What was your favorite toy when you were a kid?
 

Forgive me if this was ever posted before...

But I was wondering this past weekend, since I am no longer young, but not exactly old, about my childhood and I began to think about the toys I had as a kid. I really loved to play with Legos. Man, I could spend hours with those things. But when I wanted to hang out with my friends, it was G.I. Joe.

What was/were your favorite toy(s) as a kid?

I'd say Legos are probably the number 1. I played with lots of toys as a kid, but I definitely played with Legos more than any other. I also liked Exo-Squad action figures, Crash Dummies, and Micro Machines.

-Lasereth

(I never got along with my older sister, and everyone else in my neighborhood was all boys - so I never quite grasped my girlness)

A Yellow Tonka dump truck that was made out of metal

I somehow got my dad's Lionel train set, that was setup on a big table in the basement- the set got added to over the years... and also set up with it was a racecar set -- i wish i could remember the name - - that used to cross over the train tracks occassionally - if timed right - -I'd have some spectacular collissions.

Chalk - My only really girl thinkI ever did was hopscotch -

My neighbor's pet rock. That bastard had everything...

A vote for Lego from me as well. That and My Little Pony or Quints, model railroad set, and my Commodore 64 :)

Verti Bird. Any older folk remember that. It was a helicopter on a cable that you controlled and flew and did cool stuff with.

Definitely LEGOs. Heck, even as an adult I some times feel like making something cool.

I actually half-built a PC case out of LEGOs once, but I had issues with mounting the mobo and PSU, so it did not fly. But it was fun to make while it lasted :D

My favorite was an Evel Knievel motorcycle and wind-up motorcycle launcher. Hours of fun...
Then Legos, and thn this toy plane on a string that flew by swinging it around your head.

Can't you make a Lego shell with an existing case?

Verti Birds were awesome!

http://www.whirlybirdcentral.com/museum/images/5972.jpg

http://www.whirlybirdcentral.com

my favorite toy as a kid was my mind :) I had a really good imagination so anything was a toy and everywhere was a playground.

the viewmaster. i had so many of those card thingies for it.

http://members.cox.net/richw/lego.htm

It's a really cool idea - I wouldn't have the patience to do it... but someone had some fun with Lego - -there are a bunch more as well

Legos
and we had this little robot thing called 2XL and it had 8 track tapes..It was a trivial pursuit type of game.. anyone remember that?

My imagination. Sounds trite, but it's true.

We didn't have much money when I was growing up, so I got to play with myself a lot.

Hang on a sec...


Mr Mephisto

:) I loved it too... but after a while the tapes were repetitive. and I didn't care for the new version of 2XL that came out in the early 90s

Playing with yourself? You were an advanced youngster... :D


We also had tons of made up games in the neighborhood, or games that the neighborhood parents passed on to us -- I lived in a pretty subarban area, but most of our parents came from the 'hood. They learned us some damn fine games. Kick the can, about 100 different versions of tag, hide and seek -- who needed an actual toy.

Legos & an Atari 2600.

Nothing worse than the sound of a lego brick being sucked up into the vacuum cleaner :(

A peice of wood that looked like a gun. I'm serious too, lol.

Barbies and Toy Guns! I guess I was a girly tomboy.
Oh...and I had a pretty good imagination so about half of my games were me making up stories that I had me and my friends act out.

Ghostbuster firehouse playset

I remember playing a lot of neighborhood games with all the other kids. We played kickball and a game called boxball which was sort of like handball, played with a tennis ball inside a chalk court that you drew on the street. It was a lot of fun and it taught us how to relate to one another and to behave fairly, even when the adults weren't there to watch over you. I feel sad when I go back home and you don't see little kids out playing together on the lawns or out in the dead end street. It seems all their activities are much more organized and supervised now.

For solo play, Lite Brite was the coolest.

Yea, but it just wouldn't be the same :)

As for that link maleficent posted... Yea, thats exactly what I was going for. I'll have to read up on how they mounted the internal guts. Maybe I'll make another stab at it.

I think I still have that in my parent's basement :D

Legos, Micro Machines/Hot Wheels/Matchbox cars and the rubber-band guns my grandfather made for me (and a double-barreled one I bought :p) were my favorites.

