To open, or not to open — that is the question. Very recently, there was a thread on Fwoosh about vintage or older toys and whether or not people opened them. I tend to see both sides of the issue. I do think toys are primarily for playing with, so my initial instinct is that everything should be opened regardless of the age of the toy. The other side is that a well-preserved packaged vintage toy can be more than just a plaything; it can can be every bit an art piece as that print of a Rembrandt that you bought at Walmart. Scarcity doesn’t matter. Whether there’s one or one hundred or one thousand, it’s about the way it makes you feel, the memories that it conjures, and the display value.
With that being said, I’m firmly on the opener side. I have to feel the toy, to move it around. It reminds me of another time, and usually if I’m spending the money on a vintage toy, it’s something I never had when I was a kid, so why would I leave it caged?
That doesn’t mean a full array of carded G.I. Joes or Star Wars figures wouldn’t make a fantastic wall display, but that’s a lottery win or two away.
Last year around this time I freed a vintage Starriors Auntie Tank from her cardboard, and I’m doing the same with a trio of her line-mates.
Starriors came in all shapes and sizes. While the humanoid-shaped ones were more prolific, the four vehicle-bots (called Rammors in the Starriors mythology) had the more interesting packages, with a detailed illustration of the enclosed toy. While there is a lot of nice packaging nowadays, there is nothing quite like the care with which even a lower-tier — and quite honestly, a failure — line like Starriors was handled. 
The non-humanoid characters all received their own unique artwork. Unfortunately, these didn’t do much to attract kids attention away from G.I. Joe, Transformers and MOTU.
I bought these from a seller that listed them as old store stock, and I believe it. The packages look like they’ve just been removed from a shelf, with very minimal wear. I can imagine a box of these sitting in some forgotten storage unit somewhere, untouched and unloved. These ended up at a Lionel for the low low price of $1.21. Whether that was a discounted price or the original price I’m not sure. I guess it’s possible these never made it out of a stockroom. It looks like they lived in a form of suspended animation between the years of 1984 and 2016 without suffering any ill effects of the ravages of time. The only small sign of aging was in the tape that still held the box shut.
My favorite of the three is the sleek black Backfire. With his orange-red accessories, he’s got the overall silhouette of a futuristic sports car. All three still feature working spring-loaded pull-back and zoom features, with rubber tires intact and rot-free. Like I said, right out of 1984.
Backfire was a clumsy little bad guy, always screwing up plans by zooming around like a maniac and running into the other evil robots
Next up is Motormouth, whose allegiance was very questionable. He’s got the appearance of a blunted car from the ’70s, or maybe what someone in the ’70s might think a car of the future would look like.
I’ve opted to stick with the basics for their various attachments, but everything is interchangeable even among each other, so if I wanted Backfire to have blue accessories (heresy) I could. I’m sticking with factory standards for each of them.
Last of the three is Thinktank, aptly named as the smart one and a good guy. He’s an oddly shaped one, like a sentient grocery cart or something out of The Jetsons.
I think the oddest thing about them is that they have a ton of personality despite not having faces or anything remotely able to emote on them. I think that says something about both the designers and whoever named them.
Each of them feature the tiny human that, in Starriors Mythology, is actually their brain.
Man is a myth in the Starriors timeline, so their brains are the only clue they have that man might not be as big a myth as they believe. It all makes sense when you read the comic. It’s not like they got a cartoon or anything.
While you can often find parts of them on eBay, these three are a bit hard to find complete and in good shape. Sometimes the rubber on the tires will have dry-rotted, or the stickers will be mangled, so grabbing all of them in-package, unharmed and un-stickered was a nice little coup. Like Auntie Tank, I’m opting to leave the stickers off of them, because I don’t trust 32 year-old glue to work right. I like having them pristine and shiny. While I didn’t pay a little over a buck a piece for them, I’m comfortable with the price I did pay, and will be keeping the nifty packaging flattened out alongside them. I’m growing very close to having a complete set of these little guys. If I run across anymore, that will definitely be the subject of a future Vintage Unboxing. 
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to pull these back and have them race each other across the floor, like a mature adult.
