...we didn't have your fancy "Game-boy." What did we have? Stretch Armstrong and Micronauts! Spirograph and Mousetrap! games! And it...was...fucking...awesome!

What toys do you miss from your childhood? D'you remember Magic Window, with the blue and white sand in a plastic oval that would make wave designs? Romper stompers, the shoe-lifts that would make you four inches taller (in my case, sister-sized)? And all things Nerf!

One of my favorite parts of The 40-Year-Old Virgin was when he would refer to one of the toys from his collection, because you know what? I HAD THE DOLL OF THE SIX-MILLION DOLLAR MAN'S BOSS, OSCAR GOLDMAN, TOO!

I realize that some of you are indeed young enough to have had Gameboys. To you I say: Damn kids. Stay off my lawn!

There was a toy that I just loved. Not quite a sit and spin, not quite a big wheel. But you could sit in it and turn around really, really, really fast till you got really, really, really dizzy.

I thought it was lost forever, until I found the greatest catalogue. It's not exactly like the one from when I was a kid, but it's pretty damn close:

http://tinyurl.com/632dfr

DGB that's an awesome site, it's like they've put the danger back in to toys. Every second thing in their catalog looks like it could kill you or at very least take off an ear. Like it should be :)

My brother had way cooler toys than me. I mean dolls are ok and all, but they weren't anywhere near as awesome as that big robot he had that would walk into walls and back up and realign itself and talk the whole time, "i am a tom-ic robot. please give my best wishes to everybody." (wha'?) and his little ET landing module that had a button at the back, that would launch an ET-on-wheels out of the ship at you. And of course the transformers, machine men, voltron lions... so few toys these days have dynatherms. Or megathrusters.

in all honesty though i think i spent most of my time pretending i was either astro boy (but a girl) or Princess from Battle of the Planets. Dress up just required a cape (my mother had a huge a-line dark pink raincoat, it was perfect) and a yo-yo weapon - which i traded up for Jason's specialist weapon instead, a sort of shuriken-boomerang shaped like a rocket - which i made out of off-cuts from my dad's balsa wood (he was mad about remote control gliders) and painted all futuristic. And actually worked great, they flew great, even came back. But only indoors - outdoors, the wind would lift them all over the place, they rarely came back. So i practiced indoors. And broke my dad's stereo. And lied about it. And still haven't admitted it, 20 years on...

what am i saying, Jason had a gun. It was MARK who had the shuriken thing. (Jason also had an attitude problem.) It's been so long...

Well, DGB mentioned the two that immediately came to mind for me. My Sit & Spin and my Big Wheels. I loved both of those so much. I just saw a new "classic" Big Wheels at Target, I can't wait until the baby is old enough to play with these as well.

DGB- great website!

Well, DGB mentioned the two that immediately came to mind for me. My Sit & Spin and my Big Wheels. I loved both of those so much. I just saw a new "classic" Big Wheels at Target, I can't wait until the baby is old enough to play with these as well.

DGB- great website!

Oh, and I am young enough that I had a GameBoy as well!

Oh, Daddy Geek Boy, you and I are indeed of the same mind. Which should probably frighten you a little--ask Ylimemagic!

I'm not quite such the sensitive parent that this has ceased being funny to me:

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/28331

Story title: Fun Toy Banned Because Of Three Stupid Dead Kids

I read that, and I think: Lawn Darts! Which I also miss. And fear.

Ah the good ol days. My brother had one of these:

http://tinyurl.com/5qczra

His best friend did too and they would tear up and down the sidewalk all summer long. And practice skidding out on our driveway. Which made big black circles. Which my dad didn't like.

I had a snoopy snow cone maker. I almost bought one when I saw them in Target the other day, but I resisted.

A couple months ago, The Girl and I spent some time in the post office getting our passports. They had the little rotary phone with eyes and a red handle. I had to explain to her what it was and how to use it.

I was big into dolls. Rainbow Bright!

I had one of the original GameBoys. You know those gray bricks with a tiny army green screen.

One thing that Mo and Max will never have is the run of a farm. When I was seven we moved in with my grandfather who owned a small sheep farm outside of Philly. My sister and I had the run of that place. It was in a valley with a branch of the Perkiomen running through it. It was the best summer ever! The only shoes I wore the whole summer were wellies.

One thing I haven't seen forever are the little record players that take plastic records. I loved that thing and was insanely jealous of the friend who had one. Me, I played with sticks and mud out in the woods...and liked it.

I did get the second incarnation of the Gameboy, a little green one, when I was around ten or so. I hated that thing and its stupid Pokemon game. Gave it to kid last year who always claimed to be horribly poor and deprived. She thought it was broken because it wasn't in color and threw it at me.

I had all these things. Plus My Little Ponys, a bike, Nerf balls, Etch-a-sketch, Tonka trucks, stuffed animals, etc.

Most of these things we either kept or hav bought newer versions for Big O. I really try to avoid toys that use batteries.

There was this game - a hockey game where the hockey playing units were controlled by magnets that were moved by the human opponents. The unit was sealed so there was no manipulation except through the magnets. The magnet hockey players were these colorful cylindrical things.

Anybody remember what this was called?

And we did have game boy - the original LCD units came out when I was about 24, which means a lot of the younger parents here had them at age 12-15.

When I was a junior high student, the rage was this LED game called Mattel Electronic Football. Although they came out with a second version that was slightly more realistic, it was not as groundbreaking as the first one. Mattel re-released it, but now it took AA batteries instead of a 9 volt, and the buttons don't have that same great feel.

I was very bitter that I never got an EZ Bake oven or a cabbage patch doll. My mother was into very non-traditional games/toys which meant my brothers never got any GI Joes either.