I NEVER had any toys when I was a kid, couldn't afford any, which works rather great since I don't find any fun in playing legos, action figures, tanks, hellicopters etc....Although I really wanted a remote control car when I was a kid, but I didn't get that either. Oh well.

my ninja turtles pedal go cart

The girl next door

I loved my star wars action figures. I would lie down on the floor for hours and pretend I had 2 football teams playing. I'd also take them out in the yard and play in the bushes ... pretending they were climbing a huge tree.

I also loved collecting fire ants and army ants in a jar and watch them go at it. You would think being named "army ants" would mean they could fight good ... but it's not so.

Legos were probably my favorite.. That was usually all I got for birthdays since they were relatively cheap.

My best friend had Exo Squad action figures and toy soldiers, and I thought those were the shit, but my mom said they cost too much.

Hotwheels and Legos. Hotwheels untill I was 4 or 5, and then Legos all the way up till about 12 probably.

Edit: Oh shit how could I forget about MicroMachines Star Trek and Star Wars ships? I collected them and played with them a ton in elementry school.

LEGOS!!!!

Pogo-stick while chewing sunflower seeds.

Or knockers (boulders) where one tries to hit 2 hard glass balls on a divided at center string both travelling 180 degrees to impact over and over. Hurt the knuckles a bit when they miss..

Forgot the yoyo. Remember Walk the Dog and The Cradle Will Rock.

Its either legos or my computer.

What can I say but, my NES too!

Mighty Max, the Skull Mountain playset. I'm telling you, that thing fucking rocked.

http://www.parnasas.com/PopArena/Art...o/mighty11.jpg
http://www.parnasas.com/PopArena/Art...o/mighty10.jpg

Ninja Turtles pizza thrower
or
Ghostbuster-proton pack

Dude I had the same one. That thing is fun now that I think about it.

http://www.angelfire.com/80s/toyhunters/26.jpg
http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/images/3...26_turtles.jpg
http://i9.ebayimg.com/01/i/01/62/0b/1a_1_b.JPG
http://i18.ebayimg.com/01/i/01/7b/e8/be_1_b.JPG
http://i8.ebayimg.com/01/i/01/7c/64/3b_1_b.JPG
http://i16.ebayimg.com/02/i/01/7c/ce/be_1_b.JPG
http://www.buriedgems.com/mhha/TMNTLotC031104.jpg

I had <b>most</b> of those toys. Shit I shoulda kept em....taken better care of em. They'd be worth a little bit now.

Asta!!

I had a toychest full of toys but as a child more concerned with ways to have fun/kill myself I found myself playing with the big blue plastic lid of the toychest more often than the toys. I remember putting it at the top of a staircase, standing on the lid, and riding it down the stairs until it shot out from underneath me and I went head first into a wall....

I found myself playing the "Make The Vacuum Suck Up Pennies Until It Starts Smoking" game as well as the "Nailpolish + Wood Flood = Cool" game far too often. I'm living proof that a hard head makes for a soft bottom...

Out of the toys that were actually made to be toys, Lite Bright was probably my favorite. It was quite possibly the dumbest invetion ever but then again - I wasn't exactly the smartest child.

Transformers!

How the hell did I forget my Matchbox cars! Those rocked.

Legos, transformers, GI Joe, and my tonka dump truck.

Very Young
Stuffed "panda" bear....that I still have, up in my attic

Young
Machbox cars (the old ones, that still came in a"matchbox"...
My Tonka fire engine, dump truck and front end loader...
G.I Joe (the old one, without the beard and "kung-fu" grip)...
My "Science Lab" with chemicals, a microscope, and various geology stuff.
My GAF Viewmaster (metal)...

Somewhat Older
My telescope...now that I wish I still had.

Deathrace 2000, anyone?



For me, Legos were always a favorite. I could and did build damn near anything with them; my parents once came home to find that their 8-year-old son had dragged a ladder up the stairs and built a tower to the ceiling. I don't mean almost to the top, I mean wedged between the floor and ceiling. After that incident, my parents had a little talk with me about the proper use of the ladder (with a bit thrown in about responsible use of power tools, ubt that's a different story,) I had to stack up chairs and boxes to get that high.

