Approaching christmas, what really disappointing toys did you have?

I remember a wee cone shaped basket affair, with a ping pong ball, you clicked a trigger on it and a wee popper projected the ping pong ball about 9 inches into the air, the idea being that you caught it in the basket again. Genius.

Another was a big hard plastic rugby ball shaped thing, with a hole through it, and about 20m of double rope/string going through, with kite handles on either end. you separated the handles apart, projecting the ‘ball’ at high speed towards your sis, who did the same back to you. That thing must’ve broken numerous fingers across our fine nation.

Gies yer worst.

Spacehopper – you couldn’t really do anything on it other than shuffle around. Bouncing – as per the ads, never happened
Any battery power toys – in those days the batteries lasted 15 seconds

Aye, you really needed the core strength of a cossack dancer to do anything on those!

Can’t remember being particularly disappointed by any particular toy at the time. But looking back at the ‘in toys’ from my childhood they were much more about make believe and imagination than the toys of today and really pale in comparison.

I had a radio control car. Sounds good. It didn’t have steering. You could go forwards and backwards, and when it went backwards it turned one way. To drive it somewhere you drove forwards, then reversed until it was facing the right way, then drove forward again. I actually quite enjoyed it, though, so maybe not that disappointing.

Those clicker things where everywhere. It was always about toy fads back then. Everyone had a yo-yo, then everyone had a rubiks cube, then everyone had a nintendo game-and-watch

I never had one but played with friends ‘Computer Battleships’. Ages to set up
then it invariably conked out. The analogue version was sooo much better.

lol @ nickjb, aye, I’m sure it was really all about our low expectations!

My uncle had the rugby ball thing. Bloody terrifying.

Action Jacks figures – made of the cheapest, brittlest plastic ever.

Clackers. Just why?

Evel Kneivel – great toy but the plastic on the bikes always broke after a few uses.

Tamiya remote control Wills Jeep – only shite because I never had one.

For a trip down memory lane, other vintages are available through the links

I had a radio control car.

Radio control – Luxury! I had one of those, it was “remote” control, i.e. a wire that was about a meter long so you had to walk behind it. Yeah, walk, and a slow one at that. It wasn’t even new when I got it. 😁

Flightdeck

My brother and I were always getting shred presents, and they were invariably board games, this was perhaps the worst. It “recreated the excitement” of landing a Phantom on a carrier deck…Essentially a small plastic Phantom slid down a string, you could “control” it with a joystick and and catch an arrestor wire, on a cardboard cut-out of an aircraft carrier deck and a flag would pop up to indicate a successful trap. It was super finicky to set up, and took and age (and invariably we got bored half way through) and in practice was a pretty dull game. I think we got it going maybe once, it took up the entire first floor landing (which our parents were less than thrilled about) and once you got your eye in was piss easy.

Flightdeck! I had one of them and thought it was mint. You missed out the rubber band catapult launch bit.

Mr **** Frosty. Absolute garbage. I’m not bitter though, no.

Mr Frosty. Absolutely gash. It came back recently as well, so another generation can be disappointed.

Action Jacks figures

Behave

Sure I’d have preferred gi joe figures, but action jack was about a 5th of the price. A perfect stocking filler

Plus when you pulled the head out the entire figure fell apart..

Tin Can Alley, absolute pish!

We had an ice cream maker. Sounded AMAZING when we got it.

Took an age to set up, took ages to freeze, made enough ice cream for one desert spoon each. Being in the freezer killed the batteries incredibly quickly. So when it was up and running you might get 2 teaspoons of ok I’ve cream or 2 tea spoons of something with the ingredients of ice cream that was inediblel.

My mum clearly got tired of the whining very quickly!

I think that you will find it was called Super Flight Deck.
Misnomer if ever there was one.
I modded mine with multiple elastic bands whicj then required longer and longer bits of string to allow the F4 to go all of 10 metres.
This then allowed an extra second or so of piloting to land safely back on the cardboard aircraft carrier
Probably played with 10 times before being retired to the cupboard of pladtic tat presents.

