Ooh, another cool X-mas toy I got was Six Million Dollar Man action figures. I had Steve Austin and Sasquatch. If Steve “punched” the right spot on Sas’s belly a piece of his chest would fly off revealing his bionic innards. Suuuhweet! My cousin got Jamie Summers so we had hours of entertainment.
He and I would wait with bated breath every year for the “Paper Toy Book” (Toy Catalog) then go through it putting stars next to the 4 million things we wanted.
I’m 33 and I’m still waiting for my Erector Set, Mom.
The good snow cone maker was Frosty the Snowman, which was my brother’s second favorite toy. His favorite was Elsie the milking cow or some other cows name. You pushed it’s face into a bowl of water, and pumped it’s tail. It would click and the head raise up while going Moo. You then could milk the rubber teats. This same brother received only a coal in his stocking after a particularly nasty stint before Christmas. It was a Charcoal Barquet in his sock. After about ten minutes the flood of tears came out. The presents were brought out after that from behind the couch where Santa hid them, but next year they wouldn’t be there, if he was so bad again.
Weebles Wabble but they don’t fall down.
There was the 100 games board that was about 3 foot square double sided, and had four corner pockets. The main use was for a games with two colors of plastic rings and one ring of a different color used to hit the rings of your color into the pockets. You could use a short stick like a pool stick or snap them around the board with your thumb and index finger.
I had a voice of the mummy game, with a small plastic record and player in a surcuficus (tough luck on the spelling). You pushed the button and the mummy spoke your fate.
My favorite 70s toy had to be the Micronauts battle cruiser. The front compartment detached, the wings detached and were dart guns, they were “remote controlled,” sweet beyond sweet.
Favorite 70s Christmas picture is the one with my brother in his pajamas with his scrotum hanging out of a rip. Endless hours of embarassment for him for years to come.
She didn’t have the “wardrobe malfunction” I’d have liked but my cousin’s little sister (who is also my cousin, go figure ) had a bionic temper tantrum one day and threw Jamie and Jamie’s fur coat into the bathtub which made the faux mink look like a genuine drowned rat.
One thing that cracks me up about looking at old Christmas photographs is that you can tell the year they were taken by the pajamas you and your family were wearing. It’s always great, Dad had a five o’clock shadow every x-mas morn, everyone’s hair looked like a fright-wig, Mom wore the same red robe for about 8 years until I finally picked up the shreds of it one day and asked her to please retire it. We had a funeral for it and the following x-mas marked a new era of a brand new terminal robe. You could follow my childhood as I went from childish girly nightgown to pajama with the feet in them (loved those!!) to kiddy pj’s with no feet to sweats and a t-shirt.
Was this the one whose eye you could look through?
There was also his boss (Richard Dean Anderson’s character- I can’t remember the name and am too lazy to go to imdb) who came with multiple faces.
Does anybody remember J.J. Armes? He was based on an actual double amputee P.I., but I doubt that the real guy had hands that were for sliding along ropes and hands that came with knives/guns, etc…
And Otto’s post is one of the few proofs I’ve seen that Micronauts weren’t something I imagined.
I remember Mom saving S&H Green Stamps all year from buy groceries. Then we’d stick them into those little books and we’d go down to the S&H store. Mom would trade the stamps for glassware or teapots or whatever.
We’d also go down to the big Pizitz department store in Downtown Birmingham and see the Talking Christmas Tree. Part of a big animatronic display that would listen to your Christmas list. (Which you had to shout, because whoever was in the tree was quite deaf.)
And all four of us kids would try to wake up first on Christmas morning to see what everyone else had gotten. But we could not wake up Mom and Dad before 6 am. So we’d sit around the tree, trying to be quiet and failing miserably.
My parents have pretty much all our 70s snapshots.
From memory:
Parker Bros. and Milton Bradley games (I was the LIFE king in our house!)
Ideal toys (remember Bing Bang Boing?)
Lite Brite
Matchbox cars and playsets, Hot Wheels (though most of my cars were handed down from one of my brothers)
Tootsietoys
ViewMaster discs
Jigsaw puzzles
Model cars (Cop Out was one I had but I preferred ones with optional pieces.)
