Your favorite toys as a kid?

[Absinthe_1900]

My favorites were always model airplanes, in particular I loved the 60 cent Hawk model kits of the racing planes from the 1930's.

I don't think I could count how many Gee Bee racers I had as a 10 year old kid.

Hawk had an amazing line of model kits, some of which were the very first plastic models in the USA (Late 1940's)

 

[K.D. Lightner]

I recall the day I got my first horse and rider: I was six years old, mother had taken me shopping and gave me a dime to buy whatever toy I wanted in a dimestore. I found a bin with little hard plastic horses and riders, picked out a black and white pinto horse and a cowboy in black -- it was the happiest day of my young life and was the beginning of a lifelong love of miniature horses and riders.

When I was a kid, it was the heyday of all the good Marx playsets, the Roy Rogers cereal premium ranch set, which featured the Stuart toys. Here is what they looked like if any of you out there are close to my age, you will remember them:

http://dkmoon.tripod.com/index.html

They sell for a lot now on Ebay when you can find them. I have a few of them, loved those horse figures most of all.

I also found on ebay cowboys and horses that matched the first beloved figures. They were made by Bergen and/or Beton Toys, which manufactured these figures from the early 1940's until 1959 when the owner sold the factory. They were made of Bakolite, those early figures, but later, were manufactured out of cheap plastic when another company took over the factory.

The early Marx figures were made of rubber and were highly realistic and detailed, not like the plastic junk you see today.

Today I have a goodly number of vintage toys which I like to display. Also a few modern action toys. And, Sefton, I also collect Godzilla figures. You have quite a variety there, I mostly have the Bandai, which are my favorites.

I love Godzilla, who wasn't around until I was a bit older.

karol


karol

 

[Pilgrim]

I grew up in the 50's, and westerns dominated TV. We were a family that got a TV early, and I may not have been Ralphie from A Christmas Story, but I was close. I had a Lone Ranger outfit (till I outgrew it), and every Christmas catalog in our house was thumbed over so often that it fell open on the toy revolver and rifle outfits.

Back in those days, EVERY kid wanted to be a 2-gun man! And the Christmas catalogs (back when they still existed) for every outfit like Sears, Wards and Penney's had 4-5 pages of toy gun outfits.

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.

 

[Brad Bowers]

Hi Yo Silver, Away!

Fanner 50s! Loved those guns! I was a big Lone Ranger fan in the early 1970s. I had a two-gun Lone Ranger set, with chrome pistols, with the gazelle (or whatever it was) on the grips. Black plastic belt and holsters, with a Silver Bullet the slid into a loop on each holster. I played Lone Ranger for years in an outfit that my Mom made. I never had a white hat, sadly, but I still had fun. Later, I had a Lone Ranger action figure, about the size of G.I. Joe. I also had Silver, and my brother had Tonto and Scout. Never did had the Butch Cavendish figure, but I had several of the playset accesories. I always liked the lost Silver Mine one the best.

Brad

 

[Tin Pan Sally]

Toys

My favorites were the sock monkey one of my Grandmothers made for me, hippity horse, rollar skates, bicycle, hair styling head, sewing machine that used glue instead of needle and thread, easy bake oven, sled, and anything I could play with outdoors.
I really loved all the dress-up gowns, purses, gloves, hats my Mother brought me from the thrift store where she volunteered. I wore the same vintage dresses later in life to high school, only they didn't drag on the floor anymore.

 

[Baron Kurtz]

Hungry, Hungry Hippos!!!!

bk

 

[mysterygal]

legos! I remember spending hours making castles and star wars ships. I grew up in a neighborhood with all boys so I played with he-man and GI-Joes all the time, and in the summer we'd get out our pretend machine guns and play war in the field down the street *sighs* ah, those were the days

 

[J. M. Stovall]

I was a Apollo kid. We lived in Huntsville Alabama in the 60s and 70s, and my dad was a "rocket scientist" at IBM and Redstone Arsenal. If you have seen Apollo 13 (the movie) and noticed Tom Hanks kids room, it's like I was propelled back in time. My heroes were the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo astronauts, and I had all these glossy NASA photos plastering my walls. Moon photos, maps, astonaut photos. And where this all leads to in this thread is Major Matt Mason! I had all that stuff from all the characters to the three story moon base and the weird three spoked crawler. Go here to see what it's all about.

http://www.majormattmason.net/

I was also a big Star Trek nut (the original series) and had those Mego figures with the cloth clothes and the fold out bridge with the transporter that you would spin to make them dissapear.

Unfortunately my mom got rid of all that stuff in a garage sale when I was in college. It's all worth big bucks now.

 

[spiridon]

Marbles. I used to love to play marbles.

 

[Miss Neecerie]

Lincoln logs, tinkertoys...cars....but I think the big winner were giant tinkertoys..

They were plastic and the connectors were about 8 inches across...so the scale let you build -real- kid size buildings and so forth. Playhouses and all sorts of things...I remember building a working tricycle with them.

And they only sank -slowly-, also making them ideal for building random floating things in the swimming pool...

 

[herringbonekid]

whoaa there ! anyone notice the similarity between the 'great mazinger' and ZURG from 'toy story 2' ? why the resemblance is uncanny...

zurg shoots mini-ping pong balls too !

 

[Sefton]

Probably the artists who created Toy Story are of the age to have been playing with Shogun Warriors when they were young so I think you're right about the resemblance.

I think it was in the late 60s or very early 70s when I had a Plastic Snoopy toy dressed like an astronaut with a neat helmet of clear plastic. I also had the Mego Star Trek and Planet of The Apes figures. As goes with most people they are long gone now...

