Top 100 Toys From The '70s or Thereabouts

doctorfaustus writes "Found this on Daily Rotation -- it details, with pictures, many of the toys we all wanted from our parents at Christmas a few years ago.... Everything from '160 Exciting Science Projects' to 'Stretch Armstrong,' along with the promises made in the toy's advertising and how often those promises were broken... The story has a British orientation, but I didn't see a single toy I didn't remember from my American youth.... They're all here: Simon, Slime, Magic Rocks, Sonic Ear... Even the Sinclair."

Comments

The missed the most important thing

[Quasar1999]

I've wanted one every year since I was 12... a girlfriend... I'm still waiting...

Re:The missed the most important thing

[whiteranger99x]

Girlfriends are not toys.
Trust me, I know... :-(

Yeah, and toys usually don't bite you :P

Re:The missed the most important thing

[skinfitz]

I'm still waiting...

See that's your mistake - they NEVER come to you. If you want one, you can have one. You just have to put in a bit of effort.

Firstly, ask yourself this question - "What are you doing to get one?"

Re:The missed the most important thing

[sga.busboy]

A girlfriend I have, I just wish I her last name wasn't .jpg

Re:The missed the most important thing

[Chemisor]

> Firstly, ask yourself this question - "What are you doing to get one?"

Nope. The right question a geek should be asking is: "What are going to do with her when you get her?" (And let's not mention the obvious; remember, it takes an extraordiary man to even last an hour. What will you do the rest of the time? Show her your Star Wars collection? Right...)

Oh the sorrow.

[jellomizer]

This sure brings back to when I was a kid and all they toys I took apart to see how they work. I bet if I didn't take everything apart they could be really worth something.

I Think the site will be slashdotted early. I saw a slowdown when I was almost done with the site.

Re:Oh the sorrow.

[hal2814]

You (and me and countless others) taking them apart is what made them valuable for everybody who didn't. That's why 70's - 80's action figures still in the box are worth something. What kid kept their action figure in the box (or kept up with accessories for that matter)?

What about Lawn Darts?

[AtariAmarok]

What about Lawn Darts? They bring the exciting element of severe head trauma risk to the fun of summar yard play!

Re:What about Lawn Darts?

[TrollBridge]

I honestly believe "Lawn Jarts" (as our family's set was called) was a Darwinist conspiracy by the government and toy industry to cull the herd a bit.

Fortunately my brother and I made the cut. Society is probably better off without those who didn't. Now we have these confounded safety commissions that prevent us from shedding our weak links.

Re:What about Lawn Darts?

[artemis67]

I honestly believe "Lawn Jarts" (as our family's set was called) was a Darwinist conspiracy by the government and toy industry to cull the herd a bit.

Fortunately my brother and I made the cut. Society is probably better off without those who didn't. Now we have these confounded safety commissions that prevent us from shedding our weak links.

...except that in one of the high-profile lawsuits against lawndarts, it was the next-door neighbor's daughter who was killed, not the kids throwing the darts. One boy threw it up in the air, and it went over the fence and pierced the little girl's skull. She died in her father's arms.

Re:What about Lawn Darts?

[jandrese]

Lawn Darts were the first game where I wore a helmet even though the directions didn't mention helmets at all. The reccomended underhanded throwing style combined with the design of the dart itself ment that (at least with kids) it was quite easy to throw one straight up in the air and have it land at some random place around you.

Re:What about Lawn Darts?

[miu]

I vaguely remember lawn darts from when I was a kid, but we lost the darts pretty fast - so we had to make do with detergent laced gasoline, rock fights, suicidal bike tricks, bb guns, crowbars, tire rope swings, sling shots, pocket knives, and running with scissors.

No one ever died but we did have our share of emergency room visits and suspicious fires.

Re:What about Lawn Darts?

[Ced_Ex]

I have been accused of single-handedly taking down the original version of lawn darts with the spikes. This happened when a lawn dart impaled my friend's head and got stuck sticking straight out the top of his skull.

We never got to play with them ever again. It's been 22 years and counting since I've seen lawn darts.

Re:What about Lawn Darts?

[Qzukk]

I know where. Please contact me at Methodist Hospital, room 233.

Re:What about Lawn Darts?

