I still have her.

Mine was plastic gears and loved it, but i do not recognize this metal version - cool!

Probably from the mid 60s.

Played with them for many hours! Was styrofoam new back then? I’m thinking ‘64 or 65, I was 7 or 8. They should bring that back, the grandkids would love it.
One year we got Creepy Crawlers, my brother and I spend days making plastic bugs. Can you imagine a toy nowadays that involved an electric burner?

made with gobbledeygook!

Great toys back then. Dad would take us to Grant’s to get Plastigoop in different colors.
I had a “cowboys and Indians” cap pistol and holster set. (Talk about not-PC). And one year my brother got a BB gun, no he never shot his eye out.

Loved th creepy crawlers also.

Had a plastic Spirograph and an etch a sketch.

I didn't tell my mom

That thing was cool. I liked makong multi-colored bugs.

Also born in 56

We played with them for hours!

I was going to post that then I saw you already did!

...went to Chicago's Museum of Science & Industry
Lady there doing portraits on one
I was amazed!
She would draw it, put some sort of filter film on it, then let parents take a photo of it
After my mom died, I haven't a clue what happened to that snapshot

I never gained they kind of proficiency, but I did become an artist, so that gift had an impact. Enjoy your holiday.

but my very most favorite was Picker Stickers, the predecessor to Colorforms, with basic geometric shapes in colors and a black plastic covered cardboard to stick them on.

And creepy crawlers
EASY BAKE OVEN
Barbies and troll dolls.

Did we all grow up in the 60s?!

and the picture turns magenta or greenish blue?

I can't even find an image of them on the google!

Apparently they still exist.

Anything in the "Orange box" - and more "Erector Set" pieces!

(for you "kids" out there, the "Erector Set" stuff is NOT viagra related! )

All the original pieces. Best present ever.

did you crunch your fingers in the gears of the motor?

Of course, you know that something like that could never be sold these days, just like chemistry sets!

Looking back, I guess it was a bit dangerous. And I also had those chemistry sets.

The Christmas I got Barbie's first roadster *and* the tennis outfits for my Barbie and Ken was the bomb!

hands down....I think it was Stromberg??

1968 Schwinn Stingray Lemon Peeler

Went nuts taking pictures. They were pretty good little cameras for point and shoot. They had a locking mechanism that kept you from taking double exposures.

It was a set of several WWII fighter planes and a couple of later jets like the mig. What made it special was that the parts were interchangeable. You could put a delta wing on a Mustang, or a mig cowl on a Spitfire.

Hours of fun. Wish I could remember who made it.

after playing Jarts and pouring lead for toy soldiers.

Chemistry sets also harmed a lots of kids in those days. In some ways, I'm glad my folks couldn't afford any of that stuff.

Don't think the raccoon skin hats were real, at least I hope not.

Nice but did not last too long....
m

The Holy Grail of toy guns.

I had a repro Shirley Temple doll from Ideal in the early 60s that I loved. Almost went nuts when I opened the package.

They were made by Ideal in the 30s too.

Rock 'em Sock 'em Robots.

Go treat yourself this weekend. I actually saw these at Safeway, of all places, but Target has 'em, too.

https://www.target.com/p/rock-em-sock-em-robots-board-game/-/A-17073126

it worked like an easy bake oven, except you poured plastic pellets into molds to make the bugs.
Also - a fresh box of 63 crayons- with sharpener!!

We made tons of bugs while breathing some kind of 'plastigoop' fumes, while it cooked and an occasional burn - LOL. I loved to make gradient colored things - especially the little lizards.
Then they came along with 'incredible edibles' - similar, but you could eat them - they tasted horrible!

i cannot remember the name of the sequel to Creepy Crawlers, but they were some kind of goofy monsters heads you could stick atop your pencil, add hair, etc. I'm sure the name will come to me later. None were as awesome as Creepy Crawlers.

My fav bug was a black/purple glitter tarantula. I left in the car in the desert and it melted.

It's funny the toys we had then. Those things heated up to almost 400 °F!. Sorry about the third degree burns Johnny, but you made a neat centipede!

You'd pour and bake components for different dragons - wings, tails, heads, carapace and so on - and then assemble them in different ways.

Very cool.

Constantly burned my fingertips. The fumes were toxic. The little bits and pieces were choking hazards.

It was another one of 'chemicals are ok for kids to play with' thing where you could make some closed loop wire shapes, then dip into this stuff (Jolie?? I cannot remember!) then it make a plastic film that hardened within the loop - which looked like transparent stained glass. Then you assembled the shapes to whatever - most commonly it was used to create glasslike looking flowers and flowers arrangments.

Anyone recall what this was???

this set me off on a web search and I believe the one I remember is called Dippity-Glass and Joli Formafilm.

It always bugged me I had to go to my buddies house to play with MY Erector Set

See where it says "MO?" That, my friends, is a serious finger-crushing electric motor that more than once cut my lounge-piano-playing career short!
Where was OSHA when I needed them?

Burned a hole in the carpet in my room. The set got taken away.

Also loved creepy crawlers where you molded bugs on a hot disc box. I bet a lot of kids got burned by that toy. Saw one at a flea market recently.

I also loved by Barbies. Still have them in a box under my home storage area.

Any classic board game, Chatty Cathy doll. Oh, the memories!

Born in 1953; those are some favorite gifts through age 12.