Hell, I still play with legos. In high school, I'd keep the box in the trunk of the car (we're talking about a 3'x2'x1' box, not just a small one,) and take them out at a friend's house and we'd build various huge structures. At that point, it wasn't just little kid-style Lego buildings, it was more of a combination of an architecture contest and something resembling the Warhammer game.

Another favorite of mine was to wire up firecrackers to model rocket igniters that I got in bulk for a few cents a piece at a flea market and take short video clips of squads of army men being blown up. The zoom on that camcorder was pretty good for its time.

bro?! is that you!?!

ETCH-A-SKETCH!

#1 would be Adventure People. Between my best friend and myself, we probbly had every one of them.
http://www.fpadventure.com/images/mcyclcop.jpg

#2 would be Legos

Holy cow. I had no idea Legos were such a huge favorite before I started this thread.

That brings up some GREAT memories. I have forgotten all about that thing. That was the shit!

Micro-Machines, Masters of the Universe toys (the battle damage toys that never worked for me), Ninja Turtles (Had truck loads of them... key word had. :( ), and my favorite of all time, LEGOs! my god, i loved them, i had a huge Tub full of legos. I used to build robots, they were so awsome. You could open the chest and put a guy in there, and one in the head, the robot had all movable joinds, all the way down to fingers... I have since passed my LEGOs to my younger cousin, that then added his huge collection, then just a little while ago gave them to a younger cousin of ours. We have kept the legos in the family, that collection is huge... ohh crap im rambling again... :o man i miss my legos :( *goes off to start a new collection*

Easybake oven and light bright.

When I was about 5-6 years old my family and I spent two weeks visiting my uncle and his family who were living in Texas.

I only remember one thing from that trip: "The Little Van Goes"

It's difficult to describe, it was about 8" x 6" x 2", it had a drawer full of sections of vans (front, middle bit and rear) and you could put them together to make a vast array (about 20) different vans, then you put a sheet of paper over the top and made an etching of the van. Brilliant.

I would have to say that Lego was my absolute favourite but I also have fond memories of playing with:

Big Jim (I had the rescue rig)

http://i5.ebayimg.com/03/i/02/43/a7/b4_1.JPG

Star Trek action figures and Planet Apes Action figures (I had the treehouse - it had cool hidden compartments and everything!)
http://www.geocities.com/drzaius0/PO...eehouseBox.jpg

The two little girls next door and fire. (not simultaeneously, of course)

My dad was a hell of a carpenter, he could crank out a pretty realistic looking wooden rifle, in nothing flat. A nail for the trigger, and an old belt for the strap, and I was ready for tigers, Indians, or outlaws.

Oh, and kinda liked playing with the girl next door, better than Legos.

Legos and my bike!!

I didn't really like toys.. but videogames were fun when I was old enough.

Had to have been my Ghostbusters Proton Pack and Ecto Trap. My mom would be Janine and I would be Dr. Venkman, and she would hit an imaginary bell and go "We got one!" and then I'd run out to the living room and bust some ghost ass.

Oh yeah, I forgot about my Weebles and the Weeble Treehouse™.

(they don't fall down, you know?)

Lite Bright, Little People, and My little ponies.... my mom didn't tell us that she saved all of my toys, so I'll have vintage toys for my kids someday :)

Electric slot car set. I bought one as an adult a few years ago and have added many sections of track. I can fill the floor of an average sized room with a layout. The kids and cats love it too.

Legos, baby. I used to live for those things.

G.J. Joes, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Hot Wheels cars, Matchbox cars.

NES, SNES, Genesis, Sega CD, TurboGrafix-16, Neo-Geo AES (with debug BIOS & S-Video mods), & Neo-Geo CDZ.

Don't remember what 'he' was called but, it was the enemy creature of 'Stretch Armstrong'

He was big and green and you could stretch the shit outta him.

Anyone remeber that?

prolly tonkas, hot wheel cars, etc..stuff like that

Legos and NES in that order. I still like Legos actually...

Oh legos made me think of another toy I loved..not sure what it was called tho..

Maybe mechanics? it was pieces of metal that you could screw together, build things with, came with little motors, gears, shafts etc, you could make like cars, helicopters, etc.

Oh I furgot about that little helicopter thing with the throttle on it, you push up the helo blade spins and raises up in the air, then spins round and round.

You could ease off the throttle and like pick stuff up. That shit was awsome when you're a kid!

