The New and Improved Spirograph is not the Spirograph of your youth. Seriously look around on Ebay and yard sales for a vintage one. You’ll thank me for it.
Has anyone else seen the New and Improved re-release of Creepy Crawlies? It doesn’t look half as dangerous as it was when we were unsupervised kids messing around with hot thingies and the goo that went in them.
I’m sure it stains the carpet just the same.
I think growing up in the 80’s allowed me access to the best era of toys ever. We had just enough hold over of the great toys from earlier, and a lot of new toys that kicekd ass as well.
Original, die-cast, Transformers.
Voltron
G.I.Joe (yeah, I know a lot of you old farts will complain that they sucked then cause they were tiny, not the12" tall version you played with. But the little ones rocked because they had so many planes, tanks, jeeps, and other crap to put them in.)
He-Man (Heh, back in the days when cartoons were just excuses to sell toys…oh, wait)
Lego (Back when it was still easy to get a big-bucket-o-Lego and not use the sets, but could also get the sets if you did want to build that neat looking space-ship.)
Erector sets
Tonka Trucks (made out of good ol’ sharp, rust-in-an-instant, steel.)
Jeez, how could I forget…my grandfather got me one of those, once! (It might have been for my birthday, though…I forget.) I know he burned my name into it, but I don’t recall if he built the rest of it himself or not.
Mine always tended to row backwards, though. Odd.
Shrinky Dinks!
Best?
Wooden coffee stirrers. For some reason my Dad landed thousands upon thousands of these things. That and a little glue and string……
I became very proficient at making very small crossbows.
Worst Toys from your childhood.
It was a little (1 foot long) gas powered (little cox engine) ski-doo.
Start it, set it on the ground and away it went…. And went……
Ohh. You can make it turn in a circle. And every time it found one of your foot steps in the snow (from chasing it and restarting it), it drowned like a rat in molasses.
Lest we forget the rock 'em sock 'em action Red Rocker Vs Blue Bomber
Or the ever popular and space eating Oooooh look two NFL teams having syncronized seizures
Beat The Shit Outta A Beloved TV Host
Armatron was pretty much the coolest thing ever.
I used to get these space toys from a Sears catalog outlet thing when I got good grades. Must have been around '76 or '77… Cool space ships & action figures, seem to remember them being mostly blue (maybe their spacesuits were), and that Star Wars guys were the wrong size, but I can’t remember which were first.
Hours of fun, sure wish I could find them again.
Another child of the late '50s and early '60s chiming in.
Yessss! This was the best thing ever! We also had tons and tons of the old wooden Lincoln Logs, but we were definitely more into modern corporate architecture.
We ended up with a lot of toy weapons. My personal all-time favorite was a Mattel-made Thompson submachine gun that was sold in several versions. Mine was in black and dark blue camouflage and IIRC, was part of a “Man From Uncle” themed set. It used roll caps and had a spring-loaded mechanism that allowed it to be fired on full auto. Letting loose with that thing was sweet. I was the only one of our local neighborhood pickup army to have one, and it was the object of endless envy.
Vehicles were always welcome: the best were the original series Matchbox cars (“A Moko Lesney product”), of which we got two or three in our stockings every year. In larger toys, we ended up with quite a number of Tonka trucks when they were still all-steel and seriously rugged. The best of those that I owned was an elaborate “Highway Department” set that consisted of a working clamshell crane, dump truck and pickup in matching colors.
My Dad had quite a lot of American Flyer model trains, which I always liked better than Lionel because they were somewhat more realistically-proportioned. We had a number of curious powered accessories for the set. The oddest one was the “cow on the track”, in which a little plastic cow mounted on a swing arm would stand, well, on the track until the train arrived, when it would swing out of the way at the last moment.
Good times.
Micronauts! Those were the best action figures, ever: Pharoid, Acroyear, Space Glider, Time Traveler, Force Commander and Baron Karza, and the creepy aliens.
When they got re-produced a few years back, I bought a set and stuck them in storage. When my nephews are old enough, I’m going to infect them, too, just like my brother and I were when we were ~5-9 years old.
According to the labels, that’ll be when my nephews are 18+ years old. 
Johnny L.A.: the vertibird was probably the only “high tech” toy that I ever wished for, was given, and enjoyed to the extent that I thought I woud. Damn, but that thing went through D-cells.
