Seeing as its the summer season I thought it would be great to take a look at the 1993 spring/summer Argos catalog. I really wanted to review the 1996 one but this was the closest I could get my hands on. I have only chosen pages of interest and not done the whole book like I did for the 1985 one. So lets indulge.
Nothing says summer more than Super Soakers! Super Soaker water pistols were a breath of fresh air (well high powered blasts of water) in the early 90's. The real appeal of these water guns was the fact that these guns actually hurt a bit instead of just getting people wet. The pump action one was a great addition to my collection of stuff to annoy my sisters with.
These are outdoor houses and slides. What caught my attention on this page was Quadro something I forgot existed and I am not sure if it even still does. Quadro was a construction toy where the possibilities were endless in a Lego fashion using plastic red scaffold pipes and tiles. Quardo was extremely expensive and most kids only got to play with this at school. The materials were strong as hell and I remember we made a stage for a school play once using Quardo and it was strong enough to carry the weight of the entire school pupils and staff. There was also a smaller scaled version also.
This may look like a page of out dated scientific calculators but these are also 1990's school status pieces. Now days kids have iphones and whatnot to be competitive about but in my day.. it was scientific calculators. The more buttons your calculator had at school meant the more it cost, and the more it cost the more awesome you were. I had one with quite a few buttons and I'm sure I never used any of them. I got expelled during my maths lesson.. it was never my thing. Neither was school either!
Kids had scientific calculators and yuppies had electronic personal organizers as status pieces. These bad boys could save phone numbers, addresses, plan dates and that's about it. Looking back these things were a complete waste of money and had all the usefulness of a broken Nokia phone.
These are some portable TV's which were very handy for holidays and bringing to school when England were playing back in the day. The hand held ones were super expensive and although they did work to a degree getting them to tune in was a pain in the arse and they only really worked in a stationary position. Trying to watch a hand held one in a car journey was very hit and miss due to signal loss. I got one for Christmas in 1992.
Here is a page of VHS video tapes from 1993. Not really much to choose from here unless you like kids TV shows, Del boy and wanking off to Cindy Crawford fitness videos.
This is a page with all the bog standard musical instruments. These were the first guitars alot of people owned growing up so I'm sure alot of you may have sentimental memories of some of this. The main reason this page struck my attention was the girl modelling the Karaoke set. She looks like a right pratt and you can tell she has a terrible voice. I know you cant tell just by a photo but a picture says a thousand words and this one says a thousand bad ones.
OK now we hit my favorite part of the book.. TOYS! So on this page we have the WWF Hasbro action figures which were still going strong at this point. The ring was the second version which had black ring posts and a sound effects board which sounded horrendous. The WCW ring was one of the biggest disappointments of my childhood and was a terribly put together toy which fell apart within days. The sets of Monster in my Pocket and mini Boglins were cool but didnt become very collectible until they became available for free in cereal boxes a year or so later. The Britains farm and castle were solid toy play-sets which survived almost 2 decades in the catalogs and toy stores. The Talking Dinosaurs plushy is something I would love to have in my current collection of crap from the 90's!
James Bond Jr was something I wasn't really a fan of when I was a kid. I loved James Bond and the closest thing I had to an action figure of him was the Corgi Aston Martin. Although I didn't like the show the action figures were pretty awesome and had their own actions and cool accessories. The Spider-man stuff was in actual fact part of the Toybiz line of Marvel Super heroes which was an amazing set of toys. I am guessing here that Argos decided that Spider-man was the only marketable toy from the set so they only sold his figure and vehicle. I had the Spider-man dress up suit but my miserable, strict, shit cunt of a primary school teacher Mrs Trim took it off me and never gave it back! Mighty Max is something I have written in great detail about before on here and they were awesome hand held play-sets for boys who loved horror and hated Polly Pocket. The talking Kevin from Home Alone doll is another toy I have written about in great detail before on Lost Entertainment. I may have to stop writing about toys as I have nearly exhausted them all.
Thunderbirds had a massive comeback in 1993 and they became one of the top selling toys in the action figures and play-sets department. Although Tracy island was reasonably priced for a leading playset alot of families still couldn't afford it and had to resort to making their own via instructions from Blue Peter. The Superman Costume was another sad day for me which I will relive now briefly. Basically when I was 4 I really wanted this costume so bad. The main reason I wanted it, was because I genuinely thought by putting the costume on I would become Superman and would be able to fly away and do loads of awesome shit. My mum ordered it from the Freemans catalog and I had to wait weeks for it to arrive. When it did I put it on and stood on the edge of the sofa with the window open and my arms out stretched and... Nothing. I cried my eyes out and have had a very dark outlook on life ever since. A big part of me died that day.. I don't know what part though but it was big.
