anyway this toy pretty much fell apart within two days and I ended up putting the cage on my WWF ring instead! Shitty WCW sucked back then!
Now we go on to the soft toys. The one in the top left hand corner is a Patch Up Pet. By the looks of things its a toy for aspiring child vets. Its a good thing to bring out really! when you have to resort to digging up next doors dog to practice on its never that fun!
Then we have some of them shit annoying walkie dog things that have leads that look nothing like real dogs and are just pointless kinda like most things girls play with and find interesting! Stick to dolls of babies and prams becuase your gunna need to know about that within ten years when you let some useless tosser do his load inside ya. I grew up in a house full of girls and I hated their fucking shit toys so I'm not gunna waste my breath writing about them!
Then we have Edd the duck! Edd the duck was a puppet sidekick of a childrens TV presenter called Andy Peters.
They introduced the kids TV programs from a broom closet in the BBC studios. Recently I heard Andy Peters was gay... how ironic that he was in the closet for all them years!... well i though that was quite funny even if you didnt!
Then we have the Were Bears which are also known as "I dont really care bears" and the "Were are they now?... bears" these were either continuations of the 1980's My pet monster franchise or rip offs. I dont remember many people having these and they dissapeared pretty sharpish.
Now onto the final part of the toys section and it was a two page spread the mighty Turtles. When the Turtles arrived in the UK in the begining of the decade they conquered all that was in their path. Just how Nirvana smashed the hair bands and the 80s out of the music scene the Turtles did the same with kids TV. No longer were kids interested in muscle bound men who wealded swords riding big green tigers, nor did they care for feline men of thunder, or trasforming robot cars and ghostbusters. No kids digged teenage mutant ninja turtles who had really nasty weapons and talked like surfers and ate pizza. With a live action movie, cartoon series, cerial line, a pizza hut marketing campaign, video games, toys and basicly any type of marketable merchandise the Turtles were the first kids franchise to score big in the 1990s. The turtles them selves would enevitably face the same fate as their predorcessors from the 80's did a few years later.
The toy line was pretty awesome and had everything from vehicles, figures and playsets. The top of the page are the figures and I owned all four of the Turtles and Shredder and that was all I had. I had a friend called Scott who had everything on this page including the van and the really cool pizza thrower which was basicly a vehicle which fired plastic discs with a pizza topping sticker on it. If used correctly these could really piss off a cat, dog, or elderly relative!
I got the inflatable turtle blimp for my 7th birthday in 1991. Now I dont ever remember them using an inflatable blimp ever and I brought it to school to show my friends that day and all of us were puzzled. I really wanted the sewer playset instead and used the blimp as a foot ball and kicked it till it burst. Everyone cheered and so did I... looking back I a was pretty messed up kid.
The sewer playset was pretty awesome and I remember once going round my friend who had this toys house and bringing my WWF figures round. It was really cool having Hulk Hogan and the Ultimate Warrior sharing some pizza in the sewer with the Turtles. It wasnt long before the Million Dollar man and Shredder crashed the party though! The Sewer was cool but it wasnt as great as the Ghostbusters Fire Station as far as im concerned. mind you im just saying that becuase I had the ghosbusters firestation and never had the sewer.
The rest of the Turtles stuff on this page was just watches, stuffed toys, board games and other Turtles crap which wasnt as good as the figures. Apart from the dress up kits which got barred from my school becuase we were chasing eachother round the play ground doing all kinds of bad kung fu with plastic knives and other weapons.
At the bottom of this page there is a Batman section which is odd as this line was 2 years old and the movie was old news then. Still it was a good toy line back then and I had all of the stuff on there apart from the batcave. I also got the gold Batman on my birthday and I thought he looked a bit gay to be honest so I hardly used him.
Anyway thats all
OK now we are fucking talking!!! For me as a kid this page was the be all for me! Where do I start? well I will go from the top of the page.The Bartman playset! Now why the fuck the kid modelling the bart simpson costume has his shorts so fucking high up is beyond me. I know the cathphrase is "eat my shorts" but this is somewhat extreme. The Simpsons where the newest tongue in cheek thing to hit TV and they were red hot. The action figures were cool and i had the Bart one and none of the others (if your into the Simpsons check my review of the arcade game from the same year thats further down on this page).
Now brings me onto my personal fav of the whole thing the wrestling figures. If anyone knows me, they know I love wrestling and I always have done. Even as a kid I knew it was fake but there was just something about men on steroids that go around shouting all the time who pretend to beat eachother up in their pants that really appealed to me and still does to this day! 1991 for me I believe was the best roster that the WWF (now WWE) ever had. They had Hulk Hogan, Ultimate Warrior, Jake Roberts, The Undertaker, British Bulldog, Ricky Steamboat, Earthquake, The Legion of Doom, the Big Bossman, Mr Perfect, Ric Flair, Sid Justice, Sgt Slaughter, Macho Man Randy savage, Roddy Piper and not to forget the fucking Mountie!! Hasbro made action figures of all of the WWF roster from 1989 through to the mid 90s (Im gunna be doing a top ten of these soon). When you look at the price of these figures compared to todays (which start at like £6.99) its amazing that these were just £3.49.