It's the only toy that nobody else in the household wanted to play with, so I had it for a very long time.

haven't read through the thread yet but I bet there will be some good memories. thinking back, probably books gave the best pleasure. mysteries and anything to do with natural history.

And if I behaved very well,


2 bags of coal.

new ice skates!

Could build buildings and bridges. Learned useful lessons about structural stability in construction. Yeah....I was (and am) a real nerd.

8x10 pictures that hung on my bedroom wall. Been searching ebay for 10 years. No luck

Chatty Cathy, Play Doh, Tinkertoys and a yearlong paid certificate for my horse's board & feed!

chemistry sets, a microscope, HO trains, and similar stuff, and my yearly doctor kit (my parents wanted me to become a doctor). But my all-time favorites were military weapons and gear.

There was a company named Maco Toys that made just about everything you needed to equip a pretend army: rifles, pistols, web gear, canteens and mess items, helmets, radio stuff, pup tents, you name it. My buddy had an anti-aircraft gun that fired from a belt by turning a crank. I'll never forget those little blue bullets; I guess they were blue so you could find them in the grass. We used to watch war movies and grab our gear and head outside. This was back around '58 - '59, in the previous millenium.

Right up there with the "Bag 'O Glass".

Seemed kind of limiting

We used to go get them at the 5 + 10 store - each came in its own little box and they were fun to collect and play with.

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Too many years have past to remember the brand but I'm sure they came from Sears & Roebuck or Harvey's Dept. Store in Nashville. They were Caterpillar yellow, all metal and lasted like rock, as my best friend and I took them to the creek and other places needing serious big development work. I had the tractor and drag pan and the road grader. They did not have any sort of motor, just kid powered.

However, my No. 1 gift of all my youth was a brand new red Schwinn 3-speed 26" bike in my early teens, and I had it well up into my 40s. Still don't know how mom and dad afforded it.

Thanks for the memories!.........

We had enough track to do four lane racing after three Christmases.

..but was in awe of the full-room-sized, landscaped, four-lane HO raceways that showed up in the pages of Car Model magazine.

I got my set either forty-nine or fifty years ago this Christmas -- can't remember which. Aurora set, and I kept to their cars until the aforementioned magazine started spreading rumors of an incredibly-fast new car line coming from Tyco. (I was innocent enough to not figure out that the pre-release raves just might have been due to the designer being a former writer for that magazine.) From that point on, I regularly visited Fitt's Hobbies in Framingham, Massachusetts, seeing if the new "Tyco Pro" cars had come in. It seemed to take ages...but, finally, several months later, they got in a shipment and I came away with a bright-orange Lamborghini Miura for my saved-up $4.00. (The Tyco Pro cars cost a full $1.00 more than Aurora's models.) I got it home, only to discover that, although they were as fast as everyone said, they were also too light and would come out of their slot and off the track at practically every corner. After a few weeks/months trying to get them to behave, I went back to Aurora. P.S.: Just recently, I found an interview with the designer, who admitted to the cornering problem -- it appears that a change in the materials between the prototype and the production models made them too light. They reworked the design, and came out with the "Tyco Pro II" in 1971...by which time I had moved on to other interests (girls) and activities (failing miserably to attract the attention of said girls).

Last edited Tue Dec 25, 2018, 02:27 AM - Edit history (1)

It had a booklet of lessons and real artists’ materials like charcoal, etc. It started me on my path to becoming an artist.

probably something like this (below) - I was an utter failure!

I didn’t have any luck. I remember drawing the train coming down the tracks (one-point perspective) and my art teacher tried to “improve" on it. No appreciation of “fine art” I guess! LOL

Since I was always busy drawing!

My mother didn't like the mess I made with the charcoal.

I had the box of 64 -- remember Prussian Blue, Indian Red, Flesh, and Maize? Some of those names were “politically incorrect!” LOL

that had a "crayon sharpener" built in!

And I never even got the 64-box with the built-in sharpener in the back . . .

*SNIFF*

we spent in that lovely country. I wish I had kept them.

I got a sewing machine in 1957 or 1958. It was a quality piece of work and actually sewed quite well. My bro, sister and I also shared a chemistry set and we LOVED it. The microscope was pretty good and we did some neat experiments with the materials supplied in the set. My sister and I got Ginny dolls one year, and I always loved my baby dolls.

We didn't get a ton of toys because Dad was in the Army and we moved around a lot. I remember that some of our toys did move with us, but I hope that Mom found homes for them. I wish that I had asked her about it before she died--how she decided what to keep and what to give away. She and Dad both came from poor, Southern, farming families and never got anything for Christmas except for oranges, apples, nuts, sometimes raisins.

Purchased from Halle's Dept. Store in Cleveland, Ohio, circa early to mid 60s

place in my heart.

the left shoe to match the right one I wore

Don't know if they were Christmas gifts. Likely they were.

https://www.google.com/search?source=hp&ei=vD0gXL7cIMH4jwTTyJqADQ&q=masterpiece+board+game&oq=masterpiece+board+game&gs_l=mobile-gws-wiz-hp.1.0.0l5.2478.11808..13907...1.0..0.109.1997.20j2......0....1.......5..46j35i39j46i131j0i131j0i3.HhzX3mE8LOk#imgrc=YiF-HyOZsbGPFM:

https://g.co/kgs/7tS5yu

(which I still run) and Erector sets.

And Silly Putty