OT- Strange toys you remember having as a kid

[knightfan7]

I once received a Rocket Car kit. It included a block of Balsa wood, wheels, 2 CO2 capsules, and a spring loaded needle to puncture the capsule. You carved your car with a hollowed out end where you put the capsule. No matter what you did the car would go about 5 feet then start bouncing all over the pace till the capsule ran out of gas.

 

[FELONIOUSMONK]

A J J Jennings action figure

 

[Beancounter88]

Damn, Evil Knievel, Rocket Sockem Robots and SSP already mentioned and I actuall have a Skittles Bowl in my house. I'll have to go with ice hockey with the spinning players (Championship Hockey) and the basic erector set with so many sharp metal pieces, screws and bolts they would never sell it anywhere today.

 

[GoodOl'Rutgers]

probably the toy I got the most use out of was a rod hockey game with chicago and boston players. I actually mailed away for philly and the rangers players. We kept statistics on player goals.. the metal players, not us kids. And while my game game with a wooden puck..

I took one of the bearing pucks from my "Rebound" game to use in hockey..

 

[zappaa]

probably the toy I got the most use out of was a rod hockey game with chicago and boston players. I actually mailed away for philly and the rangers players. We kept statistics on player goals.. the metal players, not us kids. And while my game game with a wooden puck..

I took one of the bearing pucks from my "Rebound" game to use in hockey..

Trememdous game

 

[knightfan7]

Trememdous game

I had the one with metal players then got a later version with plastic 3D players. I painted one team with the Ranger home uni's and the other the away blue. Gilbert, Eddie G, Nevin, Stemkowski, and Hatfield. Rangers never lost lol.

 

[hawksurprize]

 

[RUChoppin]

Wham-O's "Super Elastic Bubble Plastic." Early 70s. Ok. Never actually had this, but I remember the TV commercials and my mom's "hell, no" expression. What were they thinking? A toxic semi-liquid that, using a straw, you blow bubbles with.

Yes, we had this... and yes, even as a kid, it just felt toxic as hell.

 

[RUScrew85]

Clothespin super hero set with toilet paper capes. I challenge anyone who can say they had those as a kid.

Damn, your family was POOR. (Just kidding)

 

[RUChoppin]

This was also a terrible idea...

 

[RUScrew85]

Wham-O's "Super Elastic Bubble Plastic." Early 70s. Ok. Never actually had this, but I remember the TV commercials and my mom's "hell, no" expression. What were they thinking? A toxic semi-liquid that, using a straw, you blow bubbles with.

I had that. It was totally toxic. You did not want to breathe in.

 

[RUScrew85]

Yup.

I had the Orange Crate, my buddy had the Grey Ghost.

 

[RUChoppin]

As was this... "let's take a sharp piece of metal and cover it with a thin fabric, and have kids throw it at their wrists... what could possibly go wrong?"

 

[chickenpatty2]

Bam!

http://waitbutwhy.com/2013/09/all-weird-toys-from-your-childhood.html

 

[RUScrew85]

I had Light Bright back in the late '60s/early 70s. The one with the small colored pegs that your baby brother or sister could choke on. You could also unscrew the lightbulb and stick your pinkie in the socket.

Also Kerplunk (sp?) Plastic cylinder with a bunch of holes half way up. You would put thin plastic, sharply pointed "sticks" through the holes to form a "web". Insert marbles. Then start pulling the sticks out. Who ever had the fewest marbles fall won.

Dunebuggy Wheelies. Greatest child exercise system ever devised in the early seventies. It was an electric motorized little dunebuggy. NOT radio controlled. You had a controller/battery pack with forward/reverse and steering levers attached with about a four foot chord. You had to run after the dam thing in order to play with it. I was a chubby seven year old when I had it. I figured out why my Mom bought it for me a few years later when I was older and wiser.

Jarts were king! One of my neighbors got hit in the head with one. Didn't penetrate. You did NOT want to yell "heads up" with those things. "Duck" was the better choice. Jarts were not eye socket friendly.

I had a LiteBrite. The picture on the box was always so much better than what you could do yourself.

 

[RUScrew85]

Had a Blue Beard, not a Schwinn. Chopper setup, high sissy bar, rear racing slick tire.

I also got blue replacement tires at one point.

 

[RU4Real]

This was also a terrible idea...

I had these. When the news story went national about the glass balls exploding all over the place, my mom took them away. :(

 

[RUScrew85]

This was also a terrible idea...

Hated those.

 

[Ridge 22]

I got one of these when I was 11 or 12. I could not imagine a kid getting one of these today, as the helicopter parents would be petrified of the harm and chaos that would ensue. We lived on a hill overlooking a river. There was always a collection of bottles and cans that washed up on the riverbed that we lined up and shot at.

Ha. I had the same one!

 

[RUChoppin]

I had these. When the news story went national about the glass balls exploding all over the place, my mom took them away. :(

The balls on mine were just a hard plastic. After the umpteenth round, purple bruise on our wrists, we had pretty much stopped using them... they were the "cool toy" because you weren't allowed to have them at school.

 

[RUScrew85]

A J J Jennings action figure

I have no idea why this made me laugh.

