What were/are your favorite toys?

[Janus]

Tinkertoys! ( I got a new set every christmas)

Chemistry set.

Major Matt Mason (Mattel's first man in space)
Bendable, posable (until the wire inside broke)

Fright factory (Plasti-goop)

Does anyone else remember those plastic toy guns that shot those rubber "bullets" that looked like the eraser off of a pencil? They were spring loaded and you poured the ammo into a chamber. You lost all the "bullets" pretty quickly, but then we discovered that pea seeds were just the right size. Oh the wars we would have in the hay loft!

 

[Les Sleeth]

Bazooka (or Double Bubble)
Pixie Stix
jawbreakers
and um
Twizzlers
and um
Sweet Mammoth Jerky?
edit:
oh yeah, you are smart and cute and a truly outstanding physics genius.

Nice try, but . . . Bazooka isn't bad, and I have to give you jawbreakers even tho that's so generic it ain't falsifiable. However, the rest are bull**** vote-buyin' trash. If you'd said polka-dot candy stuck on paper, or tiny wax syrup-filled soda bottles, corn candy, or even Tootsie Roll Pops when they cost 2 cents, then maybe we'd have a deal. Add to that that you've just gotten me in deep poo-poo by calling me a physics genius and . . . congratulations Math is Hard!

 

[Math Is Hard]

w00t! cool! I voted for you too Les. But, hey - how could I not?

polka-dot candy stuck on paper, or tiny wax syrup-filled soda bottles

can you still even get those anymore? wow! I'll never forget them - we used to get them as prizes at the school carnivals.
That reminds me, I actually found some bubble gum cigars last time I was in Texas. I never thought I would see those again!

 

[Les Sleeth]

Does anyone else remember those plastic toy guns that shot those rubber "bullets" that looked like the eraser off of a pencil?

That almost sounds familiar. I remember something that allowed me to shoot something similar to bullets. I remember spitting on rubber suction-cup darts and shooting them at my dad's forehead, and my faithful BB gun, and the time I found a cattle prod when my great uncle died, and tried it out on my cousin . . .

 

[Moonbear]

w00t! cool! I voted for you too Les. But, hey - how could I not?

can you still even get those anymore? wow! I'll never forget them - we used to get them as prizes at the school carnivals.
That reminds me, I actually found some bubble gum cigars last time I was in Texas. I never thought I would see those again!

We used to have an ice cream shop in my hometown that had a candy shop attached with all those goodies! They closed a long time ago. I have seen the polka dot candy on paper in the grocery stores (it just isn't the same to buy it all wrapped up in sanitary plastic). I haven't seen the plastic soda bottles filled with syrup in ages, so I don't know if they are still made. I sometimes get a craving for those old candies. Yeah, sure, I could just take a spoonful of sugar from the sugar bowl, but it just isn't the same.

 

[Mk]

Kids nowdays have no idea what it means to lose the key to your roller skates.

Huh?

Slingshots were fun.

Who here (as a child) had a

- microscope

-telescope

-invisible man or woman model that they built

Yeah, I had a microscope and a telescope, looked at the moon every few nights.
Wow, those stories Evo told about her imp brother gave me the "Aww, how sad," feeling... though calling it Fang was really funny

 

[BobG]

My favorite toys: shovels, water hoses, dirt, and sand.

Way back at the end of my friend's back yard (it tilted down away from house), where his parents wouldn't notice for awhile, we built an entire battlefield with trenches, bunkers, etc. Lasted until his dad mowed the yard.

Volcanoes in the sand box with a hose and spray nozzle buried under it. Put all the people on the side of the mountain and turn the water on. Eventually the water works it way through the top. Then you can build canals in the sand box along with roads and bridges.

Best was the underground fort in the corn field behind our houses. Someone found a big piece of plywood, so we dug a big hole in the middle of cornfield, threw the plywood over it, cut a trap door in the plywood, and buried the rest of the plywood in dirt. We then cut a maze through the corn field to get to it. Great fun until harvest time. Kids came flying out of there in total terror. The farmer wasn't all that happy about it, but at least it was better than discovering the hole by driving into it.

And dirt clods. Those don't hurt as bad as lumps of coal.

Best indoor toys: Lincoln logs, tinker toys, and erector sets. A super ball at a bowling alley is a pretty fun toy, as well, even if kind of short lived.

