Some nice stories here, the ones from AVE in particular.
At the age of six I was into He-Man, Playmobil and Lego. My older brother got the Dragonfly and the Snowcat on his birthday. That and the G.I.Joe cartoons being broadcasted in the Netherlands (and seeing them on Great Brittain's Sky Channel) got me interested in those little soldiers. From then I wanted to play with G.I.Joe, so my He-Man collection wasn't expanded from that day on.
When I turned seven years old I don't believe there was a single birthday or Sinterklaas (kinda like Santa Claus, celebrated on December 5th) in my youth on which I didn't ask/get something from the G.I.Joe line. Anything G.I.Joe was the perfect present.
I started my collection with Hawk V2, Viper and the Rifle Range Unit. Got them on my 7th birthday.
Ofcourse I saw lots of promotion material in catalogues, stores, on tv and in the cartoons. I was always enthousiastic about new stuff coming out, but I also felt a little sad, because I saw pictures and cartoons of cool figures like the Crimson Trooper, Storm Shadow, Dreadnoks, Snake Eyes, the Moray Hydrofoil, Check Point Alpha etc. Stuff that wasn't available anymore.....

When I got older, my mom surprised me on (I think) my 12th birthday: I found a Moray Hydrofoil at the breakfast table!!! OMG! Imagine how that felt, like finding a treasure that you thought you'd never see in real life. She got it from a kid who sold his stuff. Kids would be selling their Joes on flea markets probably for the first time around those years so I started to visit them too from that moment on.