Did it come with a bar stool and a pitcher? LOL. I'm just saying this because I have met him a couple of times at Rutgers games and Bowl games and it's always in a bar.

 

[RUJohnny99]

Can anyone who had the vibrating football game please explain how/why it was fun? My buddy had it & every time we played it, it was like "this sucks". His little sister always enjoyed sitting on the table though.

 

[RUScrew85]

Can anyone who had the vibrating football game please explain how/why it was fun? My buddy had it & every time we played it, it was like "this sucks". His little sister always enjoyed sitting on the table though.

Because the Ads were deceptive and you could order players painted as your favorite teams if your parents forked out the extra bucks. Mine didn't.

 

[FELONIOUSMONK]

Screw It actually came with 5 different 'fro wigs and a pipe

 

[ScarletR97]

Great Garloo
The Fighting Lady Ship
007 James Bond Attaché Case
B29 Ball Turret Machine Gun
Super Helmet Seven
My Schwinn Apple Crate
HO Trains and slot cars
Mattel Grenade Launcher
Air Cooled tripod machine gun
Creepy Crawlers Plastic Goo

We had a Great Garloo and the Thing Maker that made the Creepy Crawlers with the Goo. I actually still have the Thing Maker along with some other toys from the era. My Mom was a saver and gave us all our stuff she squirreled away in the attic a few years back.

 

[zappaa]

We had a Great Garloo and the Thing Maker that made the Creepy Crawlers with the Goo. I actually still have the Thing Maker along with some other toys from the era. My Mom was a saver and gave us all our stuff she squirreled away in the attic a few years back.

If they're in good shape or god forbid unopened, you can get a lot of money for those.

 

[RUinPinehurst]

Because the Ads were deceptive and you could order players painted as your favorite teams if your parents forked out the extra bucks. Mine didn't.

I had the Bears and the Cardinals. They haunt me. Circling. Always circling.

 

[DHajekRC84]

Can anyone who had the vibrating football game please explain how/why it was fun? My buddy had it & every time we played it, it was like "this sucks". His little sister always enjoyed sitting on the table though.

it was more a science experiment than game. Always trying to figure out how to make it work and not vibrate off the table. Could never complete a pass. I think I went o fer 246.

 

[DHajekRC84]

Who on here can say they owned a Schwinn Sting Ray with Chopper handle bars?

with a banana seat!

 

[JPhoboken]

A blowgun I ordered from Boys Life magazine. THe real deal. You made the darts by cutting pieces of very thin and round hardened steel about 6 inches long, heating the end and sticking/melting end into a plastic round bead. 6 ft long aluminum blow gun. With minimum effort, the dart could penetrate through 1/2 plywood. They advertised it for hunting, I couldn't imagine shooting anything with it, and never did.

I saw some of the reviews in the advertisement where people were bragging about bagging certain animals, and I couldn't resist writing in and doing the same thing. What happened next floored me, as i received many hate mail letters excoriating me for killing defenseless animals, even though I hadn't done it, but was dumb enough to say I did.

Lesson learned.

 

[Extra Point]

Two more from the sixties: Six Finger (shot darts, caps, was a light, pen, etc spy stuff); and Dick Tracy Two Way Wrist Radio.

I had the Dick Tracy radios. I had asked for a walkie talkie set and I got the Dick Tracy radios for my birthday. When I opened it and turned it on it was picking up a couple of tough sounding guys having a staticy conversation. My dad got on the radio and pretended that he was talking to them. What dad was saying to them and what they were saying tricked the rest of the family that they could hear him. My mom told him to stop don't talk to those people. I thought they might be CIA agents for the POTUS and we tapped into a private signal. Wow this toy radio might be able to transmit and receive communication from around the entire country! Then we tested out the range in the back yard and it could transmit maybe 100 feet or so lol.

 

[zappaa]

with a banana seat!

Hell yes, I also had the rear slick on my first stingray. My Apple Krate had a five speed stick shift.

 

[RUMBA-JK]

- one of those unique (odd) toys that was popular for about a month -

 

[RUTrack94]

Kerplunk

 

[OntheBanks]

Does anyone remember 'Winky Dink'.?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winky_Dink_and_You

 

[RUMBA-JK]

Who had one of these? You could design you very own 1960's 'modern' industrial structures - totally devoid of any aesthetic value

 

[phs73rc77gsm83]

I had the Dick Tracy radios. I had asked for a walkie talkie set and I got the Dick Tracy radios for my birthday. When I opened it and turned it on it was picking up a couple of tough sounding guys having a staticy conversation. My dad got on the radio and pretended that he was talking to them. What dad was saying to them and what they were saying tricked the rest of the family that they could hear him. My mom told him to stop don't talk to those people. I thought they might be CIA agents for the POTUS and we tapped into a private signal. Wow this toy radio might be able to transmit and receive communication from around the entire country! Then we tested out the range in the back yard and it could transmit maybe 100 feet or so lol.

That's a great story!! Yea, the range was pretty limited but at the time I thought it was cool as can be.

 

[Scarlet4Shore]

This was also a terrible idea...

loved those. We called them "kerbangers"

 

[NewJerseyGuy]

Chutes Away!!!

 

[vkj91]

That VCR football game.