Question On Boxes And Inserts Etc When We Were Kids

So I had the figures as a child at the tail end of the run so mostly ROTJ but was a bit too young to have the Star Wars and Empire figures from new, but just wondering did anyone as a child think at the time "Maybe I shouldn't be tearing open this box and throwing it in the bin as it may be valuable one day" ?

I personally can't remember opening the boxes or MOC's I just remember having the figures, my earliest memory of box opening is probably M.A.S.K which i'm pretty sure the boxes went straight in the bin, in fact I have memories of the boxes being rather an unnecessary chore to open all up as I just wanted to get to the toy : )

I feel ashamed to say that I ripped every box open and threw them away.......the shame. If only I had saved them. But no, was only interested in the contents :shock: :shock: :shock:

I kinda sorta remember thinking that I wouldn’t open a Logray and a Ree Yees that I got as doubles, but that thought lasted about as long as it took for me to open them both

I was a kid. They were toys. I gave not one single moment's thought to the packaging, just like most children. The packets were opened, the toys removed and the packaging binned. I wanted the toys, not the boxes. And besides, my mother wouldn't have let me keep a load of 'useless' cardboard to clutter up the house in any case!

Fast forward 4 decades and now, whilst it's certainly not true that I don't care about the toys, I care a damn sight more about the boxes! :lol:

Snaketibe said:

I was a kid. They were toys. I gave not one single moment's thought to the packaging, just like most children. The packets were opened, the toys removed and the packaging binned. I wanted the toys, not the boxes. And besides, my mother wouldn't have let me keep a load of 'useless' cardboard to clutter up the house in any case!

Fast forward 4 decades and now, whilst it's certainly not true that I don't care about the toys, I care a damn sight more about the boxes! :lol:

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That reminds me of when I got my B-wing and Y-wing... I tried to keep the boxes and hid them under my bed, but they were heaved as soon as my parents were aware I’d kept them

Like the rest of you I dont remember any boxes surviving after being opened. Totally different today, the boxes for all my kids toys are in the loft - probably a massive fire risk :?

I was one of those weird kids who kept boxes and actually put his toys back in them. :lol: All my SW vehicles were sold with their boxes, and most of the other toys I have from my childhood are still boxed!

I think it's because I used to love looking at toys in the shops and liked the idea of boxing it back up again so it was like a new toy to open. I like to think I was a budding collector even back then!!

peekaygee73 said:

I was one of those weird kids who kept boxes and actually put his toys back in them. :lol: All my SW vehicles were sold with their boxes, and most of the other toys I have from my childhood are still boxed!

I think it's because I used to love looking at toys in the shops and liked the idea of boxing it back up again so it was like a new toy to open. I like to think I was a budding collector even back then!!

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And it's precisely because of kids like you that collectors today are able to buy boxed items, so THANK YOU!

I did certainly look after my toys once they had been opened and kept them mint and never lost or damaged a single weapon or accessory (lightsabers were carefully removed from Luke, Ben and Vader's arms and placed in my weapons box after each 'play'), but the boxes and packaging never even entered my thoughts as a 6 - 11 year old :-(

Snaketibe said:

peekaygee73 said:

I was one of those weird kids who kept boxes and actually put his toys back in them. :lol: All my SW vehicles were sold with their boxes, and most of the other toys I have from my childhood are still boxed!

I think it's because I used to love looking at toys in the shops and liked the idea of boxing it back up again so it was like a new toy to open. I like to think I was a budding collector even back then!!

Click to expand...

And it's precisely because of kids like you that collectors today are able to buy boxed items, so THANK YOU!

I did certainly look after my toys once they had been opened and kept them mint and never lost or damaged a single weapon or accessory (lightsabers were carefully removed from Luke, Ben and Vader's arms and placed in my weapons box after each 'play'), but the boxes and packaging never even entered my thoughts as a 6 - 11 year old :-(

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I was obsessed by the photo diorama's on the front of the boxes and would try to recreate the scenes in my parents garden so I did keep all the boxes cards etc I liked to draw and paint also still do today, so would copy the scenes also. The photo below which has been on here a few times before shows my hoth scene in the middle of summer prob about 81 :lol:

Some of the boxes do have air gun pellet holes in them where I would take the occasional pot shot so the love could not have been too great :lol:

I don't think I would have kept the boxes without the art work as none of the other toys I had ever had the boxes with them, there was something about the sw packaging back then like it was part of the toy in some way??????

