Your favorite toys as a kid?

Lego, of course. Used them to build a castle for...
Britains Swoppet War of the Roses knights
Daisy lever-action pop gun which fit inside a heavy cardboard carpet tube which my father cut and accessorized to look like a PIAT, monopod and all. It amplified and deepened the pop gun.

Lego is the coolest toy ever invented! I used to construct real masterpieces when I was a kid. Unfortunately, modern kids are addicted to gadgets and toys are less valuable for them... My little sister can spend hours just staring at her tablet... We tried searching for some parental control apps on http://androidgo.fun/ but she always finds the way to play these silly mobile games...

Lego was definitely a favorite when I was growing up in the '60s. For a couple of years Mattel produced another type of "building block" toy called "Tog'l" - hollow cubes with a hole or pin in/on the center of each side, and some "accessory" parts as well:



I guess I was always interested in building things on some level because these led to building plastic model kits when I got a little older, a hobby I still enjoy to this day (when time and finances permit, that is).

A blast from the past! I also remember my Evil Knieval bike and figure with the wind up launcher!

I had a car that you used what looked like a zip tie with large teeth to power. The zip tie engaged with a gear on the axle. You would pull the zip tie out rapidly and release the car. I believe it was called SST or something like that. Many hours across the basement floor on rainy or winter days.
Edit: found it.

^ I had forgotten about those SSP cars. They weren't much more than a "one-trick pony" toy--pull the rip cord and let 'em go--but one friend and I spent hours racing them up and down his parents' driveway. Kenner eventually produced the "Smash Up Derby" versions with parts that would fly off when the front bumper struck something, but by then the novelty had worn off for us and we'd moved on to whatever our next fascination was.

In our neighborhood the hot car toys in the late-60s and 1970s were Mattel's Hot Wheels. Lesney Products had been producing their Matchbox line of die-cast cars for approximately 15 years before Hot Wheels appeared on the shelves, but for those of us steeped in southern California's "car culture" the Matchbox cars, though very well done, were relatively boring. I mean, imagine you're a young boy who sees "hot rods" everywhere he goes. Which of these are you going to choose?

Can't recall if I posted to this, but....

I had a lot of toys I loved as a kid. Lego was a perennial, whether in and of itself, or as an addo n to other toys. It was often used to build bases for cars, Star Wars figures, and whatever. My parents still wrap their Christmas tree lights around the cardboard sleeve that my Lego Village arrived in at Christmas 1976 or 77. My first Lego model was a bus. I still love Lego now - my brother's kids are into it. I think it's a bit of a shame though that it's so dominated these days by franchised and branded stuff, less room for a kid's imagination (the end-moral of the Lego Movie, toughb for obvious reassn that rang a little hollow!). Action Man (GI Joe) was big, back in the dayswhen he could fight (or even be!) the Nazis, and looked more like a soldier than a member of the Village People. Clearly a lot of folks bever grew out of Action Man, hence the popularity of Adult Model 1/6 scale ranges like Dragon Soldier. I tink Action Man eventually came back in the UK, but long after he'd been turned into a Kenner Paitoy GI Joe affair. Not the same. Again, I loved the original I think in part because there was no story dictated by a film franchise or TV show. Also loved the Britains 'Space' range - little brother had the Starguards, while I favoured the 'Aliens'. Dinosaurs were cool too - played with those a lot on and off for years; there was a time no visit to the museum was complete without a new plastic dinosaur for the collection being bought in the giftshop.

I also had a Hornby trainset (Dad still has all the bits and is building himself a track in the new house which he claims is for the grandkids, but....), which arrived in its first variant for Christmas 1979. Little Brother got a Scaletrix in the early 80s, which his kids now play with, and we both had cars and trains for each other's thing.

rocketeer said:

Once on Halloween he wanted to put an old pillow over his head and run around in a sheet as a ghost, I suppose today they would say he was Ku Klux Klan as most kids these days would dress up as Harry Potter.

Click to expand...

In July 1980, in our village Civic Week's fancy dress competition, I took home a prize for my long-planned Metal Mickey costume. Little brother also won for his ghost costume..... made from a dust sheet with two eye-holes cut in it and a paper plate hung round his neck bearing the legend "See You Tonight!". The local Doctor's wife tought he was adorable in it - he'd have been not long turned three - and there hewas the next week on the front of the local paper, her with him by the hand leading the kids' fancy dress parade through the town. My parents still have the B&W 8x10 of it, that being back in the day when you could contact the paper with the photo number and buy a print of it, often the only way you'd be able to have a proper photo of the event rather than just a newspaper clipping, because nobody really tought to take photos themselves in the same way back then...

Well he has grown up into an average 23 year old, gets a bit drunk occasionally but has not seen the wrong side of a police cell and with all the guns we played with he loves those WWII Playstation games but he's never had the urge to carry either a gun or a knife
My favourite toy? Airfix toy soldiers, I had thousands of them.
J

Click to expand...

I remember my mother used to lament that all my toys were about killing and warfare - especially growing up in Troubles Era Northern Ireland. I remember on one occasion at one of those loosely-veiled 'Jin theArmy' promo events we happened across on holiday in Scotland one year..... it was in Balmoral's grounds, I think. I'd have been about twleve. I had a go on the air rifle range, and beat the squaddies running it, and then proceeded to 'defuse' the prop bomb (a variant on the 'steady hands' game) first go. Thhe accent rasied a few eyebrows there, I can tel you. In the end, though, my brother and I both turned out quite fine. Apart from the fact that one of my stock expression of frustration is "This is way I'm not allowed to carry a gun - because I'd use it!" Which I have to be careful about in airports to this day.

