By Anthony J. Rapino

Time is a starving thing. With every hour, every month and year, time devours our memories. It feeds on our youth. Try as I might, holding on becomes harder with every cycle of seasons. A lost memory isn’t like a set of keys, forgotten in the other room and easily retrieved. There’s no going back for what we’ve lost.

Unless that memory is tied to a totem.

I’m a collector for a lot of reasons, but the foremost is because the things I save hold within them parts of my life, like a mosquito suspended in a chunk of amber. When I play Willow on the NES, when I display a particular Halloween blow mold, when I place a special ornament on the Christmas tree, memories flood back. For a moment, I’m immortal. For a split second, I can visit the past.

Unfortunately, as I’ve fled the chomping jaws of time, things were lost. Sometimes they vanish. Sometimes they’re sold. Sometimes they are borrowed and never returned. We all have those items from our childhoods we wish we still owned. Things that are tied to memories we desire to hold in our hands one more time.

What follows are the most prominent of my lost treasures.

The Omega Virus. (1992). Board game from Milton Bradley.

Status: Vanished without a trace.

The Omega Virus was one of those board games that had a lot of bellas and whistles. For a kid obsessed with video games, I was infinitely amused by the electronic elements of this board game. The Omega Virus used a battery operated, talking base that declared instructions and counted down to events as you played.

I received this gift sometime in 1993, and it quickly became one of my favorites to play with friends due to the interactive elements. My neighborhood buddies would pile into the air conditioning for a game on hot summer days, when riding our bikes was too sweaty a job.

About a decade ago, I was reminded of the game and searched my storage to no avail. Obviously, some foul beast sneaked into my home under cover of night and spirited my beloved boardgame away.

Making matters worse (as is always the case it seems), this game happens to be fairly collectible, and nearly impossible to buy complete and working for less than $100 on eBay.

Spinjas. (1988). Spinning top game from Tomy.

Status: Vanished without a trace.

This is another entry in the “who stole my stuff?” category. These tiny spinning gladiators where another favorite of my youth. They came in a set of two launchers and two fighters inside a case that doubled as a tiny arena. I also owned the deluxe battle stadium, which held numerous fighters and gave them more space to spin.

As with the last entry, these toys are highly sought after and go for hundreds on eBay, which means I will never own them again. Also like the previous entry, these toys vanished from my possession at some obscure point in the past. All that remains is a single Spinja fighter who managed to escape the clutches of time.

Genesis and Games. (1988). Video game console from Sega.

Status: Sold by my brother at a yard sale.

After years with the Nintendo Entertainment System, I jumped ship for the Genesis. I had begged my parents for this system, and one blessed day, as an elementary school graduation gift, my Dad surprised me with it. (This would also turn out to be the last console I owned until I got back into gaming with the PlayStation 3 many years later).

At some point in my high school years, I lost interest in video games, and my brother took the opportunity to sell off all that “unused junk” at a yard sale. It was around this same time he sold all of our Nintendo games too. Ah, the folly of youth.

Luckily, I started collecting retro video games before prices went insane, and I was able to reclaim everything I lost (and then some).

??? (Early ‘80s)

Status: A vague memory lost to time

In the early ‘80s, when I was still quite young, my dad came home with a set of rubber/plastic dragons. While most of the details are lost, I remember one of these creatures having two or three heads. There may have been humanoid figures as well, but I can’t remember. They might have been based on some fantasy show, or perhaps they were just one of a million generic toys sold in corner stores.

Of all the categories of lost things I’ve written about, this is the hardest. Not only is the memory barely there, but I don’t even know what toys these were, which means I can never reclaim them. Gone forever are both the memories and the totems.

A Retro-Daze Success Story

Status: Reclaimed and remembered!

One of my favorite things to do is rediscover things I used to own that I don’t remember until I see the item again. Earlier this year, I was exploring the background of a photo from my childhood (one I’ve used in articles before), when I noticed an NES game lurking half-exposed.

The photo was too blurry to make out, so I posted it on the Retro-Daze Discord server, where our very own That Dude figured out it was a copy of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom! Needless to say, a couple weeks later I had it (and Fester’s Quest, which was also in the picture) in my possession.

What are some of your lost items from childhood that you would like to reclaim?