I remember one year going to school for Halloween dressed as James Bond (I thought!). I wore a white dress shirt with a black bow tie (that was as much of a tux as I could get as a kid!). I carried a toy black revolver with a silencer to class as part of my costume. No problems then. Now they'd call the Swat team and the kid would be in deep trouble....kind of sad how things changed. I don't want to get off topic though so...

Corgi cars! Anyone collect them back in the day? I used to get mine at this toy store called "King Norman's Kingdom of Toys". They had a glass display case full of them that I would spend quite a bit of time staring into..my heart filled with toy lust! They were imported so a bit expensive and I couldn't ask for one too often, but I did get a few. I had the Corgi "USS Enterprise" from Star Trek too. It shot out little plastic discs when you turned a knob.

 

[Andykev]

I thought about it...

My "favorite" toy as a kid was the model airplane, starting with this simple .75 cent rubber band powered beauty (it was in our bright eyes back then!). Now they are over $5 each. Anyone remember the hours of fun with these?

We also had hours of fun with the plastic green trooper with his parachute, you'd throw it up, he would 'chute down. Until one of us threw it on the roof. We also had REAL tissue and birch wood kites where you had to attach a tail of cut rags. Long double rolls of kite string.

Yep, it was things that flew. That led to lessons when we turned 16, and flying, and pilot licence at 18, and owning a Cessna and then a Beechcraft. Oh, the model gas planes were in between too.

 

[Andykev]

Thanks for this wonderful post.

P. S.

I want to absolutely THANK you for this wonderful post. This is why the Lounge exists...just this type of thing.

You brought back memories of my mom vaccuming up nuts and screws with the vaccum cleaner, our digging "foxholes" for the G. I Joes in the backyard for hours, with the tents, space capsule, jeep, and little accessories. The etech a sketch which when broken open gave our mom another reason to queston the sanity of her boys. The H.O. model train set, and the full layout with scenery my brother built. The hours of glue and dope and peeling dried glue from our fingers. The skills used to scrach build a model plane from a kit....hours at the library reading "Model Airplane News" and "Model Railroader". :cheers1:

And all my kid wants to do is watch tv and play video games.:rage:

 

[jamespowers]

The hours of glue and dope and peeling dried glue from our fingers.

Dope?!
The rest is spoken like a father for sure.

Regards,

J

 

[Maj.Nick Danger]

Back to my robot obsession.

For all robot and other space and science fiction toy lovers, this site has some cool stuff. Quite pricy, but cool none the less. Osaka Tin Toys would be a cool place to work!

http://www.neatstuff.net/space-robots/Space-robots.html

 

[Mike K.]

LEGOs all the way!!

Of course you can't rule out water rockets, gliders, stingray bikes, and playing in the dirt!

 

[Sefton]

For all robot and other space and science fiction toy lovers, this site has some cool stuff. Quite pricy, but cool none the less. Osaka Tin Toys would be a cool place to work!

http://www.neatstuff.net/space-robots/Space-robots.html

That's a cool link! Thanks! If that isn't enough tin candy for your eyeballs.. please (shameless self promotion time) check out the thread I just created over in the Display Case about the Yokohama Tin Toy Museum.
I thank you and Mister Roboto thanks you!

 

[J. M. Stovall]

Sefton-I think it was in the late 60s or very early 70s when I had a Plastic Snoopy toy dressed like an astronaut with a neat helmet of clear plastic.

I have one of those still! One of the few things not sold. I also still have my metal Corgi Space 1999 Eagle lander. But probably the single thing I have that gets the biggest reaction from people is my plastic Star Trek Enterprise bridge model. I built it when I was in elementary school and I think it still looks pretty good. I found it several years ago in my parents attic. Even as a kid I was a stickler for detail, adding things to Spocks station that were not on the kit.

 

[John in Covina]

Toys and games

Model Motoring racing set from Aurora. The tracks where there is a groove for a pin under the car and two electric rails in the pavement. That was worth hours of fun.

Any gun toy such as to play Army or Man from U.N.C.L.E. stuff.
(Open Channel D)

That Bazooka that you pumped up with Air.

Sledding in the winter.

My "Stingray" bike.

Any air rifle but my Crossman pump was great.

A Magnifying glass and a mound of ants on a sunny day. Useful for recreating the final scene of destruction from the movie "Atlantis, The Lost Continent"

Box Kites
Balsa wood gliders or the wind up rubber band drive balsa wood planes.
nerf gliders.

My cousin had this huge replica Coca Cola Fountain Drink dispenser that was pretty cool when I was real little.

JARTS the lawn darts game.

Parchese and Sorry.

Trouble. "Pop a six and you move twice, race your men around the track and try to send the others back."

"you have to turn out the lights to play: GREEN GHOST"

Mouse Trap

The slip and slide
also whiffle ball.

Slinkies: What walks down stairs with out a care and shoots so high in the sky, goes up and down just like a clown. Everyone knows it's slinky. It slinky ,it's slinky........

Flash light tag, a version of hide and seak at night spanning several yards, in which you must ID the target to capture while a free agent can hit HOME and free the prisoners with a "Home free all!"

Collecting Lightening Bugs (fireflys) in a mayonaise jar.

Scullzies, a variation of crochet with wax filled bottle caps, played on the pavement.

I Declare War, sort of a frozen dodge ball.

Red light green light 1,2,3!

Stick ball.

Following Sonny Fox on Wonderama doing Simon Says or the tounge twister game. (The big black bug bled black blood. Aluminum linoleum. Unique New York or TOY BOAT)

Pillow fights (best with feather pillows!)

Any large Cardboard box from a major appliance.

Going Ice Skating at the Roll n Ice on Sunrise Highway in Amityville across from the Johnny Allweather Drive in (Movies).

And much much more!