The Terminator 2 Kenner action figures will always have a special place in my heart and I still have many of these to this day. These toys were just plain badass and the fact they were still hot sellers 2 years after the movie was made is just a testament to how great they were. The bioflesh re-generator was an anti climax as you could only make one naked Terminator at a time. I had visions of making loads of Terminator figures and selling them off at school. As you tell by now I was a fucking idiot as a kid and looked way too much into the capabilities of toys and costumes from Argos. The Batman stuff was still going strong considering the movies were a few years old at this point. Good toys were good toys back in the day and their shelf life was much more prolonged. Now days summer movie figures are long dead by Christmas.
The Crash Dummies were a nice little gem from the mid 90s which were huge and then disappeared into obscurity as quick as they became popular. They were a cool concept which also had its own animated show and video games. The figures and vehicles all exploded into bits on impact only to be snapped back together. Hours of fun indeed. The Action men in the bottom right hand corner were actually anniversary editions of GI Joe figures and are super awesome.
I have reviewed a few of these games before including the awesome Atmosfear but I just wanted to turn your attention to the Crystal Maze game. I remember this being so awesome and I need a copy bad if anyone wants to donate to me.
So here we have some watches that have LCD video games installed on them. These games were the worst things ever made and even Satan himself would shy away in sheer terror if forced to play one on a long drive across England. Battleship is a solid champ when it comes to table top gaming I never played the V Tech one so I cant comment. Electronic chess games are mental. You can play against this tiny machine which at a certain difficulty you can never win. This is awesome for kids or people that never have anyone to play chess with.. If they ever make a version for wanking I will never go out again!
This is a whole page of LCD games. LCD games were the worst unplayable things ever made. The only thing these games have to with the associated product is the sticker and the box. You would probably have more fun rubbing turds together in a hot car than trying to play one of these things during a road trip! That being said these things are highly collectible especially boxed.
The Super Nintendo now we are talking!!! All the games on this page were pretty solid minus Home Alone which was so bad being left alone aged nine and burgled in real life would be more enjoyable. The Super Scope was a cool gimmick but apart from the cartridge that came with it and Terminator 2: The arcade game were the only things worth using it for.
At this point the Nintendo Entertainment system was well on its last legs but Super Mario Bros 3 had pumped 2 years worth of life into it. Like I said though the console was dying and the age of the 16 bit was well in force. Minus Mario 3 all these games were horrendously bad even back then and haven't aged well either.
Here have the Nintendo Game Boy which maybe my favorite hand held console from back in the day. Great games on a horribly colored green screen with no back light to boot. My mum must have spent hundreds on batteries in the early 90s for this thing. I had the magnifying glass for it but my main memory of this was a kid used it to burn a slug to death in Marshalls park in Romford when I was 9.
The Sega Game Gear is something I have on the wall boxed here at Lost Entertainment. Some days I prefer it over the Game Boy. It was in colour and had a backlight so in that department it kicked the Game Boys arse. I never had a V-Tech painter was something I wanted but I ended up getting MS Paint so never needed it. The Atari 2600 was still hanging in there at £31.99 which is pretty amazing considering what year this was and what else was going on in the world of video gaming. The Commadore was a cool computer for its time but was the middle between a Master System and a Super Nintendo with a keyboard.
So here we have the Sega Megadrive selection. The Megadrive is one of my favourite consoles ever and will always have a place in my heart and my gaming collection. Some solid games here minus Home Alone AGAIN. The gun was pretty useless as there were only a handful of shooting games on Geneisis and most of them sucked. The Game Genie was awesome and something I hope they make for updated consoles so we can cheat and mod again. The Megadrive also had snap on add ons which as well as making the console look hideous, also needed extra power points for them which was a real pain in the arse. By the end they wanted your console to resemble Megatron from Transformers with all the snap on shit they were bringing out.
Finally we have page dedicated to stupid yuppy gadget toys like stress balls and mini punch bags. I thought growing up that men in office towers just practiced putting golf balls all day and squeezed stress balls. The truth of it is.. that is exactly whats happening and the main reason the world is so fucked up now. Have a nice day!
