Weird toys you vaguely remember

[BobArrgh]

Wow … check out Sam’s Toy Box for old toys.

[jayjay]

@BobArrgh

Around 1970, I had a toy called “Zip-Zap”, but it wasn’t the Radio Shack cars of the same name. This was a rectangular piece of foam rubber, about 12-inches long and 3-inches on the sides, with a long rubber string on each end. You would stand about 20 feet apart from your friend, each of you stretching the rubber strings between you, with the foam cube in the middle. Then you would pull the strings toward you and make the Zip-Zap shoot back and forth between you. That’s it. Pretty much a one-trick-pony.

They use something similar for cooperative therapy in the physical therapy gym here. It helps with shoulder range of motion, since you have to separate your arms wide to zip it down the strings to the other person.

[Biffy_the_Elephant_Shrew]

@BobArrgh

In the 1960s, I had a “toy” called (I believe) “Plasticast”. You put objects into molds and poured hot, clear plastic over it to make cool paperweights. Hot, melted plastic with chemical fumes … such a great toy to give a 6-year-old.

I had something like that, but the plastic wasn’t hot. IIRC, you combined a clear liquid resin with a reagent, like mixing epoxy. The reaction may have generated some warmth as the plastic hardened, but it wasn’t like pouring molten plastic.

[AncientHumanoid]

yeay, I got a zombie thread!

man, rereading some of these toy memories is fun

Thanks, guys

[Accidental_Martyr]

Snoopy Flying Dog House (like the Vertibird).
Battling Spaceships spinning top game.
http://www.boardgameswiki.com/index.php?title=Battling_Spaceships

Battling Tops

[Accidental_Martyr]

Spinwelder, I can still smell the melting plastic.
http://www.retrohound.com/spinwelder-from-mattel/
Star Trek bridge playset.
http://www.megomuseum.com/startrek/enterprise.html
Star Trek Communicator walkie-talkies.
http://www.megomuseum.com/trek/base4.shtml

[squeegee]

@flyershistory

… almost forgot Sizzlers - a battery operated Hot Wheels car. Looking back it was pretty good for the 70’s. You recharged the battery with something that looked like a gas pump

Oh, god, I remember Sizzlers. Every kid the year I’m thinking of got these for christmas, they were the gotta-haveit kid (well, boy) gift. My friends and I all got them + tracks + gas-pump rechargers. Christmas day was awesome, we plugged all the tracks together into crazy sized configurations with sizzler cars racing all over. Whee!

Sometime that day we realized Sizzlers charge lasted for about 40 seconds. And after a week it was like 20s and it was downhill from there. Then that stuff went into the back of the closet.

[Plumpudding]

My favourite toy was a plastic velociraptor with a huge penis. I also had a big axe made of cast iron. My mom got pretty mad when she found out that I had chopped my bunk bed down. Weirdly enough she gave me a flail a bit later… I guess there was a less than sublime message in that.

I was also quite fond of a model of kon-tiki I made out of bark and some wire.

[freckafree]

At an art show I did last year, there was a woman who was selling porcelain tiles cast from old Thingmaker molds. Brilliant! I wanted all of them. So. Badly. Unfortunately, I forgot to pick up her card, and I’m not doing that show this summer. I may have to send a friend on my behalf.

Does anyone remember a late-60s/early-70s toy that was a large plastic bird (a highly stylized bird – sort of like a softball-sized globe with beak, little wings and maybe a tail), and it hung from a really long spring. It was meant to be hung from a ceiling. I have tried googling every combination of words I can think of to try to come up with the name. My sister desperately wants one.

[satogata]

@Sqwert

I wish I could remember the name of these occult-like board games.

1. Some haunted house thing, where occasonally you would drop a small metal ball down a chimney. It would fall down one of 4 paths that would trigger some sort of rube-goldbergian device that might knock over your gamepiece, forcing you back to the starting line.

This was Which Witch – like Mousetrap, more fun to play with the contraption than to actually play the game. Going up the stairs was always the scariest part!

@Sqwert

2. A seance themed game, where some old uncle died. There was a hidden small orange record that would play random sayings from the desceased - where he would bequeath parts of his fortune. The object was to amass the most inheritance. There was even a glow-in the dark picture of the old coot, that would appear at the end of the game if you turned out the lights.

A seance-themed board game? Perhaps it could be, uh, Seance?

All this reminiscing about dangerous toys reminds me of this classic Saturday Night Live skit.