I think that you will find it was called Super Flight Deck.

I think you will find that was the sequel.

http://www.stuffwelove.co.uk/superflightdeck.htm

Flightdeck

I came on here to say exactly that. It never bloody worked.

Spacehopper – you couldn’t really do anything on it other than shuffle around

I crossed the Alps on a space hopper

Worst thing my parents got me was a morse tapper. Yep, build from scratch morse code thing, with no-one to send morse code to. I mean, I was a quiet kid but I wasn’t that much of a freak.
Funny thing was, I’d asked Santa for Mouse Trap (by MB Games!) and found this box of stuff outside my bedroom with my Dad’s handwriting scrawl which I read as Mouse Trapper. Where’s the little plastic man?? I’m freaked out by their cruelty to this day (approx 50 years on?!)

Matchbox Supa-track loop the loop.

Ok, I don’t want to come across as if our parents just bought us rubbish present, so I’m going to say I probably asked for this one…Big long pieces of very flexible yellow plastic track that you set up by connecting together and at the end of a big long slope was a loop the loop…Never worked. The first problem was you needed height to mount the first bit of track, and the cars would fall off, any rouge junction in the track…the cars would fall off, and the as soon as they hit the top of the loop…the cars would fall off…

Presents in the 70’s were shit.

⬆ eh? Those car tacks were ace! Think our was Hotwheels though, maybe that had better kerbs to keep the cars on. We had a starting gate for 2 cars so they could be raced. Brilliant.

Aye, I had the hotwheels one too (hand me down form my cousins) and used to build massive high tracks from big Mecchano towers (also HMDs). Magic.

Matchbox Supa-track loop the loop.

Yep, glad to hear I’m not the only one who was shatteringly disappointed by it.

Gameboy.

Now before you all kick off I totally agree, The Gameboy is probably the finest games platform ever prooduced. Lemmings, tetris, mario it was and still is fantastic*.

But tis not a toy to **** share on christmas day with your little sister is it? IS IT?!

*Also it was a mind bendingly unbelievable gift from my parents who I am pretty sure were extremely broke at the time. I also still have it somewehere and it still functions perfectly.

Matchbox Supa-track loop the loop.

Yep, glad to hear I’m not the only one who was shatteringly disappointed by it.

What you needed was one of these.

My mate had a load of track and 2 of those superboost things, the cars would pass underneath and a big flywheel thing would blast them out the other end. We had great fun.

Wanted Scalextrix, got this instead. Never worked properly from day 1. Totally Crap Racing.

Total Crap Racing. Worked OK if the cars were perfectly matched. Taping playing cards to the track to reduce grip and cut the power could result in a spin or two, but for most of the time it was crap. Spoilt Kid™ round the corner had it. Glad that I didn’t. I think that he “livened” his up with some meths and matches eventually.

Chutes Away promised so much but failed to deliver.

After 10 minutes it turned from a rescue mission to a bombing mission by adding Airfix soldiers, and 10 minutes after that the soldiers were back on the model railway where they belonged.

^^^ TCR. I was just about to say that myself LOL

Got a TCR? You’ll need one of these….

Christmas present when I was 9. What bloody good is a Christmas present your dad wants to play with! 😀

Still got it 45 years later

Mousetrap anybody?

Took so long to set up I’m not sure I ever remember actually playing it!!

Mousetrap? It was shit then but it is 1,000,000 times shittier now – at least it was quite well built in the 70s whereas it’s built of cheese now.

Subbuteo. Bear with me. Football was ace, just flick to kick. Cricket was utter gash. Rugby even worse.

Test Match – like subbuteo but even shitter. Who actually thinks that a mini figure cricket game is fun?

Mousetrap anybody?

I wish! See above 😛

Just popped in to make sure Flight Deck is getting the hammering it deserves

My lad was having a huff about his game on the Ipad freezing. I had to explain the joy of waiting for a full 30 minutes for the tape cassette game to load on my Commodore 64, only for it to crash and have to start again. I then showed him on Youtube what he would have been waiting for. Don’t know they’re born………..etc.etc