Tomy’s Mighty Men and Monster Maker with Fashion Plates at K-Mart in 1981

This 1981 newspaper advertisement (turn to p. 42) does one very important thing for us: This fills in a year in the sequence between 1979 and 1982 when it comes to tracking the pricing of the Mighty Men and Monster Maker art toy. With this ad, we can now see what the toy cost for each of those years:

• 1979 – $6.99 (adjusted for inflation: $23.43)
  
• 1980 – $6.88 (adjusted for inflation: $20.32)
  
• 1981 – $6.57 (adjusted for inflation: $17.59)
  
• 1982 – $5.99 (adjusted for inflation: $15.15)

I know, that’s a weird item to even care about, but I find the prices of old toys fascinating and thought you might enjoy seeing this info and especially the amounts adjusted for inflation. It is sometimes easy to look at these old ads and not think about how the value of the dollar has changed over time, but numbers like this should drive home: Things are very different these days.