Barbie, GoBots, and Masters of the Universe

I just can’t resist a newspaper advertisement that’s this awesome. Barbie has withstood the tests of time, and even though the brand is on a decline (CNN story), it has still managed to survive longer than Tonka’s GoBots and Mattel’s Masters of the Universe. Hell, Tonka doesn’t even exist these days, having been absorbed into Hasbro back in the early nineties. Great, all of this thinking about the stability of toylines has turned the joy of finding a sweet newspaper ad from the eighties into a bit of a downer. Sorry.