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As a little kid. Lego, obs. Meccano. Hornby Dublo train set, Corgi & Dinky toys, catapults, bikes (although never really classed as 'toys')
After the age of 12 I was more interested in air rifles, motorbikes & cars. Had my 1st motorbike for ragging round the disused quarry next door when I was 12, 1st car when I was 13 & 1st air rifle when I was 14. It 's a BSA Airsporter & It's currently in perfect working order in the cupboard under the stairs. That makes it 52 yrs old.
I had a Black widow catapult, my mate an air pistol. We used to duel each other.
We had an agreement that he would use round head pellets and I would only use snowberries or rose hips because anything else would be dangerous.
Playing chicken on bikes, 2 versions. 1: ride as fast as you could at each other (standard rules) 2: ride alongside each other and take it in turns to kick each other with the aim being to put the other into the ditch. (Lots of small, single lane roads around Thirsk)
Got into some trouble when this advanced to car acquiring age when it developed into bonnet surfing.
Lots of the above but was quite seasonal summer was bikes down the old rail lines to the track in the woods on or in the river on the commando course climbing along roots etc till someone fell in bottle fishing rafts
Autumn catapult/ acorn fights( head shots allowed by accident) trees swings season peak was fireworks we could actually buy them as kids 😵 down drains rockets up the slide or in end of handlebar break open bangers to make genies clubbed together to make a jam jar banger bomb we have kept 2of 3 kids away from most of that nonsense
Climbing trees, playing war. Building Dens, playing football. (I was a huge Liverpool fan, the days of Ian Rush, Sammy Lee and Bruce Grobbelar)
Finding fish in the local Canal, going as fast as you could on the Witches Hat in the local park.
Ruchazie in the 80's the toy to have was a home made crossbow.
Two bits of wood in the usual cross shape, a nail in the end of the cross piece and joined elastic bands provided the 'string'
Ammo of choice was the dolly clothes peg. Even at maximum range it left a mark 😆
Oh yeah- gigantic paper plane catapults. We'd join loads of rubber bands together and stretch them between the clothes poles, make paper planes, cut a wee notch out, tuck the bands in and... twang. Plane goes into orbit. With a bit of development and research we produced cereal box planes that would disappear from sight at the highest point, I found one about 50 metres away down the street.
Obviously that evolved into planes that are on fire, and then we adapted the launcher with, a coke bottle I think? so it could fire anythng you liked. Probably to this day people up and down my old street wonder why occasionally crab apples, screws, sticks, rocks and basically anything else we could find would fall from the sky. Special mention to Laurie, who found a half-rotten dead mouse and fired it so it landed 3 doors down,
An old Honda C90 that I got for Christmas when I was 12, me and a few mates would chip in 20p each to buy petrol and spend all weekend at ‘The Bash’ an old shale quarry on the edge of the Village frequented by hordes of lads on bikes (both motor and pedal - no mountain bikes though, they weren’t invented!)
No helmets, just trainers, jeans and a denim jacket.
It was bloody brilliant!!
We had a short tunnel a bit like the one below just by the house.
Used to spend hours in there playing either a bastardised version of solo tennis or football getting the ball(s) to bounce at clever angles so they'd always come back to me.
the football thing came about when that crappy ball-on-a-bungee thing broke after a couple of good kicks.
Scotch arrows.
None of this 'garden cane and playing card' ghetto nonsense, we used real arrows. Take off the pile (metal point), cut a notch in front of the fletchings, bit of string and away you go.
From an elevated start we were almost clearing a football field. The groundskeeper accosted us demanding to know where our bow was, properly got the arse when we said we didn't have one. Mate, we're in a field, what do you suppose we've done with a bow? Buried it? Without a spade?
thread juxto: "things you played with as a kid" / "are tellys like penises?"
French bangers (petards) were great fun.
Put one in a cow pat and see who got splattered the most.
Climb a tree, throw one down in front of the park keepers hut, then when he comes out to see what the noise was, blast him with the pea shooters.
Make a mortar with a piece of old drain pipe. Pop a lit banger down the pipe followed by a tennis ball which then got blasted sky high.
Put a banger in an old shotgun cartridge which was then blown sky high...........
Used to make mortars by dropping bangers/bottle rockets/whatever else would explode down one of those tubes that you used when collecting golf balls.
Fun-With-Fireworks™ ended rather rapidly after one lad pulled the sleeve of his new coat over his hand and held a banger.
Coat had two holes burned through it and he was lucky not to lose a few fingers.
Matches. For setting fire to grass on disused railway lines. Also wrapping the heads in foil and playing a lit match under until it explodes and fires across the room.
Air guns. For various ridiculously dangerous things, one that nearly cost me an eye.
Minor civil engineering projects on polluted streams, stealing anything that could be carried from derelict mills or building sites, trying to start dumper trucks,cement mixers or anything with a cranking handle, annoying adults, shouting insults be at the local drunks staggering home the late 70's early 80's were brill !
Louise
Britains Deetail
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Britains_Deetail
Still playing with them, even now.
and
Train Dets and rocks.
Jumping between loose shutted trucks on sidings.
Guns made from pallet planks.
Just all the 70's dangerous things.
We used to throw asbestos sheets on a bonfire and wait for them to explode, later we used to take turns to jump over the sheet in a Russian roulette style to see who would leave it the latest, we must of been mad.
Straw bales – build with them and watch the constructions get destroyed when discovered by dad.
Had lots of fun lining them up in circuits and running around on top of them ... then the farmer would come around and ask for the money from my Mum. Whoops.
Air rifles were great fun. Chasing mixy rabbits ... or playing a game where you tried to shoot your mate with a barley grain. You started next to each other and on go the rifle holder had to load a grain of barley in the barrel while the 'victim' legged it.
Places you weren't supposed to be - old mills, building sites, an old rail signal house, the bypass that was being built (I remember a mate and me rolling culvert pipes stacked up for a new road down the hill and watching them smash into pieces!), garden creeping... etc
Dry cow pat fights ... until you ended up in the Brook and they got wet.
home made bow and arrows,
playing football. (I was a huge Liverpool fan, the days of Ian Rush, Sammy Lee and Bruce Grobbelar)
Absolutely the same! Endless hours of that.
my twin brother poking a highly venomous scorpion with sticks in the garden!
My Nan grew up in Sudan and says as kids that was their sport - killing scorpions.
double post.