Your favorite toys as a kid?

[WickedNeriah]

My favorites were Winnie the Pooh. I am still looking for a replacement for an original. I still have my Madame Alexander Victoria baby doll 35 + years later.
It's amazing how these things have become 'valuable'.

 

[mysterygal]

I just remembered another thing, cardboard boxes...the bigger the better (don't know if it actually qualifies as a toy though) I remember making houses, castles, you name it out of those...fun fun fun

 

[Michael Mallory]

For my sixth birthday I got a complete set of "Disneykins"...very small plastic figures of all the Disney characters, and also a set of plastic Presidents. Later I got a set of Hanna-Barbera figures, made (as were the Disneykins) by Marx Toys. I'm now in my fifties and all these tiny figures are still hanging on my wall in shadow boxes. I wouldn't trade them for all the money in the world.

 

[Marc Chevalier]

1. Legos. Especially the clear lucite blocks. Hurt like heck when I stepped on one in the dark. Sharp corners!

2. Hot Wheels.

3. Not really toys, but ... "Wacky Packages". (We called them "Wackypacks".)

4. Topps Baseball cards. I *had* a complete set of Hank Aaron. What ever happened to it?

5. A realistic-looking plastic machine gun. This was during the end of the Vietnam War.

6. A realistic-looking plastic saber. Replaced in 1977 by a cheesy-looking "light saber".



Action figures, too: G.I. Joe, Big Jim, Steve Austin, and the Micronauts. I ended up burning or exploding most of them during my prepubescent "pyro" phase.


.

 

[Michaelson]

The ones I had that most of you would probably recognize were Fanner .50's. They had reloadable cartridges with little plastic tips. When you shot 'em with round caps on the back of the cartridge, it was pretty cool! Of course, those little tips were a pain in the butt to reload, and they tended to get lost. My Fanner 50's were chrome, but here's one that was dark colored.

THANK you! I thought I was the ONLY one who had one of those revolvers. Mine was the dark blue with the same holster, EXACTLY as shown in the photo. I got mine for Christmas in '62, and I had no clue it would actually shoot the bullet. I pulled the trigger, the gun snapped (as any good cap gun should), and I promptly shot a glass Christmas tree bulb off the tree directly over my Dad's head. Needless to say, I had my new revolver for a total of about, oh, say 45 seconds before it was taken from me. I got it back later that day.

In case you weren't aware, those guns were only offered for a year or so, then removed from the market, as it was discovered that they could be easily converted to shoot .22 short rimfire ammo. Not a good idea.:fing28:

Anyway, my new fanner and calf skin holster (nothing cheap about THAT holster, I'll tell you!) looked great with my new Roy Rogers outfit that Christmas!

Unfortunately, it's long gone, and when I've told folks about it, they have no clue what I'm talking about. THANK YOU!!! That brings back a LOT of good memories!

Regards! Michaelson

 

[Daisy Buchanan]

Yes, that cowgirl is me. Evidentally as a child, my mom says that I loved putting things on my head, including collanders

I loved to put things on my head when I was a kid too. My thing was dish rags (clean ones of course) I always thought they were like bridal veils.

 

[Aquia33]

Toys, what toys

When I was a kid all the toy manfacturers were supporting the war effort and not making many toys.

 

[katiemakeup]

Your Classic Childhood Toys!

Did you play with any classic style toys/games when you were growing up? Were they from years past or were they modern, out of this world? What toys have you seen that have stood the test of time and are still around?

I was born in '73, and had some toys that I knew my parents & grandparents played with. My sister and I had stilts (and when I say 'stilts' I mean Folgers Coffee cans with twine poked through for handles that my dad made) & we also had pogo sticks- the old metal kind that made a lot of noise, hula hoops and Madame Alexander dolls! We did have Silly Putty and goodness knows how long that's been around...I never like it though- something about the smell... Oh and we had this balance board that was made in the 40's- a wooden board with a great vintage logo on it and you laid it on a wooden cilinder thing where you stood on it to keep your balance, and you could roll back and forth on it. I must say I was a champ on that thing! Not sure what it was called again, haven't seen it in years. And you...?

 

[LizzieMaine]

I inherited a few of my mother's childhood toys -- her dollhouse, a little doll-sized wooden chair, and several board games. I've still got the thirties-vintage editions of Monopoly and Sorry -- we'll be playing Monopoly after Thanksgiving dinner today, in fact!

I also had a pair of old-school rollerskates when I was six or sevenish, the kind that clamp onto your shoes and lock on with a key. (That key was worn around your neck on a greasy shoestring to keep it from getting lost.) I still have a scar on my left knee that came from taking a fall onto the sidewalk from those skates!

