My faves when I was a kid:
Creepy Crawlies. Mmmmmm! Plastic Goop! And you can still get 'em… but I haven seen any Incredible Edibles.
Strange Change Machine. This was a heating element with a truncated cone over it that opened up. You’d put a 1" square of plastic in it and as it heated it would unfold into a dinosaur. There was a vaccuum-formed plastic “world” for you to play with them in. When you were done, you’d heat up the dinosaur until it was soft. There was a “crusher” (similar to what they crush cars with) that you put the softened toy into. Crank it down, and you’d have a 1" square with the Mattel logo again.
Cox U-Control airplanes, and the Testor’s competition. Testor’s had better planes, but Cox had better engines.
Guillow’s flying balsa models.
Estes rockets.
Army men. I used to paint them. My friends and I would set up sides and shoot rubber bands at the opposing sides.
Matches.
Tinkertoys.
I had this riding toy. It was a thick yellow plastic disc you sat in, with large red plastic wheels you sat between. The wheels had cranks on them for locomotion. Don’t remember what it was called.
SSTs. Plastic dragsters with a big gyroscopic wheel in the middle. A toothed T-handle was inserted and you’d yank it out to get the wheel spinning. Nice’n’fast!
Frisbees. Had to be real Wham-O ones.
Sizzlers. Hot Wheels cars powered by a small rechargable battery.
Don’t know the name of this one… A notebook-sized platform with a vertical control stick. A nylon line ran from the top of the stick to a clamp. You’d hook a plastic airplane onto the line. When you pulled the stick, the plane would release from the clamp and “fly” toward you. Try to land on the cardboard runway.
Vertibird helicopter (yes, even then!).
Freon-powered “jets”. These were styrofoam gliders with an aluminum, nozzled, cylinder in them. You’d stick a tube into the nozzle and fill the cyl. with Freon. When the tube came out, there was the thrust. Froze my thumb a couple of times. Oh, those heady days before Freon was bad!