Perhaps other Dopers can help with this one: I had a game that involved flipping plastic spoons into a bucket but I can’t remember the name. Might have been another one of Ideal’s wacky creations.
That’s what my sister and I did! The rest of my siblings had become too old for such nonsense.
We did that in the '80s. In the '70s, we lived in an area where nobody could go Griswold.
I know this is about battleships and the lot, but a 70s toy we had I hadn’t thought about in 25 years probably was a device that pressed Tootsie Rolls into molds (Christmas themed, bears, etc.). Did anybody else have this?
Isn’t it also odd how this many years later you remember every nook and cranny of how to insert the tongues into the grooves for the Hot Wheels tracks and the different cars (my favorite was a figure 8 sci-fi looking one), or how to put the molds onto that Tootsie roll press. Sigh…
I wanted to include the tootsie roll thing, but didn’t know what to call it. It game with flavored tootsie rolls and included on flavor not in the tootsie roll flavor rolls now. It was grape. This was the first time I ever saw a flavor roll, and I think they were made a product after the toy needed refils.
Lute Skywatcher
I think you might be thinking of Ants In The Pants.
I remembered a game that every house had. Cooties. Roll a dice and get the part rolled. The first complete Cootie won.
This was in the 80s, but I think I remember them once-they were basically thin cardboard (like paperdolls). Mine came in a set of The Ginghams punch-out Christmas decorations.
I’ll bet that if you went to the house I grew up in and took up whatever the most recent layer of carpet in my bedroom is, you’d still find some of those multicolored plastic sticks. I was picking them up for years.
Does anybody know why they stopped using the big Christmas tree light bulbs? Was it a fire hazard?
One of the cheesiest Christmas specials I remember came from one of the cheesiest stars of all time- John Davidson. It was filmed at his house and took the place of the Tonight Show one night when Johnny was on vacation. Years later David Letterman did a parody of a cheesy 70s Christmas special with his wife and kids (Letterman wasn’t married and didn’t have kids at the time, but actors played his family) and I swear that he based it on Davidson’s. (How cheesy is John Davidson? Listen to his rendition of Cats in the Cradle-warning: don’t go near this if you’re pregnant, incontinent or easily terrified.)
The miniature lights were a lot cheaper, and were a new trendy thing in the 70’s. The large c7 size bulbs dried out a tree fast because of the heat, and every year multiple people in your state would have their house burn down. You really couldn’t safely leave the lights on at night and you had to limit how long you used them verses the tree getting brown needles. You couldn’t use them on artificial trees either. They have been back in fashion since the 90’s and are lower wattage than the old ones. The miniatures don’t dry out a tree badly and I wouldn’t worry about leaving them on too long. The miniature also triggered the large volume in artificial trees, because you could put the lights on the trees.
The one thing that hasn’t come back on the store shelves are the metal reflector dishes with paper fingers in the center. You inserted the base of the bulb through the fingers lining the hole in the center, and screwed the light back in. The metal dish reflected the light and redirected some of the heat away from the tree. You probly never saw one of the ornaments that you hung over the bulbs which spun from the rising heat.
The students were asked to bring in an ornament for Christmas some years when the supply was getting depleted. These class room trees had the best ornament selection you’ve ever seen. In the early 70’s there were some very old ornaments. The ranged in size from about 1 to 8 inches big, and every shape under the sun. Live trees got the tinsel treatment. I think the big sales in garland also started when the artificial trees took off, because you don’t tinsel a tree you won’t throw out. We had one day at school where we decorated the class room. The class spent the day making red and green paper chains for the school, and put up the tree and decorated it. The eighth grade students made felt Christmas banners in art class prior to Christmas to hang in the gym. The school Christmas service was in the gymnasium. I can remember the smell in the school at Christmas, because it was unique, and belongs to it alone. All the kids filed out of the gym before the parents, and to the home rooms where you waited for your parents. The Elk’s club paper goodies bag was waiting on your desk, with your name written across the side.
) had a bionic temper tantrum one day and threw Jamie and Jamie’s fur coat into the bathtub which made the faux mink look like a genuine drowned rat.