I’m Christmas shopping for my nephew and I started looking up my old favourite toys on eBay. What were the coolest toys when you were a kid?
I was growing up in the 80s so here’s a couple I found:
[ul][li]Strange Change Machine[/li][li]Creepie-Crawlers[/li][li]Vertibird[/li][li]Kenner SSP (I had a blue Ski-Baller)[/li][li]Cox PT-19 Trainer[/li][li]Hot Wheels (of course)[/li][*]Estes rockets[/ul]
Early 60’s, old enough to appreciate advertising and want specific things!
Below are things I desperately wanted (and got) all before 4th grade.
Etch a sketch
Jimmy Jet
Slinky
Super ball with Zectron
Hot Wheels.
Jarts! I saw a complete set in a customers house a few weeks ago and tried to buy them.
The Green Machine.
GI Joes.
I have a set of Jarts. Brand new. Original box.
No, you can’t have them.
Someday I’m going to have a big barbecue party and we’ll play with them.
•Mad Scientist Monster Lab
•Construx
•Barlowe’s Guide to Extraterrestrials (Not a toy, but…I often asked for books. Nyah.)
Child of the late 60s/early 70s here (born in 61):
Dancerina - a fairly large mechanical ballerina doll with the hottest hot pink tutu ever. Hot pink acrylic crown; you pulled up or pushed down on the crown of the tutu and she would pirouette or kinda toe dance. Came with a record.
Liddle Kiddles - tiny little dolls. Variations included Skediddle Kiddles (had a little wheeled gizmo you stuck in their backs to make them…well…skediddle! Also Perfume Kiddles - they came in colored acrylic “perfume bottles” & were scented - my favorites were Violet & Lily of the Valley.
Creeple Peeple/Fun Flowers/Incredible Edibles - you made these things in a metal mold filled with some kind of liquid plastic gunk (Incredible Edibles “gunk” was different - in came in flavors like mint, strawberry, chocolate, etc). You’d squeeze the gunk into a metal mold & then cook it in this eletric base (this toy could NEVER be sold today - lol). You used some tongs to remove the mold & plung it into cold water. You then pried out the flower/bug/creepy thing & went from there.
VCNJ~
Wooden building blocks
Hot Wheels was the first to come to my mind as well.
And Creepy Crawlies.
Just to offer a couple that haven’t been mentioned yet:
Hippity Hops;
Toy guns and holsters;
Walkie Talkies;
and Lionel trains.
Still loved Legos.
Commodore.
Atari.
SLINKY!!!
Rubik’s Cube.
Some board games that never lose ground: Parcheesi, Monopoly.
Throw Uno in also.
Tinkertoys.
The old, wooden, good ones, before the took out half the parts, made them way too big, and started making them all out of plastic (some of the parts, like the hand-cranks and end-caps, were plastic to begin with), when they gave you big heavy rubber bands to connect the gears and pulleys and levers and any eight year old could be Thomas Edison for an entire rainy afternoon.
Also, Legos before they became pre-fab snap-together model kits.
Anyone remember the Wham-o Air Blaster?
I grew up in the 40’s (B, 1939) and I have to say my bikes were my favorites and most used. I got a couple of them as Christmas presents, from ‘Santa’, but when I got older I was constantly building bikes from parts. I also had a Daisy pump BB rifle, but my parents closely controlled it’s use. There were cap pistols and holsters, but we would often use a piece of lumber or a stick for a gun. Dirt clods were hand grenades for playing war. Sleds were popular in winter.
I remember one of the favorite, pre Christmas, pastimes was leafing through the “wish book”, Sears & Roebuck or “Monkey” Wards
My parents always made a very nice Christmas.
Jarts! Great, great game! Throwing sharp objects at your opponents barefeet.
Good times.
I am very jealous.
When I was a kid there was a cartoon on Saturday morning called Sky Hawks. (‘Fly with us, be a Sky Hawk!..’) My dad had retired from the Navy and joined the Federal Aviation Administration. He used to bring home the short ends of rolls of teletype paper. I used to draw dashed lines down the middle of a length of paper and put a number on the end, and then play with my toy airplanes while I watched the show.
I don’t remember the brand of airplanes. As I recall they were about four inches long and were made of die-cast metal. They could’ve been Matchbox. Anyway, I spent hours playing with those little metal airplanes.
I also had another airplane toy that was pretty neat. It consisted of a plastic Piper Cherokee about seven inches long, a square-ish plastic box with flight instrument stickers on it and a joystick in the middle, a black cardboard runway, a clamp, and monofilament line. One clamped the clam to a high place. One end of monofilament line was attached to it, and the other end was attached to the top of the joystick. The base/joystick was placed some distance away from the high end, and the runway was placed before it. The Cherokee hung from the line with two wires, like the ones one uses for Christmas ornaments; and the tail hooked onto the clamp. When the ‘pilot’ was ready he’d pull back the joystick, which released the airplane. The airplane slid down the monofilament line, and the goal was to land ‘on the numbers’. A very simple toy, but when one is eight years old in a time before video games it was fun.
I had this toy motorized crane, about 18" high. I could turn it all the way around, run the claw in and out, pick stuff up, etc. Kinda like this, but cooler.
Then I got a Big Track, this kind of programmable 6-wheeled space-age truck.
Another geezer chiming in here. I grew up in the 50s-60s. Toy guns were always a big hit and I remember salivating over the catalog photo of the “Fanner 50” (loved those catalogs!). Playing some sort of mayhem like cowboys or soldiers was good for hours of entertainment and we used all sorts of makeshift weapons. Best gift I ever got was a J.C. Higgins .22 bolt-action rifle when I was about 12 (you could order guns from Sears back then, along with motorcycles). I still have it. Other faves were a Lionel train set on an oval track, and a “Fort Apache” set. Nothing like a set of plastic cowboys and Indians, or plastic soldiers to kill hours on a rainy day.
My favourite was the construction building kit Meccano This stuff is so good that engineers and scientists use it for “grown up” projects.
I have a J.C. Higgins single-shot, bolt-action .22 rifle I bought from a pawn shop when I was 18. There’s a ‘plunger’ on the back of the bolt that needs to be pulled back to cock it after the round has been chambered.
Lionel trains
Vac-U-Form
Daisy B-B gun
Battling Tops
Battery operated Bartender
Aurora Slot cars and track
[del]Betsy Wetsy[/del]GI JOE