One of the greatest toys that I ever had was the plastic paratrooper, about 4 inches high, made of the same stuff all toy soldiers are made of, that had a parachute in it’s back. Throw it up into the air, and it would come floating down. Somehow, this made an awesome, mystical impression on me. I think the reason I got rid of it was because the plastic hooks, whatever, that held the parachute onto the soldier’s shoulders broke, and, in the 60s, who ever knew how to repair that kind of thing? Never found a replacement at the store, either.
Absolute coolest was my fathers American Flyer ‘S’ Gauge train set, which was only set up for the Christmas season. He had about every motorized accessory that could one could get: the locomotive made smoke, there was a passenger car that would actually load up with passengers via a cattle-chute sort of thing (using the same technology as the football games mentioned earlier, but it seemed to work better here), an ‘exploding box car’, a working missile-firing car that we tried to explode the box car with, natch, and most deeply silly, an item called ‘Cow on the Track’. This consisted of a plastic holstein cow attached to a hinged arm that projected onto the track, with a switch that would detect the train’s approach and swing the cow out of the way at the last second.
The layout circled a bustling small town made of Plasticville buildings with the streets filled with our rather large collection of (pre-Hot Wheels) Matchbox cars. Some fifty years later, I can still recall every detail of that train platform.
Others:
Lincoln Logs
Kenner Girder and panel set (one of the most brilliant toys ever developed, IMO)
Mattel Thompson machine cap gun; mine was a “Man From U.N.C.L.E.” model in black and dark blue camo, and if your allowance could stand it, you could rip though rolls of 50 caps in seconds on full auto, all day long
I know I’m not the oldest one on these boards, but I must be in the top 25%. When I was a kid in the early very 60’s and on the toys then would probably bore the living snot out of kids today. We were spoiled. Of all the cool toys in the 60-late 70’s either I (or my siblings) or someone I knew had them.
Don’t know if it was a Midwest thing or not, but in the mid-50’s forward it was a fad for people to have a “bar” in their basement. Complete with bar chairs/stools etc..
We had THIS exact bowling game in out basement to complete the “bar motif” My wifes family had a very Similar game in theirs.
One of my all time favorite toys wasn’t even mine! My younger sister had a Hoppity Horse in about 1970. It was a f*cking blast! If you filled that sucker too full it bounced to the goddamned moon! I damned near broke my crown bouncing down staircases with it!
My Pop made the mistake of giving us a wrist rocket one time.
Do I have to go on?
My brother and I welted up ever traffic sign in town we could find. Then when the locals were going around trying to find out who would do such a deed we kept low.
Until one day at Riverside Park my brother was going to whack a bird with it. Some woman came up to us and started jawing about how it was illegal and we were going to end up in reform school (:rolleyes: “Reform school”.It was 1973 for gawds sake) for some reason this pissed him off beyond repair and as she walked away he cracked her in her big butt with a good sized rock from the Milwaukee River!!! She screamed like a Banshee as she ran away.
The weird thing is, when the local fuzz were questioning us at our house (please don’t leave, officer. Our pop is going to kick the living shit outta us!)
they never once brought up the street signs. We had to go and apologize to this woman. I ended up getting a worse beating than my brother because I refused to apologize. My explanation was it wasn’t me who did it (I was just there) and [and I quote] “the fat carp should have minded her own bees wax!!” SMACK!!!
Even dumber toy than a wrist rocket: Wood burning kit. Ours said “for ages 8 and up”. Are you fuggin kidding me? I almost burned our house and the neighbors house down in 2 separate incidences!!!
Good times! Good times my friends!
A list of basic childrens’ toys:[ul]
[li]fire[/li][li]explosives[/li][li]toxic chemicals[/li][li]high-velocity projectiles[/li][li]sharp points and edges[/li][li]high voltage electricity[/li][li]figurines that can be destroyed in entertaining ways[/li][/ul]
I had one of these. It was much cooler to look at than to actually play. There were cardvboard “crypts” with supposedly creepy things you had to reach through to get tokens, but they were just things like feathers or rubber bands 9supposed to be 'snakes" or “worms”) and the like.
Another of the glow-in-the-dark games was Kaballah, which my cousin had. It wasn’t really a “game”, in that there were no pieces to move and no real goal to achieve. It was a tricked-up Ouija board, in which everyone put their hands around the edge of an easily-tipped platform with a circular track on which a marble rolled. around the track were letters that spelled out the words. to make it extra-creepy, there was a rotating ball in the middle with a glowing eye that followed the marbles’s progress.
Green Ghost Game:
Burning fingers are the least of it. On one occasion I left the thing plugged in on a plastic mat at my friends house and then we went outside to play. Thick black smoke poured out of the room (no smoke detectors in most houses at that time). Friends older brother ran into the house to find a melted mess and ruined carpet.
Second time I left it on it started some paper towels on fire and spread across the kitchen counter top to the garbage bag (a water softener salt bag) and huge flames burned up the wall and melted the paint. While my old man was stomping the fire out he was yelling how I was next to be stomped!
What I’d like to know is, what demented bastard was sitting around a toy company going “Hey! We need to come up with this years ‘must have’ toy for Christmas. How about something that gets hot. REALLY hot. So hot it could cause 4th degree burns and torch a house!”
Scary thing is, the box on mine said “ages 8 and up”. Were they fucking kidding?
I got a LOT of use out my Lite-Brite as a pre-teen. But those little colored plastic pegs showed up EVERYWHERE in the house for years, somehow even managing to appear in our next house. And that house was brand new. So they weren’t left over from previous residents.
One toy that I got at a VERY young age was the Fisher-Price parking garage set. The reason I remember it so well was that I had it for years because it was so tough and well-built. For some reason it really fascinated me.
