Retro TV Ads

1980 commercial for the Starbird by MB games.

Star Bird is a plastic-bodied, electronic handheld toy that was produced by MB Electronics from 1979.   The Star Bird manual describes it as “THE AMAZING SPACESHIP with realistic engine sounds and flashing laser blasts”.

The toy is only used in three configurations: the Star Bird which consists of all available pieces, the Star Bird Fighter which is mostly only the front hull, and the Star Bird Orbiter which is the main body without the front hull. When turned on the Star Bird mimics an engine sound. If the toy is pointed upwards the sound would automatically be altered to imply acceleration or taking-off, while a nose down orientation gives the sound of decelerating engines. A button activates the LEDs at the front of the toy, along with a blast noise, to simulate the firing of its lasers. A simple, detachable drone-like “Interceptor” is provided at the end of each wing. It also had a rotating laser turret which doubled as an escape-pod/orbiter-type ship. Follow-up toys to the Star Bird, called the Star Bird Space Avenger and the Star Bird Command Base, arrived on the market in 1979. This toy was developed by Bing McCoy who designed a number of successful toys in the late 70’s including Electronic Battleship and ROM the Spaceknight.

Info taken from Wikipedia

1980 commercial for Hornby Train sets.

Hornby Railways is the leading brand of model railway in the United Kingdom. Its roots date back to 1901, when founder Frank Hornby received a patent for his Meccano construction toy. The first clockwork train was produced in 1920. In 1938 Hornby launched its first OO gauge train. In 1964, Hornby and Meccano were bought by their competitor Tri-Ang, and sold on when Tri-ang went into receivership. In the 1980s Hornby Railways became independent.

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Rating: 9.3/10 (4 votes cast)

80’s advert for Transformers toys.

1982 ad for the Petite Dressing Table girls toy.

1988 Playskool toy ad.

1988 commercial for the Go for broke board game from MB games.avi ‘You have to lose a Million to win!’

1986 advert for the Playmobil ESSO Garage.

(pronounced “play-mo-beel”, and occasionally referred to as just Playmo) is a line of toys produced by the Brandstätter Group (geobra Brandstätter GmbH & Co KG), headquartered in Zirndorf, Germany.

New products and product lines developed by a 50-strong development team are frequently introduced by Brandstätter. Some of these, such as promotional products, are only produced in limited quantities. For example, Read the rest of this entry »

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Asterix Toy Advert from the late 80’s early 90’s

Toys R Us advert from the 90’s

Action Man - Skyhawk commercial from the 80’s