Old School Toys

[Hand Commander]

The Tonka aiplane was called the Hand Commander, believe it or not. Sweet machine.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dllViewItem&item=6980040329&category=19029#ebayphotohosting Mine's still in my parent's attic. A gi joe fit perfectly in the cockpit, even though it was made for it.
I had that red water pump rocket too. Man, you could get some serious velocity out of that thing and probably kill your little brother if you weren't careful.
Powell Peralta Bones Brigade. Oh Yeah. The search for the animal chin. Lance Mountain, Steve Cabellero, Tony hawk, Rodney Mullen. Anyone remember?
I can't remember the name, but those battery powered squirt guns that looked real and would get you shot by police now days.

 

[Bjammin]

Ganip-Ganop,
Silly Puddy,
Fun Dip candy,
Plincko,
Radio Shack TRS-80 computer,
Battlestar Galatica Cylon Ship with the working missiles,
Tyco glow-in-the-dark race car set,
Tyco Southwest Chief HO train set,
The games of Chutes and Ladders, Sorry, Mouse Trap, and Life
Red Line dirt bike,
Erector sets,
Lincoln Logs,
Tinker toys

That aircraft carrier with the foam planes that launced was super cool. I forget who made it.

Brings it all back.

 

[icefr8dawg]

Anyone have those COX line control models? God they all flew horribly when I was able to get the little engines started.

 

[72f8dawg]

How about those crossman 45 air bb/pellet guns? We would shoot each other with Q-tips broke in half(untill we got cought by mom). They were great you could see the bb arc across the yard when they were brand new.

 

[BoilerUP]

Born 1983, many of these have been previously mentioned...

Legos
Playdoh
Power Wheels Bigfoot
Atari
Nintendo (Duck Hunt!!!)
Balsa wood & rubber band airplanes
Estes rockets
Crossman 760 pellet gun
NERF guns
Huffy bicycles

My younger brother was a big fan of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but I was more of a Jurassic Park kid myself...

 

[328dude]

Anybody know if you can still run an Atari 2600 on a television of today? (HD)

 

[five-alive]

Zany Zappers
Mad Marauders - would go like 2 feet after winding them up
Colecovision

 

[V-STALL]

how about this Big Wheel!

http://www.jalopnik.com/cars/images/hemi_big_wheel.jpg

That thing gotta a Hemi in it?

http://common.weblogsinc.com/common/images/5203322665586411.JPG?0.4699383861408131


http://www.gizmag.com/watermark.php?p=4397_9080532146.jpg

 

[Gorilla]

Tinker toys for sure. Those thinks rocked. We'd always make various guns out of them, which then drooped and fell apart when you actually pointed them at somebody. Superior to Lincoln Logs which were considered a little kids' toy.

How about the little electric plane where you held a red flashlight thingie with a silver button which turned on the prop? The plane was on the end of a thin flex shaft. It became a lethal missile with little controllability.

Now here's an obscure toy. "Johnny Astro". I kid you not. Johnny Astro was a space-age, Apollo-era toy where you inflate a balloon, and tape a lunar-module type of landing gear to it. You had a control stick which pointed an enclosed fan shaped like a radar dish. The moving air would trap the balloon and the stick and throttle would control the azimuth and elevation of the balloon. The object was to move the balloon from it's launch pad to various landing pads. By timing it, it became very competitive.

Matchbox cars
Balsa flip gliders and rubber-band models
Any BB gun = guaranteed fun. And yes a friend lost an eye, for real.

A powerful imagination was required for most of these toys. I remember totally zoning out and being lost in an imaginative world. The ability to do that, which was so fun and so valuable, is lost at puberty. Damn those adult sex hormones.

 

[leardawg]

Too funny! You BW and GM guys will always be little kids in my mind. In my day, the only cool toy worth having was a Schwinn Stingray bike. The Big Wheel was, well, a tricycle, and only fit for toddlers and below.

They did seem to cause carnage, though. Hardly a day went by when some kid on one of those didn't go screaming down a hill and into a curb, flipping a$$ over teakettle and usually landing on his head.

No one wore helmets... that would have been totally dorky. I paid for it when I wiped out, got a concussion, and was puking sick for 3 days after. uke:

I remember getting my Stingray on my 8th birthday, blue with white banana seat(with the tiny sparkles in it). Tried to climb a couple of steps with it on the run by popping a wheelie, and went over a**-backwards. Also tried to jump a ditch, chickened out too late, and wound up in the ditch (never wore a helmet either; I don't think they even existed back in the 60s and 70s).

Other favorites:

GI Joe (pre-fuzzy hair).
Major Matt Mason space action figure (complete with moon station and various mobile rovers).
A fake plastic M-16 (most politically incorrect today, and I didn't grow up to be a mass-murderer; I don't even own a gun!).
My 4-ft tall Saturn V model which I put together when I was 10.