Toys you had when you were a kid

[Gorbles]

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Tonka truck! Used to sit in one of these and wheel myself around hahaha.

Found a modern version recently. I don't go on for the whole "stuff was better when I was young" because Transformers, Lego, Power Rangers, even stuff like Scalectrix . . . all of that is so much better now. But a modern Tonks truck is roughly 50% plastic. Wouldn't even be able to park 5yo me's behind in that.

Was a bit disappointed, because I almost wanted it for my 5yo.

 

[Gori the Grey]

I'm pretty sure this was my cap pistol. If not this very one, then one very much like it:

 

[Hygro]

A lot of Lego but sooooo much playmobil.

My older brother was more into building so he was all Lego.

I just wanted to play with the people and put them into teams and relationships and scenarios and play.

 

[Hygro]

I'm pretty sure this was my cap pistol. If not this very one, then one very much like it:

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Crip or blood?

 

[Gori the Grey]

Thankfully, I lived in an era/region where that dichotomy was unknown.

Cops and Robbers.

Cowboys and Indians.

The one above was for Cops and Robbers. I think I had a separate Western-styled one for Cowboys and Indians.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Silly Putty.

Slinky. (Never worked as well as in the commercial).

Play-Doh.

Green Army Men.

Oh, man. Before I owned the Hot Wheels City depicted above, my mom would take out a baking tray and pour oats onto it, and I could drive my Hot Wheels around in that and just make roads of my own.

 

[Farm Boy]

Yes, I had that very Fisher Price set, JR! And possibly amadeus' Main Street one. Anyway, I somehow had the vehicles from that one, b/c I had that fire truck and milk truck. (In an era when my family got its milk delivered by a milk truck!) Oh wait, I think it might be a mail truck. It remains true, however, that we got our milk delivered when I was a kid.

Let's see what else I can bring to mind. I built model kits. The Enterprise, Romulan Bird of Prey, then I think an X-Wing (crossover before it was cool). I would hang them from my bedroom ceiling with fishing line.

An old-school toy gun that shot little plastic disks. Here you go:
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Now I'm going to dig up my Tonka Toys. From back when they were metal:
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lol! 3/3 on those pictured. Video games were an Atari 2600. A little older and I got into model rockets. A little older yet and the disc gun became a .22.

 

[Broken_Erika]

Slinky. (Never worked as well as in the commercial).

like this?

Spoiler :

 

[Hygro]

Thankfully, I lived in an era/region where that dichotomy was unknown.

Cops and Robbers.

Cowboys and Indians.

The one above was for Cops and Robbers. I think I had a separate Western-styled one for Cowboys and Indians.

Early 90s as a kid I was afraid to wear too much blue or red.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Early 90s as a kid I was afraid to wear too much blue or red.

Sad to think it, Hygro. The result of this thread is just to remind me in what innocent circumstances I got to live out my youth.

Cap guns didn't need a little orange nub on the front so that a cop wouldn't shoot you. If you pinched your damn fingers in a metal toy, then you were the idiot; be more careful next time; your parents didn't think they should go sue the toy company.

Good times.

Not that bad, @Broken_Erika; just went down one step and stopped, rather than going down a series:

Etch-a-Sketch.

 

[Snowygerry]

Not a toy strictly speaking, but this is certainly is what got most hours, even saved up to buy it.

In the beginning there weren't that many games, and to be honest not much to do with it, the internet had yet to be invented.

I still remember how happy I was when I turned the blue screen with light blue text into a black screen with green text, the whole street came over to watch

 

[Zardnaar]

Early 90s as a kid I was afraid to wear too much blue or red.

Fine in my hometown but brother told me not to where my type of red shirt in a city. Red flannel grunge type.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I also had a few handheld computer games, prior to getting a (pitiful) Amstrad and one year later an (awesome) Amiga 500.

Hm. My first computer was an Amiga 500. That thing paid for itself quite nicely, since I mostly used it for my typing business. Later on I did the SCA and Star Trek club newsletters on it. And of course that's the computer that I had when I first learned to play Civ I.

Lite Brite

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Lite Brite, makin' things with light
What a sight, makin' things with Lite Brite.

