As I speed toward my 35th birthday, I’ve been taking a little stock of my younger days. Growing up in the 1980s was a fun situation because there were so many awesome gearhead toys showing up all the time. The Saturday morning cartoon shows were full of ads for the latest and greatest truck, car, or construction set that did neat stuff. I managed to find a ton of awesome 1980s ads that show some of the coolest toys of the era. I knew my parents were great, but watching these ads made me realize that I had just about one of everything on the list! (I also seem to remember dad having as much fun with them as I did!)

I’m afraid of sounding like an old person when I lament the fact that, “they just don’t make stuff like this anymore,” but they don’t. These toys were all about creating the environment to play with them in. Piling up some rocks, making a tunnel, making dirt piles for the monster trucks to climb. It involved imagination and because none are remote control, it required you to get up off your ass and chase them around.

As you’ll see in these ads, monster trucks truly ruled the spectrum of gearhead kid toys back in the early 1980s. Directly or indirectly, many of these toys were inspired by them.

One last thing. I always hated the kids in the tv ads because they had to coolest setups to play with the toys in. You’ll see one ad with a truck climbing a running river! Who the hell had the time and skill for creating something like that at age ten?

I suck at video games because I was too busy playing with all the junk below: