I was too young to remember, but the story in my family is that my older brother, at about 3 or 4 years old, got a Mr. Machine for Christmas and was scared to death of it. It subsequently went into the closet and never came back out.
I thoroughly enjoyed two that have already been mentioned: Tinkertoy, and Lincoln Logs. I also have fond memories of the View-Master to see photos in 3D. My favorite set of photos for that were from the Civil War photographer, Brady. And, finally, the Lite-Brite which was pretty cool to see after following a text to place the bulbs, akin to the old typewriter picture puzzles.
Oddly enough, every one of those is still in production today.
That’s a weird bit of trivia. Apparently the stereoscopes were all the rage during the civil war and a lot of those 3-D pictures were sent home as souvenirs. Considering how many seemed to be of piles of bodies, I can’t see how having it in 3-D enhanced it. Still it is amazing to think they have been recreated as View-Master disks.
I had a lot of great toys when I was growing up during and just after WWII, but one of my favorites was a chemistry set in a beautiful fitted box. And this thing had a LOT of cool elements in it. Including powdered charcoal, sulfur, and potassium nitrate, with a bottle of powdered magnesium just to make things exciting. And combine these in the right proportions (soon discovered), and what did you get? BOOM! We blew up a lot of stuff with this set, and didn’t have to go to the hospital even once. Kids nowadays have it so safe and dull.
HAH! Daylate, Killer of Threads", strikes again!!