The things you can do wiith a 25w light bulb... I had an older version than the one in this photo, and many years later I snagged the bulb out of it when we needed a 25w light bulb for the campfire scene (aka Peter's Denial) in the first production of Jesus Christ Superstar I worked on (in 1981). That light bulb became one of my theatre souvenirs. I still have it.

Silly Putty.

Slinky. (Never worked as well as in the commercial).

Play-Doh.

Green Army Men.

Oh, man. Before I owned the Hot Wheels City depicted above, my mom would take out a baking tray and pour oats onto it, and I could drive my Hot Wheels around in that and just make roads of my own.

I remember Silly Putty. I remember where my mother bought it for me, and what a weird smell it had. I remember taking it to school and the other kids being jealous.

Slinky was basically a scam. Mine never worked.


Nobody's mentioned Tinkertoys. My dad gave me stuff to do with cars and building things. He was a bit disappointed that I never produced anything remarkable with the Tinkertoys.

I still have a few of the plastic farm animals I played with when I was about 5 or 6. It was quite the ongoing soap opera. The animals were one big family, with the sow and the sheep as the grandparents, the cow and one of the horses were the parents, another horse was an uncle, and the piglet, ducks, and rooster were siblings (the piglet and rooster were boys and the ducks were their 4 sisters). They all lived in a plastic farm truck turned on its side, and their adventures were mainly outwitting Lord Selkirk (a Canadian historical-themed knick-knack my mother got in a box of Salada tea and gave to me to play with). So help me, I still remember the names I gave to most of those animals (I don't recall the names of 3 of the ducks). I had a vivid imagination back then, and it used to freak my mother out that I could set this up on the coffee table and play silently, telling myself the stories in my head.

Come to think of it, I still have the top of that coffee table. My dad turned it into a taller table by removing its original legs and mounting it on a piece of stove pipe and a wooden base. It's sitting in the room with me as I'm typing.

 

[AmazonQueen]

Tonka truck! Used to sit in one of these and wheel myself around hahaha.

Found a modern version recently. I don't go on for the whole "stuff was better when I was young" because Transformers, Lego, Power Rangers, even stuff like Scalectrix . . . all of that is so much better now. But a modern Tonks truck is roughly 50% plastic. Wouldn't even be able to park 5yo me's behind in that.

Was a bit disappointed, because I almost wanted it for my 5yo.

What was better wasn't toys, it was freedom to roam without parents worrying about strangers or traffic

 

[REDY]

I had a lot of cheap plastic cowboys and indians like these:

 

[Farm Boy]

Not a toy strictly speaking, but this is certainly is what got most hours, even saved up to buy it.

In the beginning there weren't that many games, and to be honest not much to do with it, the internet had yet to be invented.

I still remember how happy I was when I turned the blue screen with light blue text into a black screen with green text, the whole street came over to watch

The key feel on those is so nice.

 

[EgonSpengler]

I started playing Dungeons & Dragons at age 7 or 8, so the "toys" I remember the best are the 1st ed. AD&D books.

Sadly, I didn't get a first printing of Deities & Demigods, which included the Lovecraftian Cthulhu mythos and Moorcock's Melnibonean mythos. Chaosium Games had licensed those IPs for its games, and by the 2nd printing of Deities, TSR had to remove them.

 

[JollyRoger]

I started playing Dungeons & Dragons at age 7 or 8, so the "toys" I remember the best are the 1st ed. AD&D books.

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Sadly, I didn't get a first printing of Deities & Demigods, which included the Lovecraftian Cthulhu mythos and Moorcock's Melnibonean mythos. Chaosium Games had licensed those IPs for its games, and by the 2nd printing of Deities, TSR had to remove them.

I had those 3. When my parents boxed up a lot of stuff from my old room and gave it to me later in life, they left out the two things I really wanted: My 1st ed, AD&D books and a paperweight I received as an award in a high school cross country meet that has a lot of nostalgic meaning to me.

 

[Kyriakos]

The plane was cool, and GIJoe toys at least weren't as stupidly large as the He-Man ones, but still they sucked. I had a few figures but they never were my favorite toys.

Code Zero were a lot shinier and smaller, though again by that time I was mostly using my computer for games.

 

[Broken_Erika]

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The plane was cool, and GIJoe toys at least weren't as stupidly large as the He-Man ones, but still they sucked. I had a few figures but they never were my favorite toys.

Original GI Joes were the size of Barbie dolls