[superstick58]

Oh we still have those deadly lawn darts. They are a commodity that I will always cherish. Of course, I did enjoy many other activities similar to what you describe. One of my favorite was dodgeball on bikes. My cracked teeth did not enjoy it so well though.

I hope kids these days still can play with these dangerous devices and partake in such risky activities. The memories of childhood that stand out are all those near death experiences such as falling out of the tree fort and barely missing the exposed sticks that are arranged like a tiger pit below or riding down the street at 30mph in a go cart without breaks. This is how childhood should be.

Re:What about Lawn Darts?

[Tackhead]

> "I threw a lawn-dart into the air Where it fell, I cared not where"

"Once ze lawn darts go up,
who cares where zey come down?
Zat's not my department!"
Says Werner von Braun...

Re:What about Lawn Darts?

[Fishstick]

People over 35 should be,dead. Here's why ...........
According to today's regulators and bureaucrats, those of us who were kids in the 40's, 50's, 60's, or even maybe the early 70's probably
shouldn't have survived.
Our baby cribs were covered with bright colored lead-based paint.
We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets, ... ! and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets.
(Not to mention the risks we took hitchhiking.)
As children, we would ride in cars with no seatbelts or air bags.
Riding in the back of a pickup truck on a warm day was always a special treat.
We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle.
Horrors!
We ate cupcakes, bread and butter, and drank soda pop with sugar in it, but we were never overweight because we were always outside playing.
We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle, and no one actually died from this.
We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then rode down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem.
We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the! street lights came on.
No one was able to reach us all day.
NO CELL PHONES!!!!!
U n t h i n k a b l e !
We did not have Playstations, Nintendo 64! , X-Boxes, no video games at all, no 99 channels on cable, video tape movies, surround sound, personal cell phones, personal computers, or Internet chat rooms.
We had friends!
We went outside and found them.We played dodge ball, and sometimes, the ball would really hurt.We fell out of trees, got cut and broke bones and teeth, and there were no lawsuits from these accidents.
They were accidents.
No one was to blame but us.
Remember accidents?
We had fights and punched each other and got black and blue and learned to get over it.We made up games with sticks and tennis balls and ate worms, and although we were told it would happen,we did not put out very many eyes, nor did the worms live inside us forever.
We rode bikes or walked to a friend's home and knocked on the door, or rang the bell or just walked in and talked to them. Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment.
Some students weren't as smart as others, so they failed a grade and were held back to repeat the same grade.
Horrors!
Tests were not adjusted for any reason. Our actions were our own.
Consequences were expected. The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke a law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law.
Imagine that!
This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers and problem solvers and inventors, ever.
The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas.
We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned how to deal with it all.

Toys today!

[teiresias]

I might just be nostalgic but does it seem that the toys from back then were more tactile and creative? The toys were good in their own right but to make them great you needed a good portion of your imagination to truly make them fly.

[grandparent voice]Today's toys are all movie tie ins and spin offs. The story has been told before the action figure or game has been brought home. The imagination is gone.[/grandparent voice]

Still a nice trip down memory lane.

Re:Toys today!

[Fallingcow]

This is my complaint about LEGO these days.

Used to be, you'd have Space or Castle sets, these days you have Star Wars and Harry Potter. What the hell is the point of buying these kind of LEGOs? Get the normal action figures if you just want to re-enact or extend an existing story. To me, LEGOs are better suited to creating from-scratch story lines.

The roles of characters are so well defined with the movie tie-in sets, while the older sets were free of anything but a slight suggestion of the relations between characters or factions.

Re:Toys today!

[Rorschach1]

They were built better, too. I went through a number of modern plastic aircraft with my son, but the only one that survived - and that he really enjoyed playing with - was an ancient (Tonka?) Turboprop plane I'd had at his age. It was a bit faded and had lost some prop blades, but for a > 20 year old toy it held up pretty well. His new AH-64 Apache with lights and sounds, on the other hand, broke in half within a week.

I went looking for a similarly well-built toy plane, but never found a modern equivalent. I finally hit eBay and found an identical plane, still in its 1978 packaging. He's still got it, and it's still in good shape. Hasn't even lost a prop blade yet.

The rest of his toy aircraft, however, are now so many brittle plastic shards at the bottom of his toybox.

And don't get me started on the metal toys we used to have. I once saw an original Voltron fall from a 7-foot wall and land on concrete with hardly a scratch...