GO LEGOS!! I loved the space ones when I was a kid!

Wow this really does bring back loads of memories. Lego was a firm favourite of mine as well, but most of the toys here i played with. 2nd favourite would have to be the firecrackers though.... good times

*sheds a tear*

Rock'em Socke'em boxers.

I remember my mom getting me some from a yard sale or something and the head of the blue one wouldn't pop up. Nevertheless, I loved it.

Also they had those cars that you pull the winding thing out and they would rev up and you could smash against each other or anywhere else, and the pieces would come off. Those were so cool!

Lincoln logs and tinker toys, for years...then I got a Red Rider BB-gun---everything went great until Dad caught me shooting that old bull in the balls---man he could beller (the bull, not dad)...
so, he took the insides out so it would not shoot BB's...thats when i figured out that it made a hell of a water gun when I dipped it in the horse tank...problem was, my sister yelled louder than the old bull when I shot her in the face with a load of water...

It disappeared right after that...

LMAO


Mine where my BIG WHEEL, Ninja Turtle action figures and Lego of coarse!:lol:

Hell yeah...I had the Haunted house one.


Envy me...I had the DEATH STAR from Star Wars!!! along with Luke's speeder, several figures, and a few TIE fighters. A bit later in life I would fall for Transformers.

Legos, star wars then GIJoe figures
The I'd make up teams and make the star wars/GIJoes play football. I'm not kidding.

I have two.

The first is the most fun, and most used. The second is the most memorable.

The first, and most fun toy I remember playing with is GI Joe figurines. I was really into them, and would dig ditches in my back yard and play with them all day long. It was great.

My most memorable toy was one of those "double layer" wheels (think mini Merry-Go-Round), that you sat on and could spin around really fast if you spun the top wheel fast enough.

As a child, I got the brilliant idea to try to stand on this and spin while on my porch, near the pillar supporting the roof. Naturally, I lost control, fell, and cracked my head on the ledge of the pillar. A hospital visit was in order, but I don't think any permanent damage was done, aside from many stitches and a scar, which has since gone away.

I also remember loving this felt panther I had. I believe it was Skeletor's panther, and I would take it everywhere I went. I think I credit this partly with liking animals so much now that I am older. That little felt panther really has a permanent place in my memory for some reason. It was just really cool, and I liked it a lot.

I liked Legos and Ninja Turtles.

Legos when I was a little kid, and Turtles from when I was about 12 on.

In order of importance:
Ninja Turtles
GI Joe
Legos

Lego, by far. I loved building anything and everything - spaceships, castles and underwater bases. I used both the premade sets, and I built my own things. I've actually still got my lego packed away somewhere! (pack rat)

It was a combination for me:

Construx building block type things
Star Wars vehicles
GI Joe action figures

The 3 3/4" GI Joes. Man, I loved those things. Especially once I figured out how to switch their body parts around. (boil them in water to make the plastic soft, then pop the heads out, unhook the rubber band inside to change legs, etc. My poor little Star Wars toys got left in the dust as GI Joe commandeered all their vehicles.

I had a huge number of Construx blocks, and used to build enormous bases, robots, and vehicles for the GI Joes to crush. Ahhh the memories.

Holy shit, can't forget Lincoln Logs

The old school GI Joe's! I had the aircraft carrier and everything!

I had a glow in the dark dinosaur and a small eskimoe guy. I used to make a cave out of my bed sheets and play with those. Man those were the days. The simplicity of life...

Wow, Adventure people! I forgot all about those :). I didn't much of them but my friend next door had a lot of those.

But for me, Lego's, Transformers, Gijoe, Matchbox/hotwheels, scale models, starwars.

Star Wars and GI Joe were my favs!! I still regret selling them in a stupid garage sale!!!

Transformers!! i can't remember the names of the characters i had but they were badass.

i also played with lego alot

Legos were the best by far. after that it would have to be my brown 4 door sedan matchbox car. cant even buy those anymore all they have now are ugly fake cars. oh and cant forget the tonka truck with the rusty sharp corners. that thing was a blast

Clackers (or klackers (?)). Two hard-resin plastic balls at the end of a string. You grab the string in the middle and move your hand up and down. The balls clack against each other back and forth (over your hand and then under your hand). I was damn good, and my wife still has hers.

