• Rom was bought by board game company Parker Brothers from creator Bing McCoy. They wanted to try their hand in the booming action figure business since Star Wars figures were helping Kenner rake it in, and electronic toys were becoming all the rage. Why not combine the two?
• McCoy originally created Rom as a meditating Egyptian mystic, because he was studying meditation at the time. Thankfully that action figure didn't make it to store shelves. Although it could be argued that Rom's expressionless robot face and non-moving limbs are perfect models for meditation.
• Rom was pitched as a "cyborg," with no backstory, but he eventually got a micro-history, courtesy of the Parker Brother marketing department. Rom was a "Spaceknight" sent to the Earth to destroy "Dire Wraiths" who could assume any form.
• Rom came with an Energy Analyzer that could see if something was a Dire Wraith, a Translator that could allow him to talk to any "intelligent being" and a Neutralizer that could blast things into smithereens. Talk about clunky. "Hi, hold still while I use my clunky analyzer on you and then please don't move if I draw my neutralizer. Thanks!"
• Rom could "breathe" through his Respirator, which produced a raspy sound when you hit one of the buttons on his backpack. It allowed him to sound like he had asthma on multiple alien worlds.
• Rom's "rocket pods" allowed him to fly around via your hand. If you pushed another button on his back, these would light up red, just like his eyes, the respirator, the analyzer, the neutralizer, and the translator. They sure loved sticking red l.e.d.s on this guy.
• Marvel Comics later produced a Rom series of books that lasted 75 issues, far longer than the 1979 holiday period where Rom was introduced as a toy.
• McCoy approached Stan Lee in an effort to get Marvel to sue Robocop as being a Rom knockoff, but Lee decided it wasn't worth the money or effort. Probably because Robocop was much cooler.

In a day and age when Sesame Street ruled the airwaves and toys were marketed as "enriching and learning," Alphie was educational in the way white bread was "filled with vitamins." Armed with plastic game cards, Alphie allegedly could teach you math, memory skills, and some language basics. But all he was really good for was playing "Claire De Lune" over and over so you could drive your parents crazy.

He was sadly retired when Alphie II came out in the 1980s, but the new model sucked harder than the old one, and he was banished to the deep recesses of attics and basements across America. Alphie, I know you're somewhere in my parent's house in Texas. When I find you we'll see who gets schooled then, bitch.

Although Stretch was filled with goo that allowed him to perform his Plastic Man tricks, Vac-Man was filled with grainy pieces of "vegetable matter." Once you twisted his body into some malformed shape, you could shove the Vac-Pump into his ear and suck all the air out of him, and he'd stay in whatever shape you'd posed him into until you let the air come whooshing back by pressing his "cybernetic button." It didn't take long before you'd put him in the most perverted position possible and leave him like that until your mother confiscated the toy. Not that we'd know anything about that.

Check out the extremely informative instructions for Vac-Man in the gallery. The best part is that if Vac-Man breaks, don't despair! You can get a parent to fix him with a balloon, some rubber cement, and a little know-how. Just try doing that with a damn Xbox.