 

[Evo]

We used to have an ice cream shop in my hometown that had a candy shop attached with all those goodies! They closed a long time ago. I have seen the polka dot candy on paper in the grocery stores (it just isn't the same to buy it all wrapped up in sanitary plastic). I haven't seen the plastic soda bottles filled with syrup in ages, so I don't know if they are still made. I sometimes get a craving for those old candies. Yeah, sure, I could just take a spoonful of sugar from the sugar bowl, but it just isn't the same.

The Food Channel had featured a store that sells all of the old candy, I can't remember the name, but here's one I found that seems to have all the oldies. http://www.nostalgiccandy.com/store/index.php?action=category&start=0&id=1&subid=

 

[Ba]

I still have a big box of legos. Although most of what we did was make things. In my not so long ago childhood we dug holes in the backyard until we were yelled at (digging a foundation for our house later kind of cured me of that one). We had a shed we turned into a fort no girls alowed. We made swords and staffs out of sticks as well as bow and arrows. These were very soon outlawed and we had to make them in secret (it happened when we accidently shot my sister. The bows actually evolved into something quite good. Microscopes were fun, dissecting bugs. then there were always trees to climb, rocks as well. Hey, I was just playing with a grappling hook and trees over thanksgiving as well as taking down a treehouse I built six years ago. It could still hold my weight but the tree was pulling away

 

[singleton]

Well I think my childhood toys mostly had to do with building things :)

I loved lego, construx and mecano. I'd dig out old train sets of my fathers and set them up while they weren't around :D And I build -tons- of tree forts myself. I'd spend days hacking up very good wood and patchworking together a nail-ridden waiting-for-accident fort about 50 feet up in the trees.

God... looking back it scares me how I could have easily let go/slipped and fallen off from that height

When I was nine I bought my first computer. Yes--I bought it. We grew up poor and I had my first paper route at age six under the supervision of my parents :P (they convinced all customers to pay "office pay" so I wouldn't be troubled with collecting money). I began programming in QBASIC then and haven't stopped programming since

So most of my toys deal with "building" I guess. I'm still a big kid

 

[quantumdude]

Two words: Star Wars (they're not dolls, goddammit, they're action figures!)

I think I was a kid at the absolute perfect time, because those toys were a lot of fun to play with. My brother and I must have made up about a million sequels to the trilogy just in our playroom.

 

[Janus]

While not exactly toys:

The tree-house.( which at various times served as a fort, spaceship,the Bat-cave, etc.)

The raft.

We had a small pond out in our pasture, and one day when I was about 8 or 9 the neighbor kid and I decided to build a raft for floating on it. We had gathered up all the odds and ends of wood we could find and were nailing them together, when my dad walked by. He asked what we were doing and when we told him, He took one look at our handiwork and said "That's no way to build a raft, it will never support your weight."

He then proceded to build us a raft, dragged it to the pond with the tractor and got it into the water for us.

The thing is, my dad was a very busy man, he worked a regular 8 hr a day job and also ran an 80 acre farm with 20 head of cattle. When he stopped to ask us what we were doing, he was on his way to some farm chore or the other, yet he took a big chunk of his day to make us a raft, when he could have just put the kybosh on the whole thing.

We spent many a summer day poling our raft on that pond.

 

[Moonbear]

We had a shed we turned into a fort no girls alowed.

Well, fine, I'll just go play in tribdog's fort; he let's the girls in his fort.

 

[Evo]

Tinkertoys! ( I got a new set every christmas)

Tinker toys! For the life I me I kept drawing a blank on what they were called.

Does anyone else remember those plastic toy guns that shot those rubber "bullets" that looked like the eraser off of a pencil?

Yep, my brother shot me with those too.

 

[abitofnothingleft]

cabbage patch kids dolls

 

[The_Professional]

I loved Legos and those mini , detailed cardboard planes from World War 2 that you have to assemble yourself with glue. And of course remote control cars that I always end up disassembling for some reason but never able to put back. I've always enjoyed looking at the circuit boards and transistors to figure out how it works, and so my gijoes will have their own vehicles as well :)

 

[Ba]

Originally Posted by Moonbear Well, fine, I'll just go play in tribdog's fort; he let's the girls in his fort.

Well we had a nice comfortable sofa suspended about two feet from the ground.

 

[Artman]

Erector Set (in particular the one with the motor and gears) and GI JOE Mercury Space Capsule

 

[Moonbear]

Well we had a nice comfortable sofa suspended about two feet from the ground.

But what good is a sofa if you won't let the girls in.

 

[Ba]

Only special girls got to come in. It was a rule to keep out my sisters (and their friends), nothing more.