Remembering old toys that were fun… My folks didn’t have a lot of money so many of the toys were ones that a bunch of boys could share or play with at the same time. Some of those listed were ones we made and in truth were some of the best we had.
- Lincoln Logs – building a log cabin is completely entertaining!
- Tinker Toys – you could build windmills or a really neat futuristic rifle to play shoot out with your brothers.
- Erector Sets – they came complete with an electric motor that attached to a D-cell battery so when you built a crane, you could actually lift items off the floor. Worked great until I wired it to a lamp cord and found out AC doesn’t geehaw with DC. Good lesson though, even if it did smoke up the entire house when the little motor blew.
- Footballs or basketballs – we played with both for hours!
- Walkie Talkies – the old ones you almost had to be able to see the other person to get them to work but they were still fun.
- I’m not sure what this particular toy was called but it allowed you to build devices that had mirrors inside so you could look around corners. Loads of fun if you are spying on your brothers.
- Hot Wheels – watching those cars loop the loop or see how far you could make them jump. Now that was good fun!
- Match Box toys – the wheels weren’t as good as Hot Wheels but they were great in a just every day play.
- Plastic soldiers – I had a Revolutionary War set which meant half the soldiers were blue and the other half red. I wanted the red ones to be Chinese so I started to heat up their heads in the gas flame of the heater in the bathroom and with a paper clip make them little ponytails. This practice stopped when I dropped hot wax onto my finger and burned the heck out of it. Still have the scar.
- Swords made from yucca sticks.
- Sling shots made from mesquite tree limbs and innertubes. Nothing like launching rocks at each other.
- Tops. We had the ones you wrapped string around and then threw while pulling the string to get the rotation. We had top battles, contests to see who could spin the longest, etc. A simple toy but it could keep us busy for hours!
- A used up water heater. We had endless hours of log rolling contest or just seeing how far we could roll the old water heater around the yard. We had so much fun with it that Dad didn’t take it to the dump until we had worn the thing out.
So what were some of your favorite toys?
