Childhood remembered in plastic robot form

Seeing the below article about a forthcoming Transformers live action movie (not till 2007 though) made me reminice about childhood fads/toy crazes of the 1970s/80s:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/eo/20050714/en_movies_eo/16938/nc:790;_ylt=AsQpOOn5JEOitdX4_VZt47owFxkF;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl

If I had half that stuff now it would be worth a fortune!
Some of my earliest toy-related memories were either of Action man whom in those days never wore a dayglow bodysock whilst powerboarding against Captain Polutoman but instead was a marine commando, Helicopter pilot, German Officer or even an Israeli defense forces trooper ready to take on those dastardly Palestinians!! An off shoot of Action man was Action force plastic action figures in there fight against Baron Ironblood and his Red shadows.. aagh, I was in the fan club and my codename was the same as the tank commander (with battery powered tank) which I'd just got for Xmas!

Star Wars figures were of course a constant thing, revived each time a film came out.. I always wanted an AT AT but they were too expensive, tch. The first figure I ever bought was a Stormtrooper.
Battlestar Galactica figures and the ships with little pilot figures were cool but sort of came and went..

Strangely I never really got into He-man or Thundercats. Dabbled in Zoids. Dungeons and Dragons figures were pretty good (about the time of the cartoon but nothing to do with the same characters, these were grown ups!).

Transformers though.. WOOOO! Some Goth themes must have stirred even then as my favourite was Skywarp, a stylish Black and purple Decepticon, followed by Soundwave who became a cassette player.. not very useful when fighting giant robots that turn into Fighter planes, trucks, tanks etc.. but at least I could pretend to be listening to my Duran Duran tapes on it.

Ho hum. Anyone else have fond memories rekindled by such rambling?