When I was about 17 or so, I loaned my entire ARAH collection, 1982-1990, to my little cousin. After a while, I decided to be charitable and tell him he could keep it. He was pretty excited and I'm sure he got a lot of play out of it, so I guess it was worth it.

Naturally, when I got into collecting toys a few decades later, I winced a bit. After searching through a few bins of my old toys, all I came up with was a Captain Gridiron helmet, one of Darklon's lower legs, and a few assorted missiles. I do still have the Joe HQ and my MOBAT, which I think were already in storage by the time I gave my Joes away.

I have since replaced a handful of my old favorites and picked up ME versions of a lot of the others, but I still kind of wish some of them were the Joes I had actually played with as a kid. Still, though, the hunt for the replacements has been fun, so I'm come to terms with it.

(Oh, I do still have one figure, who in some ways is one of the most important: my very first custom figure, Imp. Imp was the result of a horrific Cobra experiment in teleportation gone wrong. Horribly disfigured and driven mad by Cobra's nefarious experiments, Imp escaped and became a quixotic ally to the Joes with an uncanny knack of teleporting in to the rescue just when their backs were against the wall. I have since restored Imp to his former glory and I've been contemplating tracking down the parts to do a ME version as well!)