LizzieMaine said:

My little brother had one of those ultra-realistic toy guns -- solid metal, made to look like a police revolver, shot caps with a rotating cylinder, the whole bit. He came up behind me with it one day while I was sitting on the living room floor reading the paper, and pistol-whipped me across the back of the head. Knocked me out cold. A very effective weapon.

(He was about five years old at the time.)

Click to expand...

Jinkies, he didn't pick that up watching Dixon of Dock Green!

Fading Fast said:

Fast forward, twenty or so years and I meet my girlfriend and her mom (yup, mom) loves electric trains and has a train track that runs the entire circumference of their den and she has several trains, cars, etc., and is really into it. Now I own a few trains (mainly gifts from her mom and dad) and love, just love, having one going around the room - not only the motion but the sound (the digital ones are, basically, recordings of real trains and sound fantastic) I find to be very relaxing. I don't do the layout, etc., just the track and train, but it can take me to another world to have it running.

Click to expand...

The digital ones are after my time now, but I hear great things about what can be done with them. One day I'll live soemwhere I have room for a big enough Christmas tree to run a little train around the base of as I saw in all those American seasonal cartoons.

Then the cat will probably eat it....

By far the best toy ever invented. Photo just fished from the net, I still dream about owing a place big enough so I can build a full stadium.

^^^ Funny. I never had one but a very popular toy here was electric football. However the field looked completely different.

I had a fiveaside version of Subbuteo branded after the Sport Billy cartoon. Year later the pitch had a second life, used upside down as a 'field' for Warhammer....

I thought I was the only one who remembered "Tog-L." The ingenious feature of that product was that one face of the cube was hinged and could open or close as needed for whatever you were putting together. We had a set of those that went thru me, my sister, and my brother before they finally all disappeared up the vacuum cleaner. They also hurt a lot more than a Lego when you step on them. Just saying.

Legos, aside from all the virtues mentioned here, turn out to have considerable value in radio production. We used to drop a couple of Legos into a wine glass to simulate the sound of ice tinkling in a drink, and when I had to come up with the sound of a collapsing ice sculpture made out of stacked ice cubes for our upcoming summer broadcast, I thought about it and got the effect by pouring a pile of loose Legos from one wooden bowl into another.

Which reminds me. One of my favorite childhood toys was a cheap little portable reel-to-reel tape recorder. It took three-inch reels, it ran on batteries, and it used a cheap crystal microphone, but it was the method thru which my cousin and I made dozens of our own radio programs. None of them survive, which is probably for the best, but while that machine lasted we had more fun than with just about any other toy I can remember.

Anything dinosaur-related was tops with me.

Zombie_61 said:

I mean, imagine you're a young boy who sees "hot rods" everywhere he goes. Which of these are you going to choose?

Click to expand...

Well, I know which one I'd choose now! haha

lego, tamiya plastic model kit and mini 4wd, gundam plastic model kit, plastic armymen (of the ninja variety), matchbox and tomica mini diecast cars, GI.JOE action figure, nintendo, super nintendo, and PSX when I was young adult, and now still have some toys on my desk.

navetsea said:

... gundam plastic model kit...

Click to expand...

Thought I was the only one.

Sent from my moto z3 using Tapatalk

For me it was Tonka toys.
I saved these when my parents were cleaning out the family home to move 30 plus years ago.
I recall having about 10 pieces between my brother and me, girder cranes, backhoes, bulldozers and the such.
My mom gave them to my cousins then to my nephew. They never had pride of ownership like I had. They were left outside for years under thier care. This is all that's left.
I was at my grandchildren home the other day, saw the poorly made plastic toys they had to play with in the sand box. Came home and took these down from the attic. I think they are good for another round of major construction projects.

So33 said:

View attachment 167254 For me it was Tonka toys.
I saved these when my parents were cleaning out the family home to move 30 plus years ago.
I recall having about 10 pieces between my brother and me, girder cranes, backhoes, bulldozers and the such.
My mom gave them to my cousins then to my nephew. They never had pride of ownership like I had. They were left outside for years under thier care. This is all that's left.
I was at my grandchildren home the other day, saw the poorly made plastic toys they had to play with in the sand box. Came home and took these down from the attic. I think they are good for another round of major construction projects.

Click to expand...

I know it's stupid, but I'm offended (not really, but I definitely look askance at them) by the cheap looking plastic ones that now carry the Tonka name.

Love your pics and glad you were able to rescue a few.

I had (and adored) that Tonka cement mixer, though mine was yellow. IT's interesting how toys have changed these days. There seems to be more low-quality stuff than back when, though I have also notice a significant rise in quality in many things too. Action figures are now vastly superior to what they were; looking back, the original Star Wars figures weremostly prety awful. One of the few humans that actually looked even vaguely like they should was Alec Guinness. Not so much the rest, and the costume colours were typically all sorts of wrong. Most Luke Skywalker figures came with a yellow lightsabre, and it was a rare Han Solo figure where the clothes were anytingl ike the colours on screen!

I want to say a good word for Tinker-Toys. I was always interested in different types of building sets, but even as a small child my vision was poor, and I didn't get glasses until I was in the fourth grade. When I was at the age where you like to play around with this kind of stuff, Tinker-Toys were the only ones that were really accessible to a kid with bad eyesight -- they were big enough and simple enough to manipulate that I didn't need to squint and get frustrated.



Plus they came in a can. Who doesn't like a toy that comes in a can?

My own childhood set remained reasonably intact thru my sister's time, but when my brother got hold of it, and realized that the sticks fit neatly into the pencil sharpener and could be easily weaponized against the rest of us, it was all over.

⇧ In the building-things toy category, in addition to Tinker Toys, I remember Lincoln Logs also came in a can. The below is a web pic I grabbed, but one that I remember some friends having back in the '60s-'70s.