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...that are probably a bit shit by today's standard.
1. Chutes Away.
Improved by standing toy soldiers on the disk and bombing them.
Ahh a bit shit, was very happily remembering Lego.
Well not Lego, but my matchbox car race game (metal spring coiled, with lubricant, thst pulled round track I think), that jammed a lot, didn’t work well with carpet fibres, animal hairs and household fluff
+1 for Lego in its most basic form which seems very different from the current themed kits which current kids might find boring. Also a 60’s child and it was the start of my interest in how things work. Endless opportunities and variations of outcomes.
Yeah, has to be Lego even more than Meccano.
Does a bike count as a toy? I think that having a bike and cycling took up a larger part of my childhood than even Lego did
Super flight deck - the number times that plane either got stuck or failed to turn around so you were trying to land it in reverse.
My competition winning peaked in the mid 70s, when I won this in a Spot The Difference comic competition.
Pink panther ripcord car!
Actually I reckon it might still be pretty awesome. Plus there's ample opportunity for damaged furniture and trapped tiny fingers
Lego beats everything. Our house is absolutely crammed with Lego as both kids love it and still play with it a few times a week at 16 and 13 but a few years back I noticed a cheap set of 80s Technic lego on FB marketplace. We were a few days away from going on holiday to Devon for a week so I bought it and we took it with us - damp October half term was spent walking on the beach, sitting and cafes and sprawled on the floor of the static caravan we were staying in playing with old skool technic. Brilliant. Since then this box has been kept seperate from the other Lego and still goes away with us each holiday.
Mentions for Micro Machines, Matchbox cars obviously get in there and I remember having a fair few fuzzy headed Action Men. Oh and obviously my Hornby train set. Still got a drawer full of model railway stuff now which I should really do something with and build a layout again.
Lego and mechano. I had a mechano crane creator kit which was just so good.
But it’s the improvised play that’s best.
i one made a flight deck from a dinky toy plane, paper clips, fishing line and hard board for the run way
Another good one was making playing card castles and then shooting them to bits with my breach loading Howitzer
I never got bored of my vertibird helicopter (basically a remote controlled helicopter on the end of a stick) but the windup and go Evel Knievel was one of the great disappointments of my life.
https://corporate.mattel.com/brand-portfolio/vertibird
This thread is a great way of seeing who actually read the first line of the first post
i had a very cheap plastic skateboard for xmas in 1977. bought from Leo's supermarket in wakefield. both the skateboard and the supermarket were utter shyte.
i bought my son a very good quality board for his xmas present in 2001. is was fantastic. proper good quality deck. trucks that moved with ease. good quality wheels and bearings.
he used it a few years. then bikes became his thing. last summer he brought it to our house for his nephew, my grandson. and he bloody loves it. and it is still quality.
Action Man was great. I had about half a dozen of them ranging from the original, fixed hand, plastic hair version through to the flexi grip, eagle eye, fuzzy felt hair version.
Endless hours spent making up scenarios and stories playing with them.
In reality I guess they were a bit shit as they didn't actually do anything and the elastic that held the arms and legs on on early models rotted if it got wet (deep sea diver's suit in the bath) and eventually all his limbs fell off.
I can't decide if Swingball was terrible, or just that I was (and still would be) terrible at it...
Manta Force - I was lucky enough to have both both of the big ships. Proper good toys when I was a wee lad
The (bogus) "isn't Lego shit these days, it was so much better when I was a kid" argument has been done several times over in the big Lego thread. If you hanker for those days, you can still buy a big box of bricks.
https://www.lego.com/en-gb/product/lego-large-creative-brick-box-10698
Cost-per-brick it's almost half the price of themed sets, before deals.
This thread is a great way of seeing who actually read the first line of the first post
like any thread over 15 posts here. It’s a great reflection of the male psyche 🤣
Hornby trainsets. Locomotives that looked nothing like the real thing: I'm looking at you Class 08 & Class 37; carriages missing entire windows and scale metres in length over the prototype; that sodding ringfield piece of dung motor which required constant tinkering & only had 3 poles so slow running was nigh on impossible; curved track with radii that even a tram would wince at; zero1 (they could have at least put a connector in the loco chassis so my dad didn't have to solder every single connection); but worst of all their total failure to jump to HO and proper scaling, so now we have track that is completely the wrong size & everything looks like it's on Russian gauge. A prime example of British exceptionalism. Sort of but not quite fixed after they bought Lima and threw their own tooling in the skip.
