Toys you wanted as a kid...

[Muck]

wasn't a whole lot of toys I wanted as a kid.

spent most of our free time outdoors. playing sports, hunting, fishing, etc.
when I was young, i really wanted my own pirogue so i could get deeper into the marsh for hunting snakes.

no i'm not kidding.
yes I realize this post will only help solidify the stereotype of people from my part of the world.

If it makes you feel better I've always pictured you as a slightly less damaged version of Terry Bellefleur.

I probably spent as much or more time outdoors as a kid as I did indoors but there was a definite mix of both...well except when we'd visit family in WV, then you couldn't get me to come inside for anything.

 

[Onebuckfan]

Not a toy but pestered the folks to see the Royals..Jerry Lucas Big 0 Jack Twyman Happy Hairston Odie(Adrian) Smith

 

[Nutriaitch]

If it makes you feel better I've always pictured you as a slightly less damaged version of Terry Bellefleur.

never saw True Blood (had to Google to see who this cat was), is this a compliment?
or did you just slam me and I don't know it?

 

[Muck]

never saw True Blood (had to Google to see who this cat was), is this a compliment?
or did you just slam me and I don't know it?

He has a good heart.

 

[scooter1369]

He has a good heart.

Dead Iraqi woman with a penchant for sending Efrits after Americans disagrees

 

[Dryden]

I had a couple of those as a kid. The drawbridge and another set (no idea what specifically as I never had the box, my mom probably found it at the Salvation Army).

It was one of those toys that not only did no one else have...no one else had even heard of it. It took me a long time to even find out who made it & what it was called when I started trying to find it online years ago.

I didn't know what those sets were called either. Since both my cousin and I were born in '74 he could not have gotten that new, but I never knew that back then. By the end of the '70s Kenner had ceded the building toy market to LEGO and was printing money with Star Wars action figures, so the only way to find the Girder & Panel sets was second-hand.

I was a couple of years too old when GI Joe really started to take off but I do remember thinking the carrier was pretty cool.

I was 8 when GI Joe relaunched in 1982. I was the target demographic. Bought the comic books; ran home after school to watch the cartoon. I had one of everything growing up. Except the Flagg.

I distinctly remember opening two GI Joes at Christmas in '82 (Grunt and Flash) and it was over. Every night Grunt and Flash would team up to kick Han Solo's ass. It was really a mismatch since the Joe's had articulated knees, elbows and torsos ... they could do karate and wrestling moves. The Kenner made Star Wars action figures didn't stand a chance.

The worst part of it was knowing that my cousin just didn't get it. He was 110% full bore into LEGO. He never played with GI Joes and he only seemed to want to play with the Girder & Panel buildings when I was over there. Damn. If I'd had a 6 foot tall destructable Sears Tower in my bedroom with all my Joes ...

 

[Muck]

I didn't know what those sets were called either. Since both my cousin and I were born in '74 he could not have gotten that new, but I never knew that back then. By the end of the '70s Kenner had ceded the building toy market to LEGO and was printing money with Star Wars action figures, so the only way to find the Girder & Panel sets was second-hand.

I definitely had this one & distinctly remember the box (& the blue girders)....

The second set had black girders & the plastic 'windows' that popped on the outside. No idea which set it was originally but looking at a fan page it may have been the Sears Tower set as that is the only one that seems to have the same size base platform as mine.

BTW what color was your cousin's set?

Edit: The more I look at those sets the more convinced I am that it was in fact the Sears Tower set as it also appears to be the only one with the same window panels.

I was 8 when GI Joe relaunched in 1982. I was the target demographic. Bought the comic books; ran home after school to watch the cartoon. I had one of everything growing up. Except the Flagg.

I distinctly remember opening two GI Joes at Christmas in '82 (Grunt and Flash) and it was over. Every night Grunt and Flash would team up to kick Han Solo's ass. It was really a mismatch since the Joe's had articulated knees, elbows and torsos ... they could do karate and wrestling moves. The Kenner made Star Wars action figures didn't stand a chance.

The worst part of it was knowing that my cousin just didn't get it. He was 110% full bore into LEGO. He never played with GI Joes and he only seemed to want to play with the Girder & Panel buildings when I was over there. Damn. If I'd had a 6 foot tall destructable Sears Tower in my bedroom with all my Joes ...

I was 11 in 82 & had received my first computer the previous Christmas (a TRS-80 Model III...it's also on my list of 3 greatest X-Mas memories with the Guns of Navarone above) so in 82 my life primarily revolved around the computer, D&D, playing baseball or shooting my BB gun.