[freckafree]

@satogata

This was Which Witch – like Mousetrap, more fun to play with the contraption than to actually play the game. Going up the stairs was always the scariest part!

We had the Bats in Your Belfry game. You loaded a bunch of plastic bats (which had different point values) onto the turret of the castle and dropped a steel ball down a chute. This triggered the spring-loaded platform in the turret to fly up, launching the bats, which you then had to catch in big purple plastic monster claws.

[AncientHumanoid]

Happy Fun Ball

[Fiddle_Peghead]

Satellite Jumping Shoes, or what I remember as “moon boots”, which I got as a gift in the early 1970s. I guess they were renamed in order to cash in on the moon landing.

Dangerous and really not all that fun. Not a good combination!

[Nom_de_Plume]

@Hampshire

I had the coolest toy when I was probably 8-10 yrs. old. Late 70’s. It was a Spiderman Webshooter that they dare not make these days. It consisted of the mechanism like a suction cup dart gun but it strapped around your wrist.

I had those, and LOVED them when I was a kid.

When I was older, about 20 or so, I bought a very realistic looking M-16 that rapidly fired B-Bs using compressed air cylinders. It was pretty cool, but I’m sure they don’t make them anymore.

[Prelude_to_Fascination]

There was a car toy I had when I was around 10–same sort of thing as the SSP, in that it had a wheel in the center of the car, but didn’t have the SSP pull-stick. Instead, there was a battery operated tower with a gear shift. You put the car on a small downward facing ramp, and a gear type of mechanism stuck out from the tower into the hub of the car. You’d shift from 1st to 4th gear on the tower, using an H-pattern stick shift, with each pull of the gear shift spinning the axle and drive wheel faster and faster. Actually, you only went to 3rd gear–4th gear on the tower released the car and like the SSP cars, this would go whizzing across the floor.

I’m damned if I can remember the name of it, so I’m having trouble googling it. I thought it was Turbo Tower of Power, but that’s not it (this is). Does anyone have any idea what I’m talking about? it would’ve been around in the early 70s, and didn’t have a motorcycle like the Turbo Tower of Power did; I only remember a car.

[Son_of_a_Rich]

Remember those full page comic book ads? The guy carrying a big box, and projecting via a ventriloquism devise a voice from within the box? I sent for the devise which turned out to be a small cylindrical metal whistle. The most I could do with it was pretend to be holding a squeaking squeeze ball. Of course, I swallowed the damn thing. From the same ad I bought a pair of futuristic walkie-talkie looking things. The ad claimed they were wireless. Yeah, they were- they used string, like the old tin cans with buttons. My young eyes were opened to deceptive advertising thanks to those purchases.

[Dung_Beetle]

@tanstaafl

That was the Big Trak. I still have mine (though the paper insert under the keyboard is kind of mildewed) and have the trailer as well.

My brother and I had a Big Trak. It could be programmed to fire the gun a maximum of 99 times in a row, which took it about…five minutes? Anyway, a really long time to listen to a toy tank go “Pow! Pow! Pow! Pow! Pow!” The adults hated it.

We wanted to use the tank to chase my grandma’s Pekingese around, which involved trying to predict which way the dog would run so we could program the tank properly. Alas, Mr. Woo was a wily one…

[Zeldar]

@Son_of_a_Rich

Remember those full page comic book ads? The guy carrying a big box, and projecting via a ventriloquism devise a voice from within the box? I sent for the devise which turned out to be a small cylindrical metal whistle. The most I could do with it was pretend to be holding a squeaking squeeze ball. Of course, I swallowed the damn thing. From the same ad I bought a pair of futuristic walkie-talkie looking things. The ad claimed they were wireless. Yeah, they were- they used string, like the old tin cans with buttons. My young eyes were opened to deceptive advertising thanks to those purchases.

Oh, yes! I was a total sucker for those “save up and send off and get” gimmicks in comic books, magazines, and newspapers, and even on the radio. Box tops were usually involved.

The worst one was the Malayan Throwing Knife described in this old thread.

[CindyH]

Back in my day, we had to use a REAL potato when we played with Mr. Potato Head.

[SmellMyWort]

The Animal, a battery powered truck with (fairly sharp) retractable claws built into the wheels.

Air Jammers, use a small pump to fill the tank with air and then let’er go! Putt-putt-putt!

A rocket that you’d fill with a little water and then pump it up and shoot it into the air (or at your friends).