Ok, a bit of a late reply, but THANK YOU! That’s been driving me crazy for years. Maybe I’ll put them up on e-Bay and see what I can get!
Okay here’s my favorites from years gone by.
Anyone remember Tog’ls, they were red and yellow plastic boxes about 1/2 inch wide. They had holes on some sides, and little pegs on the other. Some pieces were purple and flat with holes or green tubes. They would all fit together to make basic shapes or buildings.
Big Trak by Mattell, a programable truck with a trailer. You would program it by inserting certain codes in the key pad on top. It would move, shoot a “laser” and dump it’s pay load from the trailer.
Merlin and Simon, both electronic hand held games, that really taxed your memory.
Finger Ding dolls. The tops were regular dolls, but the bottoms were just material. You’d slip first fingers through to make the dolls legs, and you could make them move. There were a couple types, a ballerina, skater, and go-go dancer.
Vaguely remember a bowling game using Campbell Soup cans, (this came out around the same time Andy Warhol’s paintings of the time). Can’t recall the object of the game either other than whoever toppled the pyramid of cans down lost.
How about the new games of old, but the new ones suck. Colorforms used to be made of rubber sheets that actually stuck on the board unlike the plastic ones now.
Spirograph that came with pins and pens with alot more cogged pieces than now. I still can’t get the current one to work right or make the many designs I once made.
Candyland, with all the oh so sweet characters now, hell I want the evil licorice dude scaring me as I let my imagination unfurl in the land of plenty.
LightBrite with the longer pegs that don’t break your finger nails trying to pull out. And the longer pegs actually had a better color and the patterns were great.
Lawn Darts which gave you a real appreciation for physics and wind velocity. What kid didn’t almost impale the family dog or bratty next door neighbor?
Last but not least, can’t recall the name but they were upside down yellow cups with green plastic rope handles. You stood on them and walked around. They were used in the old preschool tv show Romper Room. Who didn’t ever try going down stairs or run across the street with them?
Can anyone identify the toy that was the size of maybe a gameboy (or smaller) typically colored red. but there were these different colored plastic circles in water, and you pressed the rubber white button on the red case and it would pump out air and push the plastic circles around. It was like party favors u got at a birthday party that was like a cheap hand sized pin ball game… I have a picture of it, just can’t share it on here 
Can’t help, but I’m sure it had BRAAINS!
WTH? 
Not what you’re looking for, but what was the name of that electronic toy the beginning of your description made everyone think of? Melvin? Marvin? Merlin?
ETA: Merlin! And it looks like they found it worthwhile to bring it back (albeit with a slightly different look). $60 is a bit much for five minutes of nostalgia. I wonder if there’s a Flash version out there…
So glad to see this oldie revived! One of NoClueBoy’s finest. Don’t miss the Master Wang-Ka contributions.
And please leave this one open! If it’s not already mentioned there, I’m going to add it to the Truly Great Threads list. Thanks for the bump, Prissbish!
My older brother had this, and we had lots of fun playing with it. IIRC, once you were done with the dinosaurs, you sort of squished them into a blob again…until the next time!
Many thanks for bringing up the girder and panel sets. I remember mine fondly. You had to be really careful when you took them apart so you wouldn’t tear your panel.
Next challenge for the group- I vaguely remember a plastic mountain with a path going up like a spiral around it. The paths had small depressions and you had to move a small steel ball up the path by spinning a wheel or rolling dice or something. Sometimes the path would force you down a chute through the mountain and you’d wind up further back than you were. The object was to be the first to reach the summit. Never mind, found it: King Of the Hill
I think he was talking about the Thingmaker. The thing with the dinosaurs that you squished back into cubes again was the Strange Change Machine
I had one…it was made by Kenner and called “Girder and Panel”. One of my favorite toys ever! There was also a version that had a tray-like base with a battery operated pump built in. It pumped water to operate water wheels and dump buckets and that sort of thing.
I’m old enough to remember wood burning sets and lead soldiers. An electric heater melted real lead that you (if you were six and over, lol) poured into molds.
I got several woodburning sets as gifts when I was a kid, but I never really got into it…once I figured out the POINT of a woodburning set, I just figured “Why bother? I have a set of colored pencils over there that do a better job of making a picture, they don’t take forever to heat up and they’re not going to burn a giant blister into my finger if my hand slips.”
I had a toy that I’m pretty sure was supposed to be one of Stretch Armstrong’s enemies. It was this rubbery red human shaped thing with a scowling monster face. Instead of the gooey liquid center Stretch had, the bad guy was full of some kind of little pellet and had a valve on his head so you could pump the air out and pose him, then press the valve to let the air back in and have him go back to being soft and stretchy.
I also had a board game called Alien Autopsy. It came with a rubbery green alien in the standard big eyed “gray” style, except with a bulging hollow stomach with a slit along it. The idea was that you reached into the stomach with a pair of plastic forceps and pulled out one of a variety of rubber items that were funny shapes and often hard to get out. It you got an organ (colored reddish pink) you got a point, if it was a piece of trash (colored black, these were things like old boots, tires and (for some reason) an assault rifle) you didn’t get a point. The player who’d gotten the most organs out of the alien at the end won. I’ve tried Googling, but the results for “alien autopsy board game” seem to be for some different game with the same name.
I remember I had Stretch Monster. Those things were filled with CORN SYRUP! And they had a distressingly common habit of springing pinhole leaks so half the time they and everything under them in the toybox were covered with sticky crap that attracted ants.
That would be Vac Man.
Seriously.
Found it! It was called Vac-Man. You can see it in the soft state [here](http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_m0LIlWZrbl8/SpwmkJz0oVI/AAAAAAAABBI/ANU5em1cXHI/s400/!BZDrMkg!2k~$(KGrHgoH-EUEjlLl0EpmBKkygSI-U!~~_12.jpg), and the pumped out state here. I think the one in my house might have been my brother’s actually. Either way, he eventually sprung a leak and you couldn’t pump him anymore. At least he didn’t attract ants.
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Edit: Beaten to it. Thanks Doc.
I don’t know what it was called, but it was a small black plactic rectange, with a lever switch on the top. If you pulled the lever, gears would start to move-and a the top would open-and a little white hand would come out-and switch the lever to “off”.
The box would then close up.
Haven’t seen one in years!
Haven’t found a definitive name for them but check out the variations at This Machine Turns Itself Off
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.
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.