Then next to WWF products was their arch rival company WCW and their figures. Now the WCW figures were just solid plastic and didnt move and were rubbish really. The WCW ring was something I had on my wishlist as a kid and was an anti-climax! The ring came with a cage, a bell, and some odd giant launching platform which catapaulted wrestlers in mid air normally no where near the cage. It confused me as a kid and when I tuned in to watch WCW I would always be hoping that they were gunna bring out the catapault for the main event. I would love to have seen Sting launch the Black Scorpion into the rafters that would have been awesome. Anyway this toy pretty much fell apart within two days and I ended up putting the cage on my WWF ring instead! Shitty WCW sucked back then!
Now we go on to the soft toys. The one in the top left hand corner is a Patch Up Pet. By the looks of things its a toy for aspiring child vets. Its a good thing to bring out really! when you have to resort to digging up next doors dog to practice on its never that fun!Then we have some of them shit annoying walkie dog things that have leads that look nothing like real dogs and are just pointless kinda like most things girls play with and find interesting! Stick to dolls of babies and prams becuase your gunna need to know about that within ten years when you let some useless tosser do his load inside ya. I grew up in a house full of girls and I hated their fucking shit toys so I'm not gunna waste my breath writing about them!
Then we have Edd the duck! Edd the duck was a puppet sidekick of a childrens TV presenter called Andy Peters.
They introduced the kids TV programs from a broom closet in the BBC studios. Recently I heard Andy Peters was gay... how ironic that he was in the closet for all them years!... well i though that was quite funny even if you didnt!Then we have the Were Bears which are also known as "I dont really care bears" and the "Were are they now?... bears" these were either continuations of the 1980's My pet monster franchise or rip offs. I dont remember many people having these and they dissapeared pretty sharpish.
Now onto the final part of the toys section and it was a two page spread the mighty Turtles. When the Turtles arrived in the UK in the begining of the decade they conquered all that was in their path. Just how Nirvana smashed the hair bands and the 80s out of the music scene the Turtles did the same with kids TV. No longer were kids interested in muscle bound men who wealded swords riding big green tigers, nor did they care for feline men of thunder, or trasforming robot cars and ghostbusters. No kids digged teenage mutant ninja turtles who had really nasty weapons and talked like surfers and ate pizza. With a live action movie, cartoon series, cerial line, a pizza hut marketing campaign, video games, toys and basicly any type of marketable merchandise the Turtles were the first kids franchise to score big in the 1990s. The turtles them selves would enevitably face the same fate as their predorcessors from the 80's did a few years later.The toy line was pretty awesome and had everything from vehicles, figures and playsets. The top of the page are the figures and I owned all four of the Turtles and Shredder and that was all I had. I had a friend called Scott who had everything on this page including the van and the really cool pizza thrower which was basicly a vehicle which fired plastic discs with a pizza topping sticker on it. If used correctly these could really piss off a cat, dog, or elderly relative!
I got the inflatable turtle blimp for my 7th birthday in 1991. Now I dont ever remember them using an inflatable blimp ever and I brought it to school to show my friends that day and all of us were puzzled. I really wanted the sewer playset instead and used the blimp as a foot ball and kicked it till it burst. Everyone cheered and so did I... looking back I a was pretty messed up kid.
The sewer playset was pretty awesome and I remember once going round my friend who had this toys house and bringing my WWF figures round. It was really cool having Hulk Hogan and the Ultimate Warrior sharing some pizza in the sewer with the Turtles. It wasnt long before the Million Dollar man and Shredder crashed the party though! The Sewer was cool but it wasnt as great as the Ghostbusters Fire Station as far as im concerned. mind you im just saying that becuase I had the ghosbusters firestation and never had the sewer.
The rest of the Turtles stuff on this page was just watches, stuffed toys, board games and other Turtles crap which wasnt as good as the figures. Apart from the dress up kits which got barred from my school becuase we were chasing eachother round the play ground doing all kinds of bad kung fu with plastic knives and other weapons.
At the bottom of this page there is a Batman section which is odd as this line was 2 years old and the movie was old news then. Still it was a good toy line back then and I had all of the stuff on there apart from the batcave. I also got the gold Batman on my birthday and I thought he looked a bit gay to be honest so I hardly used him.
Anyway thats all
