The Energon Pub

Childhood, 10 or 11 years old, 1980's.

I was hard on Lego and I kept building spaceships. I just had (and still have) a small Lego box. Lego and Mega-Blocks are compatible. So it would have been perfect to have as a substitute. However, MB didn't exist in the 1980's.

I have divorced parents that lived in two towns separated by 250km at the time. In Xmas of 1986 or 1987, I had high hope to have a new Lego set.

I got a Construx set instead. (picture related) I look at my dad, dumbfounded, wanting to know it it was some kind of a joke. It wasnt. "It's cheaper than Lego he said". 'Kay, whatev', I still have my mom.

New year's eve, my mom give me the EXACT SAME Construx set. I was not a kid who cried often. But damn, tears poured in freely that night.

Worst Xmass ever. Was I punished? Was money so low? Or are my parents were stupid at the same time?

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Another one, but this time, it was way less dramatic. It was Xmass 1988-89. My mom and stepdad went all out. Me and my sister got both a Sega Master System each (sis lived with mom, I lived with dad.) Fist two seconds, I wqas disapointed it was not a Nintendo. But what the hell, it still was a brand new console. It beat a Atari anydays. So I still was really happy. The Sega was the same price as a Nintendo back then. Why was I given a Sega? "It have 3 games and a gun instead of just one game and no gun included". Nintendo had Mario Bros, of course, Sega have Hang-On, Safari Hunt, and a hidden Labyrinth game. Dear mom, ever heard of "quality over quantity"? Anyway, if it werent for them, I would have not know so many great games. And cxheap too because the Sega carts were quicly dropped to 10$ because it was really not popular in Canada.




Yeah, yeah, 1st world problems. Shut up

Yes. Although I guess it wasn't entirely their fault. I was very disappointed at the Pretenders, Autobot Clones, and both Headstrong and Repugnus when I received them in the 1980s. They weren't nearly as interesting as earlier Transformers, and I especially did not like the Pretenders, which weren't really even Transformers, but more just robots that folded up or sat inside a plastic shell. So it was a combination of my parents not knowing the difference and the fact that the post-movie Transformers in the 1980s really sucked.