Thomas Salter Chemistry Sets... The bigger the better... where are they in these H&S enlightened times?
Meccano was my thing. I'm not sure it's shit by today's standards, mebbies needs a bit too much input for too little instant gratification.
Thomas Salter Chemistry Sets... The bigger the better... where are they in these H&S enlightened times?
Meccano was my thing. I'm not sure it's shit by today's standards, mebbies needs a bit too much input for too little instant gratification.
Scalextric - borrowed a set recently and was reminded that it's actually rubbish. Spent longer assembling all the fiddly bits and getting it to work than actually playing it.
Manta Force on the other hand, I'd play with that now!
I thought Meccano was shit back in the day. It took too long to build, was fiddly and would fall apart when you played with it.
Lego was much better IMHO. Instant gratification. You could throw stuff together, and if it wasn't right you could pull it apart just as fast. Still got a house full of Lego 50 years later.
What he said.
I never got on with Meccano. I hated that it was imprecise, and it rusted in my sweaty little palms.
Matchbox Race & Chase.
Like a tiny Scalextric butwith cars that could do handbrake turns and go the opposite direction and fly over a see saw bridge. One cop car, one Corvette getaway car.
Brilliant at the time but rendered a bit shit the first time I played Driver on PS1.
Still got mine Tomy super cup football. Oh how I lusted over that game, eventually negotiated with my mum to get it (I had refused to go to the doc about a knob issue, she bribed me to go). It was bloody brilliant (the game, not the doc fiddling with my knob). As was that test match board game
Both kinda lost their appeal the first time I played fifa and brian lara cricket on the PlayStation however.
Im glad I'm not the only one who hated meccanno. To fiddly, to tricky. Once my dad made the little wilis jeep I never wanted to take it apart. Which kind of defeated the whole point of it.
Not technically a toy as such but I once got given some indoor fireworks for Christmas. I thought they were awesome but I'm guessing they were actually shite to anyone above 10 years old
This thread is a great way of seeing who actually read the first line of the first post
like any thread over 15 posts here. It’s a great reflection of the male psyche
Or indeed read anything after the first few words of the title. Anyway, cheese is great and gazelles, what are they like? Thomas Hardy FTW and approach every junction in prime position because Helen Mirren is best.
Most of my suggestions have already been posted, so I’ll offer any of the execrable (by modern standards) “Game and Watch” LCD handhelds of the early Eighties.
And thinking of toys from the early Eighties…
My bike, mud, string, a saw, twigs and branches, water, wellies, snow.
My toy machine gun. I now accept it cost as much as my brother's microscope set that he got for Christmas the same year and I played with it loads. Sorry mum and dad for saying what I said that day. It still haunts me some 50 years later 🙁
For those feeling nostalgic, you can access all the previous argos catalogues online..a great little trip down memory lane.
I almost forgot: fire !
My ActionMan truck was the fatsest down the hill and round the bend into the car park in our close. It had a great flat bed on the back I could kneel on and it used to steer round the bend pretty well. kids riding their Tonka trucks and Barbie/Cindy cars had no chance!
Now my kids just look at me like i'm a sad old man, when I tell how cool and fast I was and how I won all the races....They'll never get it!
Tomy super cup football. Oh how I lusted over that game, eventually negotiated with my mum to get it (I had refused to go to the doc about a knob issue, she bribed me to go). It was bloody brilliant (the game, not the doc fiddling with my knob). As was that test match board game
Came here to say both of those. My brother and I lost hours to both.
I also nominate Crossbows and Catapults (double loop the elastic bands for more powerful projectiles).
Another vote for flightdeck. We'd use old airfix planes, stuffed with French bangers and cotton wool. Catch it on fire, launch from bedroom window, have to land it before it blew up!!!
Tank Command - the tanks were played with independently rather than as part of the game.
The worst one and I didn’t have it, was probably Stretch Armstrong 🙂
My bike, mud, string, a saw, twigs and branches, water, wellies, snow.
Why do you consider those things to be shit by modern standards?
Your bike may have changed but surely the other things are pretty much the same as they were.
Test Match
Subbuteo
Slime! (What would your children think if they asked for a new phone and you gave them Slime? I can imagine the deeply puzzled look on their faces. It came in a plastic dustbin IIRC.)