We did a lot of improvisational play in my neighborhood -- most of us were poor kids, and didn't have the Latest Toys and things, so we found ways to make do with things we found. There was a junkyard at the end of the street, and one time a couple of boys dragged a rusty old oil tank up the street and kicked a hole in the side of it. Thus modified, it became a spaceship -- and a lot of neighborhood moms wondered why their little ones came home that night reeking of kerosene...

 

[max the cat]

toys

I still have a couple of tops and can spin them with string. I probably haul them out once or twice a year just to see if I still can! I fear a lost art now-
Max

 

[PeeWee]

I still have a two wheel scooter I got for Christmas in the mid 50's. I didn't wear it out, and neither did my daughter or her friends. I suppose the next generation will give it a try.

 

[BegintheBeguine]

The Return of the Smiling Wimpy Doll by Jean Shepherd

The 70s name for that balance thing was a Bongo Board, I think. I had colorforms, play-doh, I liked the smell of silly putty and the egg it came in was somehow a comforting shape to me, don't know why. When I saw a picture of some old Kewpie Dolls I went crazy for them, I found a playmat with them printed on it that I was wild about, never saw the actual plastic dolls though. Matchbox cars, I was kind of a tomboy. I had an old Barbie my dad saw on the side of the road and pulled over to rescue for me! A metal fire truck (still have the wooden ladder, I use it to prop open a window in the summer) to ride in, it had pedals. A toy xylophone, used as a butt-skateboard, now used to prop open a different window. My brother had a wooden sidewalk surfboard.

 

[Elaina]

My favorite toy as a kid was a button on a string. Wind and pull and pull for hours.

I had a ton of toys, but I was an outdoor kid. I made my own treehouse and sat up there and read for hours. On that token, my favorite kid books were Ramona Quimoby series....started in the 50's.

 

[Miss Sis]

I had my Mum's old roller skates. They were white boot ones from the 50s. I could not wait for my feet to grow into 'em!
Of course, when they did, the ball bearings in the wheels weren't that great but I just thought the style of them was fantastic.

 

[Lady Day]

I grew up an 80s kid. So I had (still have) TONS of My Little Ponies!
I never got into Barbies.
Also had Cabbage Patch Kids (right at the hight of the craze).

But to even out all that girl, I loved He-Man action figures, GI Joes (the small kind) and all of my brother's Transformers (back when they were dye cast metal ).

Ah, the memories.


LD

 

[olive bleu]

i was pretty much a tom boy growing up. I played with my uncles old hand me down toys, i really loved his G.I. Joe set. He was also heavily into the cowboy & indian role play, which is not very p.c. these days , but there you have it.

My fav toy was my imagination, i guess. I lived in a very remote area and played outside a lot, playing "Red Rover" and stuff like that

 

[fleur]

Fuzzy Felt!

 

[John in Covina]

Toys & Games

When I was very young to about 5, I played with my Cowboy guns. We played in "the Woods" alot as there were a fair number of lots on my street with out homes. I played Tarzan with my older brother and cousin a whole lot then too. From 7 to 12 or so I played army with friends or Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea or Lost in Space. We rode our bicylces a lot and went to the beach at Copiague and all around. Sand lot football, some basketball, Stickball. I declare war, Scullzees (shuffleboard like game with wax filled bottle caps.) Flashlight tag (at night) and collected lightning bugs.

Plastic Army men, they still probably turn up in the yard at the house my parents owned! A GI Joe for quite a while. i put together plastic models of Military planes and tanks also the Flying Sub from VTTBOTS!

We played Sorry, Parcheesey, Monopoly and cards. My brother's Aurora Model Road Racing track and cars was the source of endless fun.

AND we had a pellet rifle single shot then a Crossman pump BB /Pellet rifle again hours of fun.

Also we got 45 records and would listen to music a lot too.

 

[happyfilmluvguy]

"What walks down stairs, alone or in pairs, and makes a slinkity sound? A spring a spring, a marvelous thing, everyone knows it's Slinky! Slinky! Slinky! everybody loves a Slinky, it's Slinky, it's Slinky, for fun it's a wonderful toy! It's Slinky, it's Slinky, it's for for a girl and boy!"


Okay, I'm done.

I also have the only surviving sword and musket from Disneyland. Most of them I broke or lost. The musket is broken a bit but they don't sell them anymore. If it were new, it could be worn something one day.

 

[Tony in Tarzana]

I got a lot of mileage out of my Tinkertoys and my Erector Set as a kid in the 1960s, as well as my coaster-brake bike and my pedal car.

I think my #1 things were my Tonka trucks. I had quite a collection, and they stood up to my manhandling very well.