FWIW Hot Wheels/Matchbox cars worked perfectly with the bridge set road (if you pretended each piece was a single lane rather than two).

 

[Dryden]

BTW what color was your cousin's set?

Edit: The more I look at those sets the more convinced I am that it was in fact the Sears Tower set as it also appears to be the only one with the same window panels.

My cousins set was black with black window panels in two different styles. I had linked the picture earlier but I think we hit a bandwidth cap for off-site linking so its not displaying anymore.

Was this one I think.

 

[Muck]

My cousins set was black with black window panels in two different styles. I had linked the picture earlier but I think we hit a bandwidth cap for off-site linking so its not displaying anymore.

Was this one I think.

uh oh

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[Smudger]

Basically anything related to this. This one is a little before my time, but you get the message. Had a plethora of hand-me-down G.I. Joe's from my older brother (six years older) on top of all the ones I had, so this was #1 priority every time Christmas or my birthday came around.

Sadly never got one, but I did get one of these.

 

[knapplc]

When I was younger I had a carrier that was smaller (half the size or so?) that had working (rubber band powered) catapults that could launch foam aircraft. Another one of those toys that I've never seen or heard of since (and another one of mom's thrift store/garage sale finds).

A neighbor kid might have had this same aircraft carrier. It was pretty big, but being a kid back then I'm not sure the dimensions today. It was nearly my size when I was younger. A few feet long, and the rubber-band catapults for foam aircraft sounds like it could have been the same thing. Darker-colored, like gray or green? He only brought it out for the kids in the neighborhood to play with once or twice.

Speaking of Army Men, I would set up forts for mine with my Lincoln Logs, then gather a huge pile of rubber bands and sit a few feet away and shoot them down. That was hours of good entertainment.




And one other toy that I desperately wanted, even to this day, is the old electronic football game. This was way better than the Coleco hand-held football.

 

[Fungo Squiggly]

A neighbor kid might have had this same aircraft carrier. It was pretty big, but being a kid back then I'm not sure the dimensions today. It was nearly my size when I was younger. A few feet long, and the rubber-band catapults for foam aircraft sounds like it could have been the same thing. Darker-colored, like gray or green? He only brought it out for the kids in the neighborhood to play with once or twice.

Speaking of Army Men, I would set up forts for mine with my Lincoln Logs, then gather a huge pile of rubber bands and sit a few feet away and shoot them down. That was hours of good entertainment.




And one other toy that I desperately wanted, even to this day, is the old electronic football game. This was way better than the Coleco hand-held football.

I got one of those as a gift from a garage sale....no instructions, missing players. I would just put the players on there and watch them move around. I still have no idea how you are supposed to simulate a game of football with one of those things.

 

[knapplc]

I still have no idea how you are supposed to simulate a game of football with one of those things.

It's not easy.

My friend had one. We would use a piece of wadded-up cotton ball as the football, tuck it under the RB's arm, set up our offense/defense, and as soon as the defender's base touched the RB's base, the RB was down.

Sometimes the RB would drop the cotton ball, so the next player to touch the ball got it. That little wad of cotton would move around quite a bit on that vibrating surface and we had lots of fun arguing over who touched it first.

We never did any passing. He had one of those kick/pass/punt players but we hated it so we never used it. Plus, being Nebraska fans in the early 80s, we didn't care about the forward pass anyway.

 

[BayBuck]

He had one of those kick/pass/punt players but we hated it so we never used it. .

TRIPLE THREAT!

Those games were great, I always thought it was so much more fun setting up plays than actually watching them never do what you intended anyway.

 

[cincibuck]

And one other toy that I desperately wanted, even to this day, is the old electronic football game. This was way better than the Coleco hand-held football.

As the Packard Motor Car ads used to say, "Ask a man who owns one."

I owned the set before this one, Metal goal posts and players, in silver and blue - I quickly painted scarlet jerseys on the silver players with scarlet stripes on their helmets and yellow pants on the blue. I didn't mess with putting wangs on the blue helmets.

Actual play was akin to watching Brownian Motion. A Huge disappointment.

And passing was a joke. The kicker/punter/passing QB was a tiny trebuchet and setting it up for distance and accuracy was a bitch.

Each player had two thin metal reeds under his (I don't know what to call it. it looked like each player was standing on a skateboard.) If you bent these backwards the player would move backwards instead of forward. I enjoyed bending the prongs so that most of the blue team went backwards as soon as the ball was snapped.

BUT I did have some fun with field goal kicking contests with friends and the team in the scarlet jerseys regularly kicked the hell out of the team in yellow pants.

Let play become reality.