Legos!
Matchbox cars with the flexible orange tracks that you could join together and run all over the house.
Micronauts.
Adventure People.
GI Joe (the original 12" figures, not those itty bitty ones they sell nowadays).
I used to do this as well. I remember I’d find every umbrella in the house, open them, and set them over the space between the couch and coffee table, and then chill under the coffee table reading a book or something.
I also used to hide in the hallway closet where for some reason there was an outlet, so I brought a lamp in with me, my crayons/markers/pencils and paper, and I’d stay in the closet drawing for hours. My parents thought I was nuts. 
As far as toys, there are a few that stick out to me…
Play Doh. I used to make intricate meals with Play Doh for some reason. I specifically remember rolling up tons of little balls of blue Play Doh to make a blueberry pie.
Legos. I still have some in my closet, though I gave the majority up to my niece and nephew. I still get them out every now and then.
A wooden car. My parents got it for me when we lived in VT, when I was 2 years old. They called it the “Sammi-car” (my name is Sam), and I still have it.
I was also a very crafty kid. I remember cleaning my room once and in cleaning out from under my bed I got a sewing needle jabbed into my arm and I bled all over my white sweater. I was fine, of course, but I definitely kept a closer eye on where I kept sharp objects from then on out. (Although, even as an adult, I once sat on an exacto-knife I’d been using for a craft project.)
Hmm…let’s see. I was a tomboy in the 70s. Some of my favorites were:
- Evel Knievel’s Stunt Cycle
- SST Racers
- Hot Wheels cars and the “Juice Machine”
- Vertibird
- Which Witch? and Mousetrap! games
- Johnny and Jane West and their various horses, friends, and accessories (I used to hook the family cat up to the buckboard–it was just the right size!)
- Big Jim and his adventure camper
- Steve Scout and his various adventure sets
- Small Shots (little kids on skates that ran on Hot Wheels tracks)–I’d say these were my all-time favorite toys. I used to make up stories and draw comics about them, and to this day I still have a character or two that had their origins in the dim and distant days when I used to play with these. I also made stop-motion films with them in the 80s, long past when I was old enough to play with them.
- Malibu PJ, Ken, and Skipper (I never liked Barbie, but her friends were okay)
I loved paper dolls too - I had 2 sets of the “Gingham Girls” including several cardboard pieces of furniture - like the picnic table and the rocking chair.
My sister had Strawberry Sue - but she wasn’t as careful and accidentally ripped some of Strawberry Sue’s hair off when she was punching the cardboard mannequin out. (I had to word that carefully - “punching her out” just looked wrong.)
My grandmother would also save me the pages from the McCall’s magazine that had the paper dolls you had to cut out in them. I loved that.
That’s so awesome! A lady in our church once gave my sister and I some extra office supplies to play with. I took a big box and cut it with an exacto knife and made a teller’s window. We would play with that for hours until my brothers told my mom that I was “bossing my sister around.” But I was supposed to - I was the boss!!
I loved colorforms! And I still love crayons to this day!
My oldest brother had an erector set - all metal pieces. Used to cut myself playing on that all the time - but would hide the cuts so my mom wouldn’t make me stop.
I only had one dollhouse growing up - the Bionic Woman one. It came with this big plastic orange bed and these little tiny cardboard steaks with mushrooms on them. It made me want to try steaks with mushrooms in restaurants - now I love them!
But I was the only girl and we were pretty poor for a while there - so whatever toys we had growing up were usually sports related. I used to love to go over to our friend’s house. It was the 70s, and they were pretty earthy/crunchy (which I loved.) They didn’t have barbies - they had “Happy Family” instead. (Remember them?)
And their daughter (who was several years older than me) made all the furniture out of the coolest stuff - like the plastic containers that held 3 tomatoes in them in the grocery store. The long ones were the grown up beds, and she’d cut the others in half and slide them together to make baby beds.
I thought that was so clever. Between that girl (whose name I can’t even remember) and my mom - who can make pennies give back change, and daffodils out of muffin papers - I am a pretty good decorating MacGiver these days.
Thanks everyone for participating - this is fun!!
The Lite Brite…oh, the Lite Brite. Such colors, such fun, so cheerful and happy. All hail the Lite Brite.
They do, but the dolls are all online now.