Re:Toys today!

[stcanard]

Personally I don't even like the space and castle legos

I buy my son the basic blocks only. With a space set he can build space ships. With a castle set he can build castles. With generic blocks he can build spaceships, castles, cars, and a whole bunch of things I would never have thought of.

Re:Toys today!

[msaulters]

Personally I don't even like the space and castle legos
I buy my son the basic blocks only. With a space set he can build space ships. With a castle set he can build castles. With generic blocks he can build spaceships, castles, cars, and a whole bunch of things I would never have thought of.

Bah! If you have a castle set AND a space set, you can build space castles! Seriously, I used to combine parts from my space sets and my Lego airport to make some really cool stuff. The only issue I have with current Hollywood tie-ins is that it is an excuse to charge more by creating an artificial 'collectible' that isn't really very collectible. Also that the pieces are ONLY available in the sets and not separately or in bulk is kind of a pain.

Re:Toys today!

[Moofie]

I keep hearing this complaint, and it is simply not borne out by the facts.

Your average Star Wars set has no more painted bricks than your average Space set from the early 80's. The only big, pre-formed pieces are things like canopies.

That aside, the new click hinges are the most useful LEGO part ever.

The new Star Wars sets are some of the best LEGO sets ever, even though you happen to be able to put them together to look like something from a movie.

Don't know about the Harry Potter sets. They don't look very different from the Castle sets, which were my other favorites when I was a kid.

And by the bloody way...

[Atrax]

... description mentions "the sinclair". What, the Sinclair C5? ZX81? Spectrum? or one of the later, uprated spectrums (spectra?)

Re:And by the bloody way...

[JustinXB]

Does it matter? You got made fun of either way.

Down already

[tjc0]

That didn't take long.

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=cache:CfODxQWCELc J:tv.cream.org/extras/toys/+&hl=en

Great...

[armer]

Now to rehash old wounds, a list of all the toys I ever wanted and never got. Merry Christmas!!...

Re:Great...

[harrkev]

I hear you, bro.

I always wanted Rockem' Sockem' Robots when I was a kid. Never got it.

Now, my son is 3-1/2. Guess what I got him a few months ago?

I am glad that some of the retro 70's toys are cool again.

Re:A cricket playset?

[SoTuA]

Cricket? Why of course, indian children with HB1s...

North Pole: AKA Communist China

[TrollBridge]

NORTH POLE
Leader: Big red guy.
Employees: Countless little people.
Labor Conditions: Servituude
Cost of Product: Zero

COMMUNIST CHINA
Leader: Big red government.
Employees: Countless little people.
Labor Conditions: Servitude
Cost of Product: Next to Zero

I could go on, but I think you get the idea. Support capitalism, debunk the myth of Santa!

They Came from Innerspace

[Lego-Lad]

Toys from the 1970's make me think of the Micronauts. They were by far much cooler than Star Wars figures, and the came BEFORE transformers.

Skat Skoota

[jag164]

A favorite contraption. I loved my Skat Skoota and my Erector Set. I can still get Erector Sets but I have never seen another Skat Skoota since the one I wore out by the mid-80's. *sniff*

Re:zero

[LiquidCoooled]

Dear Santa,

Since we have been good admins all year long, could you please send us:

1 New Web Server.
A nice fat internet connection.

Sincerely,

tv.cream.org admins.

My $6,000,000 Man Action Figure...

[Sideshow Coward]

used to have his way with all of my sister's Barbies. Who could resist with his bionic leg, magnifying eye, red jump suit, and his oh-so-fuzzy head?

Rock 'em Sock 'em ROBOTS!!!

[Marquis de Sade]

SMACK! SMACK! SMACK!

"You knocked his block off!"

(...even as a child I felt a special love for offering pain...)

HA! HAHA! SMACK AGAIN!!!

Toy stores

[El Cabri]

What of the most unexpected pieces of happiness that came with becoming a father a few months ago was for me to return to toy stores. I had left the "Toy scene" twenty years ago when all my attention was diverted to getting and upgrading home computers for myself. European toys rule : Lego, Playmobil, Smurf figures were here for me, are still here.

50-in-1 Electronics Lab! Yeah!!