What could possible go wrong with kids banging what amounted to pool balls back and forth over their exposed wrists?

I must be in a somewhat different age bracket [heh, "Dy-no-MITE!"], but I'm still surprised that *nobody* has mentioned MICRONAUTS yet. Man, those things were the ultimate! Way cooler than the Star Wars action figures, and a dozen times more modular. Micronauts were by far my #1 kid toy. Though I am talking serious old-school here: they hit their peak around 1978-9. They weren't cheap, and for some reason they didn't last long (despite major popularity), but they truly rocked.

My memories of the many Micronauts I played with are also tied up with memories of listening to Led Zeppelin and KISS, when "Battlestar Galactica" was brand new, and me & the other boys in my 5th-grade class wanting to be like Fonzie. [sigh]

Hell, Marvel Comics even had an excellent long-running Micronauts comic book series. I still have all of my issues today.

Lest you think I'm a heretic, before Micronauts I also worshipped at the altar of the almighty Lego. Gotta give props to the mad skillz of those Danish geniuses who created them.

Besides Barbies... My favorite thing to do was play pretend in my backyard. I'd dress up in my mom's night gowns, and put on the brightest red lipstick I could find and run around the back yard pretending I was a fairy/muse type girl...

Climbing trees and roof tops was also something I did almost daily in the summer.

Riding my bike too.

1) crayons & blank paper - glue, tape, staplers, markers were good stuff, too
2) dolls & barbies (& my brother's johnny west jeep & horse, thunderbolt)
3) bicycle & unicycle & roller skates
4) lite brite
5) swing set - used it more like a solo uneven bars
6) garage - great club house up in the loft
7) old grown up clothes to play dress-up with
8) my friend's tap & ballet shoes & costumes (she took lessons & taught the rest of us :))
9) old kleenex boxes & toilet paper rolls - could be transformed into virtually anything
10) BIG trees - climbing & hanging upside down from the limbs, etc.

oh yeah. and the YARD! countless hours turning cartwheels, learning to do back walkovers & back handsprings etc etc :thumbsup:

Legos, followed closely by Voltron and Transformers.

Legos, GI Joe toys, Transformers, and the metal yellow Tonka dump truck

My first RC car. And a M16 watergun. Fun times.

Legos. Legos. Legos. Legos. Legos. Legos. Legos. Legos. Legos. Legos.

I was a HUGE video game freak (still am), and I liked action figures.. However my favorite toy might have been the Hot Wheels Criss Cross Crash set. Or at least I remember it being my favorite for at least a wee.

Lego! It rocked...

Another cool toy from my childhood was a Six Million Dollar man action figure. It was so cool because you could look through is eye from behind his head and it looked like you could see far away things up close. I used to make that stupid noise that the show show used to make everytime he was using his bionic eye.

My mother never let me have Lego's. Aparently, they looked as if they could cause bare feet (her's) some harm. ;)

I do recall many an hour whiled away with my Lincoln Logs and my Tinker Toy set. Ohhh...and my Erector Set. Can't forget that. Wait...how come she let me have sharp pieces of metal with hundreds of tiny nuts and bolts...yet Lego's were verboten?

I don't remember having any favorite toys. I had random toys. I did have barbies, and legos (the castle sets), and stuffed animals, and pet rocks, and cars, and guns, and things that made a hell of a lot of noise.
I played outside all the time, mostly. I just kind of made things up as I went along.

When I was stuck inside on rainy days, my bridge playing parents used to have tons of decks of cards which would keep me entertained for hours, I used to build enormous houses and villages of cards in the living room. Every so often, I still do now, it's a nice destressor.

The only girl thing I ever really had was a jump rope.

The tire swing in the back yard was also lots of fun.. We had two in one tree, and we'd play bumper tires, take a kid on each tire, dont get in the tire yet, but pull it as far back as you can, aimed toward each other, jump on the tire and wait for the collissio, if you fell off, you lost.

I lived two streets off of a main road, the first street off the main road was a pretty steep hill that evenually turned into my street. (if I ever went back to that town< i'd probably realize ithad a not much of an incline, but when you are 8, it was huge) We'd race down the hill on our bikes... No brakes... and if you were really brave, no hands, It's amazing I survived childhood with all my teeth, and without scrambling my brain.