In genral, the lower the tech of the toy, the more good I got out of it. Tonka Trucks were great. Wooden blocks, lego, simple board games…many hours of fun. One toy I got a lot of good out of was an old fashioned wooden top. The kind you wrap a string around, hold upside down and throw, and it spins for like minutes.
Like this like this, only mine was painted green with stripes.
Used to love the slot cars. Mine was blue and white; my brothers probably beat me most of the time, but I still enjoyed it.
Do they still make Stingray bikes with banana seats and chopper handlebars? Those were the best bikes. We never used kickstands, just let them fall over wherever we were.
I can’t tell you how many hours I spent looking at stuff through my microscope. Came close to deciding on biology as a career.
Most hours multi-person play with a single toy? Probably the good ol’ Frisbee.
It also had a bit of an issue with shag carpet. 
I just saw an ad in Classic Motorsports that said ‘Slot Cars Are Back!’. I had a slot car set when I was a kid. I don’t remember the kind of car. Some sort of GT. I remember about 15 years ago noticing businesses that had ‘slot car’ tracks – only instead of slot cars they used small (1:43?) radio controlled cars.
Here’s something I’ve just remembered. It’s not from my childhood, but from my teen years. It was a radio-controlled sand sailer. Basically it was a sheetmetal platform that was shaped as an elongated triangle. A mast raked back from the front, and the front wheel was steerable. The rear wheels were widely set on a piano wire shaft about two feet wide. It had only one channel, for steering, and I used a radio from one of my airplanes. That was a great toy in the windy Mojave Desert!
Motorific We had a lot of track for this! Basically you set up the track. Each “switch” toggled every time a car went through. Put several cars on the track and set 'em going. Sit back and thrill to the near misses and inevitable crash. Half the fun was keeping the cars in running order.
Major Matt Mason His space station was the coolest.
Tinkertoys Tinkertoys are back on the market. I picked up a couple of jumbo sets at Costco!
Lone Star Treble-0-Lectric My first trains. These were some of the first “N” scale trains. I had a 3x4 layout that my Dad and I customized with a yard and additional sidings. I think Dad liked trains as much as I do. We used to go and watch the afternoon trains leaving LaSalle St. station in Chicago from an overpass. This was before Amtrak, so we got to see all the old liveries.
The kid upstairs had these. A big collection too. I am sure they were just as expensive back then (adjusting for inflation) as the kits you see on my link, so it must have been a few thousand dollars worth, even back then. Very good toys though.
I had forgotten all about the Kenner girder and panel set. Ours came with an electric monorail as well.
Now that I look it up, I realize that I had a “Vertibird” as well. Very cool toy.
I wonder what all my crap would be worth on E-Bay today? Actually I don’t. I can’t handle the depression.
Vac-U-Form, already mentioned by others. Not only could you use it for Vac-U-Forming, but the heating element is the same one used by the ThingMaker for Creeple People and Incredible Edibles, so you could do those, too:
http://www.spookshows.com/toys/vacuform/vacuform.htm
Cosmorama – working plastic planetarium!
http://www.pielock.com/cosmorama.htm
I never had Legos, but I had a toy whjich consisted of plastic “cinder blocks” which you could snap togetherv to build houses. The kit included window- and door-frames that snapped in place, too. I have no idea what it was called.
I also had a toy electronics kit that included relays (so could turn on and off things like TV sets), silicon photocells, water-sensitive detectors, and the like. You could build a remote control that would turn on your TV when you shone a flashlight on it, or would set off an alarm if a water level got too high.
Though I don’t see 2007 versions on their web site - maybe it was last year’s fad.
We had these building toys that were giant versions of Tinker Toys. The rods were a few feet long, and the connector joint thingies maybe eight inches across. I used to think I had dreamed them, but mom assures me that we had them and built little houses to sit under (with blankets for the roofs).
We also loved Lincoln Logs, my father’s old Erector set, and my father’s old electric train.
Of course last night I was watching The Simpsons and it was the one where Bart and Ralph steal Chief Wiggams’ master key and go to the J.R.R.Toykins store. One of the main items in front of them when the doors open is a giant tinker toys structure!
…nobody has metnioned the Evil Kneivel (sp?) Stunt Cycle (I think Signals or similar retailer has re-released these) or Stretch Armstrong. Marketing for Stretch was that it was impossible to destroy. You can bet my brothers proved that false. They go about 10 or 12 feet before the arms come off and pink goo comes out.