I kept all my weapons etc in top trump boxes

I was a strange kid growing up. I would bearly move the joints because I didn't want them to become floppy.
It was my mum that told me to keep the packaging, telling me they'd be worth money one day. I didn't listen to her and throw them away in a big clear out when I was about 14. Mother knows best :lol:

I never had any vehicles when I was young but the figures were ripped of the card as soon as I got them and the packaging thrown away, the thought of keeping it just didn't occur to me. With some of the Palitoy release first 12 figures, Chewbacca, Stormtrooper Han Solo, a good condition cardback can be worth more than the figure itself nowadays, especially if the bubble is still intact or even loose. A Palitoy 12a Chewie cardback recently sold for over £70.00 on Ebay.

The only thing my Mum told to keep hold of because "they could be worth a lot of money one day" was my collection of Beano comics from the early eighties. They're not.

I kept most of my boxed Star Wars items from childhood as I insisted on it. The first Items I got were MF, AT-ST and Snowspeeder, my Mum through all the boxes out and I whent nuts! So from then on all the boxes were kept. Annoyingly I didn’t keep any of the cardboard inserts. I’m not really sure why I insisted on keeping the boxes, it certainly wasn’t because I thought they may be worth something one day. Perhaps more to do with the fact I liked keeping the vehicles in their boxes when I wasn’t playing with them. The pictures on the front were always fascinating to me.

I never had any Star Wars toys to open that was my older brother's thing and I was too young and into other stuff, I do have very clear memories of what we did at xmas though. Me and my 3 brothers every year would all have our presents stacked up inside large black bin liners, my mom would stand up the bags on different chairs and places in the living room for us all to see when we woke up xmas morning. Not one single thought from any of us went into wanting to keep boxes for any single toy ( accept if it was a board game box to keep everything in there for storage ), every toy that got opened was ripped and torn, no cutting through selotape/seals with knives or scissors, we'd just tear the box to **** around the seals to get them open, we didn't see them as 'boxes' it was just packaging in our eyes the same as opening a packet of crisps.

And once all the opening was over ( I remember there was a bloody lot of packing leftover from 4 of us ), we'd all get the black bin liners and tear, scrunch up and **** every single bit of packaging into the bags ready to chuck out, leaving us with a load of loose toys. I can still visualise the mountain of packaging on the floor ready to bag up, so bad that we'd have to double check through it all just in case we left in an accessory or instruction leaflet amongst it, there was probably many hundreds of £'s worth of boxes in today's value, just shocking, but how were we to know?, so in that way I forgive myself.

It's weird though how I still remember a lot of what the boxes looked like back then on xmas morning for toys I had, even though I didn't give them a second thought and torn them to pieces after having it for 5 seconds.

Snaketibe said:

peekaygee73 said:

I was one of those weird kids who kept boxes and actually put his toys back in them. :lol: All my SW vehicles were sold with their boxes, and most of the other toys I have from my childhood are still boxed!

I think it's because I used to love looking at toys in the shops and liked the idea of boxing it back up again so it was like a new toy to open. I like to think I was a budding collector even back then!!

Click to expand...

And it's precisely because of kids like you that collectors today are able to buy boxed items, so THANK YOU!

I did certainly look after my toys once they had been opened and kept them mint and never lost or damaged a single weapon or accessory (lightsabers were carefully removed from Luke, Ben and Vader's arms and placed in my weapons box after each 'play'), but the boxes and packaging never even entered my thoughts as a 6 - 11 year old :-(

Click to expand...

:lol: Good point - I just wish I was the one benefitting from my childhood collection.

It's funny, because we were the opposite. I thought we looked after our toys but I've photographic evidence that my brother's R2 was absolutely knackered, our Luke Bespins both lost a leg(!) and had really loose joints (I remember the plastic being really loose), and we lost various weapons. The hinges on the canopy for my Cloud Car broke, as did the hinge on the Falcon ramp. We weren't particularly careless with them, it's just we played with them a lot.