Very vaguely remembered-- it was some sort of candy factory toy. I think it was yellow, I think it was from Disney. It made jelly-like candies in some sort of mold using process. I really liked that bizarre toy, yet I recall almost nothing about it. Anybody recognize it?
God I hated Hungry Hungry Hippos.
But they do–the aforementioned Creepy Crawlers. I was a kid of the late '80s and '90s and remember them fondly. I don’t think they were as dangerous as the ones you mention, but they were the same type of thing. They made insects and I think there were some others you could make–all I had was the Creepy Crawlers, though.
Incredible Edibles? It was essentially the same idea as the Thingmaker/Creepy Crawler set, only with edible goop. They tasted nasty.
This reminds me of Sixfinger. It was a flesh-colored gun shaped like a finger. You held the grip in your fist, so if the spies from the Other Side aren’t looking too closely, you look like you’re just normally walking around with your index finger extended. But in reality it was a gun that shot projectiles (including one that was could hold asecret message) about six feet.
The Mighty Men & Monster Maker. You would choose from a variety of plastic plates, one each for head, torso, and legs. Put paper over it, rub with a crayon. This gave you an outline of your creation, which you could then color with crayons or markers or colored pencils or whatever. Made lotsa neat pictures with that one.
I remember the Johnny West stuff and also a talking GI Joe. My sister and I tried to play a trick on my Dad with the GI Joe–we put the guinea pig out on the kitchen floor and waited for Dad to come get a beer from the refrigerator, whereupon we hid and pulled GI Joe’s string. But no matter how much beer Dad drank, he wasn’t fooled into believing that a guinea pig could say “Mission accomplished!”
Slime was great fun for playing tricks on your schoolteachers. The only problem was that any teacher who’d been on the job for more than three days already knew what it was, so one rarely got the desired effect of seeing one’s teacher have a total nervous breakdown when the stuff was poured on her desk.
One thing I recall was not really a toy involved getting plastic container lids from the butcher’s department at the store, drawing a design with magic markers, punching a hole in the lids, and baking them in the oven until they shrank and hardened, at which point you put a string through the hole and wore the plastic disks around your neck. I think a company eventually made a do-it-yourself kit for this activity.
OK, did a bit of research and the car wash thing was called “Mr. Kelly’s Car Wash”, so I didn’t imagine it after all.
Meanwhile in the “children’s Weapons of Mass Destruction” category, may I present to you the mightyJohnny Reb cannon, with which, during the early '60’s, I slaughtered uncounted battalions of Army Men, broke a couple of lamps, and pinged cannon balls off the head of my younger brother when he was being particularly annoying.
This wasn’t really a toy, but I always enjoyed using my Spirograph. The kit consisted of different sizes of plastic circles with holes in them. You put a pen in one of the holes and rolled the circle around on a piece of paper, making neat looking geometric designs.
I think these are the Honey Hill Bunch dolls.
I didn’t have any, but another little girl on my street had this set, and I was very jealous.
Can anyone help with an ID for this toy – it was a construction/building set, you snapped together horizontal and vertical pieces to make the skeleton of a building, and then snapped on plastic rectangles to make the exterior walls. The look of the design was 1960s modern, although I had this set in the 1970s (ok, it was really my brother’s set, but whatever). We had one set with an airport theme, it also came with little signage clips-ons so you could build O’Hare, Kennedy, or other actual airports.
It was NOT an Erector Set, and once you finished building, it didn’t have any moving parts, it was more like a model. Once you built it, it took freaking FOREVER to unsnap the whole thing and put it back in the box.
Can anyone remember the name of a toy that was sort of a puppet, but you’d stick different things on his face, like scars, or a giant nose.
Another shot in the dark: Anyone remember King Dings?
I Vant To Bite Your Finger.
The board game for budding oral-digital/felt-marker fetishists.
Delphica:
Sounds like Construx. Here’s a link with a picture, but I remember all mine were grey with blue rectangles and cube connectors.
I recall in the early 70’s that my brother and I had an astronaunt action figure. He could travel in a transparent globe of some kind. It was cool back in the day. Can’t remember the name.
I also had an Evel Knievel action figure with a motorcycle and the van. You could set up the van with a ramp on the back and take Evel and have him jump the van.
How about Rockem’ Sockem’ robots? That was a blast to work out your frustration on your siblings. “Knockin’ their blocks off” was a whole lotta fun.
The one thing I wish I could find again was a model set of the Prehistoric era. There were dinosaurs and cave men too. The cave men probably stood about 8 inches tall or so. You could buy this stuff individually. I recall having the “cave” setting with a neanderthal man. It was pretty detailed if memory serves me right. Seems like there was a “tar pit” accessory too.
delphica - It also could be the Girder and Panel Building Set. I loved this. http://users.rcn.com/ed.ma.ultranet/gphistory.html
The toy I had that no one remembers was from the early 70’s. It was called either the “Take Apart Choo-Choo” or the “Pull Apart Choo-Choo.” It was a train engine with a clear plastic shell and colorful gears inside. You could take it apart and put it back together. I’ve never been able to track another one of these down.
They were quite popular in my grade-school days (eastern Iowa, early-mid 70s), but everyone called them Zonkers.
I wish I could remember the name of these occult-like board games.
Some haunted house thing, where occasonally you would drop a small metal ball down a chimney. It would fall down one of 4 paths that would trigger some sort of rube-goldbergian device that might knock over your gamepiece, forcing you back to the starting line.
A seance themed game, where some old uncle died. There was a hidden small orange record that would play random sayings from the desceased - where he would bequeath parts of his fortune. The object was to amass the most inheritance. There was even a glow-in the dark picture of the old coot, that would appear at the end of the game if you turned out the lights.
I remember Exin Castles, a great construction set to build any kind and shapes of medieval castles. Now I only own no more than fifty pieces… not enough to build a single little house. If some of you know if the set still exists to buy, I will thank you.
And a sort of board with trails in it… representing a city like Chicago in Capone’s times, with cars that chase themselves freely and you only can control the bifurcations to make them crash… what was it?
Ahh… Mr. Chimp. It was a lovely monkey with a remote control attached (by cable), controlling the movement of his arms and legs to make him do acrobacies…
chemistry set, yo-yo’s, cap guns, BB guns, erector set, a football game that had a motor that jiggled the board and these little players zoomed around until the one with the ball banged into one from the other team.
weird. I opened this thread with exactly that toy in mind. If it’s the one I’m thinking of, the dinodaurs started out as plastic cubes, and then when heated in the not-safe-for-children heating chamber, they grew into dinosaurs.
And then you could heat 'em up and squeeze them back down into cubes again with a hand-cranked compressor device.
Creepy Crawlers[sup]TM[/sup] was also loads of unsafe fun.
The Creepy Crawlers set of yore featured an open hot plate (!) which was great for searing my young fingers. The newer version (which I gave to my nephew), I think the hot plate is not exposed, and you have to slide the molds into an oven.
Plastic, hell. They were originally glass. Shards of which would ocasionally go flying toward your nearest playmate. (Not to mention the bone-crushing impact when the click-clack would bang into your wrist.)
I’m sure this company must have gotten sued out of business. Maybe they went to plastic balls before folding.
(And Hampshire, they were called Click-Clacks 'round these parts. They may have had different names in different markets.)