I spent almost all my playtime drawing on my big chalkboard, or out in the garage, where my grandfather had built a bench for me to do arts and crafts on. I had all kinds of glue and paint and wood and clay and inspiration. However, I wish I’d lived next door to Zipper JJ! The dollhouse sounds great!
LITE BRITE!
Making things with liiiiiight.
words i cant remember
da da da with Lite Brite.
Our friends had one. When we ran out of the special black paper - we would use black construction paper.
Lite Brite,
Makin’ thiiiings with liiiight!
Outta sight,
Makin’ things with Lite Brite!
I had quite a collection of little Marx plastic animals. They came in little boxes illustrated with the animal in its habitat. I remember they seemed so realistic to me. I also remember an “encyclopedia of animals” that we assembled with these stickers that came from the grocery store. To this day, I recall that “book” being practically the only place where I could read about and see pictures of animals like onagers & capybaras. Yeah–I’m all about the animals! (back then, about the best you could get was “Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom with Marlin Perkins” on TV).
“muffled scream!” I just searched on ebay and some one has that book up for auction–it’s called “Wonders of the Animal Kingdom” 1959.
Excellent point - my daughter used to love all of those online wardrobe doll things. It does limit the imagination games you can play with them…
Swingset! My parents got a handcrafted wooden one when I was about eight. There were two swings, a trapeze, hand-over-hand bars, and a rope swing. Hours and hours of fun 
My favorite indoor toy was the marble maze (like this one, only I don’t think ours had as many different kinds of ramps).
Mattell Thingmakers- 2 sets, with all the army men, creepy-crawly, and flower power molds, a Pretzel Jetzel, Incredible Edibles, and all manner of Jonny Lightning and Matchbox cars and tracks.
OMG, hellpaso. You and I must surely be of an age. I remember that animal stamp book (although I seem to recall the pages being black, not white). I think the stamps came from the A&P. Friday night was grocery shopping night. Mom & Dad would leave us home with our grandmother, who lived with us, and we awaited eagerly for their return, as we might be rewarded with such treats as a three-box pack of Cracker Jack, the latest Mad magazine, or those animal stamps.
Whenever a Wild Kingdom segment was obviously approaching a commercial break, my sister and I would roll our eyes and sing-song “Mutual of Omaha.”
The toy that I miss most, the one that was with me from before I can remember until most of my toys ‘mysteriously’ disappeared, was my Curious George.
It was about a foot tall, from the top of his head to the bottom of his feet, and wore a red shirt with his name on it, and a red hat. Since I had him before ever reading the books, or seeing the TV show, I was confused by the fictional George being naked.
I had a big plastic slide that was shaped like an elephant. It had a hollowed out center where you could play inside. I liked hanging out in there and pretending that I was traveling in a time machine. Or that it was my secret laboratory where I invented things. Or I would use it to wall off an area of the room and pretend it was my secret hideout. Yeah, the imagination of “kid lshaw” reminds me of that of Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes.
The things I remember spending the most time with were Fisher Price “Little People” We had the house, and the school house. Those had been my sister’s first. For my own birthday (3rd or 4th I’d guess) I got the “Village” and that was my favorite.
I think about that a lot. I played in my room alone with those for hours, making up stories with them. My son gets antsy after 15 miuntes alone in his room.
My dad worked briefly for Ideal Toys so we had a plethora of their dolls; Chrissy, Velvet, and Shirley Temple doll reissue, and a misguided life-like boy baby doll that was supposed to be Archie and Edith Bunker’s grandson Joey.
One of my favorites was the X-500 Rocket Launcher and Defense Base. What was that dome-shaped thing in the control panel for? Who knew? Who cared when you could fire six missiles at your brothers before they could mount a defense?
When I was about six, I loved to ride on my Mobo Bronco horse. (Not a picture of me.;))
My favourites were Lite Brite, Spirograph, and the Fisher Price Circus train. It had an engine with a horn that tooted, three train cars with cool doors that swung or opened into a ramp, and animals - a lion, a giraffe, and elephant, a bear and a cool monkey with a curly tail. I recently bought one off Ebay for my kids to play with.
I also had a Sindy doll with a nightstand that had an attached lamp that turned on and off, and a horse with tack that I played with a lot.
Plus I played with all of my brother’s Star Wars toys.