[Artful Codger]

I was born about 20 years too early for the Internet, so while waiting for Al Gore to actually get it done, I was an electronics geek in public & high school (early 70's)

One year a prescient uncle gave me one of those kits, and I absolutely devoured it over the next several months. Highlights were the various radio circuits, audio amplifiers where you pressed that pink crystal earphone into service as a microphone, and the pinnacle - an AM transmitter.

Thanks in part to that thing, I went straight into electronics after high school and had a great 20 year career in broadcast electronics before jumping into programming several years ago.

Thanks for the link. Those were good memories.

Re:50-in-1 Electronics Lab! Yeah!!

[Graemee]

I had one. My cousin's had the 75-in-1 RS kit and I got the 50-in-1. Spent years building and modding different circuits. Then one day in a quest for power, and to majorly annoy my sisters I built the TV jammer circuit and connected a very large battery. The battery was a military brick style, I think it had 120+ AA in series and parallel to make 15V with just a few amps. When the diodes exploded and the potentiometer caught fire the fun ended. So sad. It was however very cool.

bittersweet memories

[catdevnull]

I remember back in '73, I got a GI Joe--the 12" action figure from the Viet Nam War era! He had rough beard and pre-camouflage utility uniform. VERY cool and manly. But then, my dad exploited my colorblindness by giving me a pink banana seat high-riser girl's bike he bought from a police auction for $5. Cheap bastard.

I think that was "tough love." But, on the bright side, I get to pick his retirement home.

LEGOs

[crow]

LEGOs have been changing for quite some time, but in many ways they're not much different. There were always specialty sets and special-purpose pieces. I remember the blue train tracks and ladders from the 70s, just as an example.

Certainly they have a lot more special pieces in current sets. Some of them are hard to use for a different purpose, but some of them are great for a wide variety of alternate uses.

Perhaps the biggest change of the last few years is the huge variety of colors available. There are multiple shades of most colors, including orange, purple, and many others. And they changed brown, grey, and dark grey to be slightly different colors.

But now you can go and buy a bucket of 1000 basic pieces for $20, so unlike twenty years ago, you're not limited to the sets.

Anyone remember Capsela?

[Domini]

It's like Mecano, just cleaner... I really wanted this as a child, and was surprised to find it again.

Check out Capsela

From the site:

Description: Max Out comes with 108 interlocking parts to construct over 100 land and water projects inicluding a tug boat, water pump, crane, cable lift, generator, steam roller, tricycle, vacuum cleaner and as many simple machines as your imagination can conceive. Includes a full color Science Discovery Design Manual with easy to follow assembly instructions, as well as an illustrated basic Science Booklet to explore 18 physical science principles. Children of all abilities from age 7 and up will be fascinated with tangible demonstrations of electric circuits, motion energy, friction and traction, buoyancy, vacuums, and other real-life concepts as they discover the fun of science in motion with Capsela!

5 months in the 70's

[frovingslosh]

I was alive for maybe 5 months in the 70's

Me too, and I was born in the 50's.

*Sigh*... I miss dangerous toys

[phillymjs]

I didn't get very far in the list before the /. effect thwarted me, but my God, someone actually put a blob of mercury in a toy??? Oh, how I long for the days of my youth!

The lack of dangerous toys are a major part of why American society is going to hell in a handbasket. Back in the good old days, Darwinism made sure only the strongest, toughest, smartest kids survived. Nowadays, you can't hurt yourself with toys even if you try, playgrounds have 3 inches of soft rubber under everything, and they don't even have monkeybars (and you risk an NAACP protest march if you still call them monkeybars). The soft, stupid children survive into adolesence or adulthood and end up cracking for one reason or another and shooting up their school or workplace.

There's a bash.org quote that says, why don't we thin the herd of idiots in this country by taking the safety labels off everything for a while? I say we go one better and bring back toys that were deemed too dangerous and were removed from the market.

~Philly

Legos

[upsidedown_duck]

Top toy from the 70s: Legos
Top toy from the 80s: Legos
Top toy from the 90s: Legos
Top toy from the 00s: Legos

No, I don't work for them, but having seen all the expensive-single-purpose-toy-with-no-volume-contro l-played-for-for-ten-minutes-and-thrown-into-a-clo set crap sold at stores I really appreicate how valuable toys like Legos are. And, guess what?!? Legos are still in business! You don't have to peddle ADD-inducing crap to entertain children!