Okay. I've seen these lists by the "so called" experts about the favorite toys of the 70's and 80's and quite frankly, I've never heard of some of them and certainly didn't play with them. This blog was SCREAMING for a top ten list about my favorite childhood toys and so here it is. I started with 20 and left a few very deserving toys (pinball machine, Stretch Armstrong, matchbox cars with orange track, lawn jarts) off the list and narrowed it down to 10. Without further delay...the envelope please...
10. Lincoln Logs - I couldn't decide which I loved more; Lincoln Logs or the original Tinker Toys. They both rocked my world. I spent hours building and shaping and destroying. Great toy!
9. My first Fisher Price phone - Granted this was early, but I distinctly remember pulling this little jingly thing all over the house.
6. Electric Football - See my post about this game. My brother had the biggest E.F.L board I have seen to this day....it was GIANT! This game was a riot and I loved the little painted teams. Here's a link to an old Coleco E.F. commercial.
5. Big Jim Sports Camper - Big Jim was a great toy. He had a beard...he was taller than G.I. Joe and he had this REALLY GREAT vinyl smelling camper. Great memories on this one.
3. Classic Army Men - Was there a better toy as a little boy? I played with these things all the time. I set them up. I buried them. I lit them on fire. I blew them up with fire crackers. Seriously...when I was a Jr. in high school, a certain friend and I played with these on his living room floor and had a war complete with blood, guts and sound effects. (I think he had Rambo so he won)
2. Radio Flyer Spring Pony - I was very young but am told that from around 2 to 4, this was it for me. I have black and white pictures (because of the old age) of me on this sucker riding away.
1. The Evel Knievel Stunt Cycle - It doesn't get any better than this. I had this box with this bike and this launcher. Again...I have posted about the greatness of this toy in the past and I still maintain that there wasn't a better toy for me than the E.K. doll/bike.
There you have it. Please leave me comments if I have left off anything obvious that you loved!
10 comments:
I too enjoyed those same toys, except the Big Jim Camper. But there are 2 toys that were not in your top 10 that you might have overlooked. Hot Wheels cars were amazing. They could go through any dirt pile or fly off of a front porch and crash and come back for more. And the other toy would have to be the Nerf hoop and basketball. I spent countless hours playing nerf basketball shooting dazzling shots off the wall and ceiling and performing masterful dunks that would make Air Jordan cry with envy.
Andy
I currently have the Electronic football II at my house. My son only plays with it occassionally due to all of the other dozen or so electronic "toys" he has in his room. But I love seeing it. I had one and played all the time. I was the only girl I knew of that had one, back in the day, and well....currently! Paulie, this was a great top 10! Maybe you should do the top 10 hotties of the 70's next!! Male and Female. That would exceed my joy apex on my awesome-ness gauge!!!!
I have to agree with the Fisher Price phone! I loved the little dialing mechanism and the way the wheels clicked when you rolled it. I also had the airport and plane. A girl's retrospective would have to include the Barbie head that you could put makeup on and style hair for. Hours of delight! My Etch a Sketch got lots of use, as did the Life game. Thanks for the mammaries, Paul!
Loved the toy list, lots of goodies I remember. We laugh regularly in our office about that electric football game with the Electro-Action® jiggling playfield that buzzed as loud as a fire alarm, and had that little lint-wad of a football that you had to reach down and flick the stupid quarterback’s absurdly upraised arm to pass it or operate his leg-on-a-lever to kick it, and it inevitably went completely out of the entire stadium either way (just as in real life), while all the plastic linemen (which by the way burned just as interestingly as army men, with the same screaming flaming drops of fiery liquid plastic that as it turned out would burn a little brother’s forearm much worse than candle wax) ran immediately to the sidelines and jiggled (again, just as in real life). The biggest laffs would occur when someone would secretly twist the power nut all the way up; the thing would roar like it was electrocuting somebody, making little brother jump and wet himself, and the players would all DASH to the sidelines rather than meander, and many would become so stimulated they would completely upend and tremble around in horizontal circles. This game defined ultra-realism for my entire generation.
Less well known in this jiggly genre were:
· the electrified auto road rally (little cars racing along recessed channels; the suspense rested in whether your car would keep going the right way at the intersections. Answer: Not usually.)
· and the electric baseball game in which the little jiggly baserunner was supposed to run the bases while the fielding player tried to throw him out with a flipper-thrower-thingy mounted atop the wall in deepest center field, which delivered the plastic ball-bearing-sized baseball with a magnet in its core to the general area of the base you were throwing to, or otherwise completely out of the stadium again and under the couch, where little brother had to go get it before the cat ate it. This last one played better without the power turned on, though
LAURA!! I had one of those Barbie Heads with the pick tray that set just below her neck. And there was a pretty pink comb and that make- up!!!....GEWD GRACIOUS! Her hair eneded up looking like Paulie's number one "Man Fro" by the time I got around to chopping off all of her hair on the left side of her head. :shakin:
You guys are cracking me up with these comments!
What girl didn't have one of those Barbie heads! I personally loved to put intense blue eye shadow on mine! HAHA! Also, the huge, honkin' Cher doll wasn't on your list, Paulie. :wank:
OMG, Tamu!! That Cher doll was way more masculine than any G.I Joe I had ever seen!! Especialy, after I cut all of her hair off and she had a buzz (and not the good kind of buzz either - wink, wink)!! She dated my barbie's for a while.... Barbie needed a real man. Ken was very "Ross the intern" (from the Jay Leno show).
Barbie heads? Electronic games? Big Wheels? We had pogo sticks, hula hoops and jump ropes. Chatty Cathy was a big doll for me. Heck TV's were only in black and white when I was a kid. :shakin:I played a lot of Chutes and Ladders and Candyland
I had dinner with my wife tonight and she, also, enjoyed the giant Barbie head. I said that I thought it would be creepy in your room in the dark. She also had the Ms. America Barbie (which a friend of hers chewed the foot off). She thinks my list is missing several prominent female toys...but I am not a female so she will have to get her own blob.
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