I miss the books from my childhood. If anyone has a copy of Mercer Mayer's Search for the Zipperumpazoo, I'd pay for it!

i never had a gameboy, nor the ds, nor ipod. i'm pretty much hardwired to my pc though, so i wouldn't have time to use those things anyway.

i did have little LCD games when i was a kid - fire, fire and something about mario and luigi packing beer. my friend in primary school had the original Donkey Kong home arcade game, about the size of a small tv, weighed as much as the average desktop PC tower does these days. Made terrible noises. Probably gave off more radiation than the Corio power station. Damn we loved that thing. Lame as it was. One lever repeated forever... things just kind of sped up and there were more snakes or something.

Hoppity Horse. Etch-a-Sketch, though I don't think we ever had one. I've been tempted by the little mini ones at Target, but I already spend too much time goofing off when I should be working.

And Johnny Jump-up. Okay, I know it's not really in the realm of what you're talking about. But man, I loooved jumping up and down in that thing and was so jealous when I got too big and my little sister got to jump in it all day.

Oh BoL - where were you during my childhood? We never had toys like that. With three girls in the family we never saw mechanized toys. *sigh* We didn't have dolls either, oddly enough, at least I don't remember any.

Ah, Herasmus, thirty-five years ago, was there any sweeter word than "Tonka?"

I remember the lame-ass hand-held "football" game, Super-Papa. I lament that children (and many adults) will never grasp the wonder we once had at the idea of a computer that could fit...right...in...your...HAND!!! It was as if my Merlin game had time-traveled from the future, just to play tic-tac-toe against me--and lose! I was smarter than a computer!

Super-Papa, I'm sure you remember the promotional Superman comic book from the early Eighties wherein the Man of Steel, his mind weakened by exposure to red solar radiation, must rely on the computer skills of two schoolchildren armed with state-of-the-art TRS-80 computers and a dial-up modem.

My daughter inherited her dad's thirty year old, solid metal Tonka trucks. They're sweet. She also has some of his original Transformers and some of my My Little Ponies and Strawberry Shortcake figurines. She digs the Viewmaster and the Etch-a-Sketch, and she's gettting pretty good at the Spirograph. No, we're not trying to relive our childhoods! Why would you ask?

I saved box fulls of toys, including a lot of Star Wars stuff, GI Joe, etc. I loved my Merlin and always wanted a Green Machine. Micronauts were awesome because they actually shot stuff and you could set up huge battles. Hot Wheels cars with track laid out all over the living room...

I gotta go home and play now!

MAGIC WINDOW!?? that's what it was called??? omg, i loved that so much!! mine was blue and white too. i think i still have it somewhere....

my mom didn't like barbies or cabbage patch kids, so neither did i. never had any except for the one barbie that my aunt sent me. i was mostly a wooden block and marbles kid. i remember making little courses to roll the marbles down. i also remember my fisher-price, brown cassette recorder. i used to record my voice and wonder why it sounded nothing like me. mostly though, i would dig in the backyard for dinosaurs. we lived in new mexico and i was convinced that all the lizard bones i found in the dirt were really just baby dinos.

i got my first 8-bit nintendo at 19 when i moved into my own apartment and my first gameboy (the first model) when i was 23 for a trans-atlantic flight.

I always wanted an EZ Bake oven. My cousin who lived next door had one and I was insanely jealous of her for that. But I never got one. She also wouldn't let us have any kind of video games--I remember when Nintendo first came out and another set of my cousins got one. It was great, but we only had Dad's Atari from 1970-something that we weren't allowed to play with because it was for him, not us.

I did have Transformers and Hot Wheels cars and loads of other stuff like that, though. And a Cabbage Patch kid (I begged and begged for that and got it for my 9th birthday). And more Barbies than a person could reasonable know what to do with. But my absolute favorite toys I had as a kid were my Spirograph and Lincoln Logs. Unfortunately, I don't have any of it anymore. Our house burnt when I was 14 and we lost everything, so I can't give my kids any of the cool stuff I had.

Mttm, I feel you on that one. My boys will never have the run of the hill with a huge extended family. We lived on the side of the mountain in an old coal camp community. Several of my cousins lived there (mom has 11 siblings and 3 of them lived on the hill with us, so I had 12 first cousins practically next door). We roamed all over with very little supervision and I'm surprised that nobody died, but it was a great way to spend a childhood. N and A will never have that and it makes me a bit sad.

I remember going over to a neighbor's and being deeply jealous of his Nintendo. I could duck hunt with the best of them.

I also had serious My Little Pony Envy.

However, after I expressed my dismay at never having an easy bake oven, my aunt bought me one for Christmas when I was around 16 or 17. Imagine me and my thirty year old cousins ARGUING over the right way to bake a cake on a light bulb.

Y'all, I had the giant She-Ra pink castle that was as tall as I was. Best toy ever. I also had one of those dancing barbies that you'd shift her from side to side and her arms would move.

Although, nothing can beat practically killing yourself on a trampoline. We would wet it and soap it up to make it extra deadly. Sweet. I once fell through the springs, got hooked, and flipped backwards over the side. I was dangling over the side screaming my head off and trying to figure out how to get down.

Michael...They re-released the Mattel baseball and football games a few years back. Sold 'em to nostalgic geeks like me, who would now spend $20 to recapture some of their childhood. You know what...it was worth it.

So many good toys being mentioned here. Man, I LOVED my Merlin.

Video games seem to be a great divide. A few years can mean the difference between growing up with Atari 2600 and Nintendo.

My first video game system was the Odyssey, which was pretty much 8 different versions of "Pong" It had three little knobs on the side of the game unit, so you had to sit really close to your friend to play while turning these little knobs that weren't spaced very far apart.

That and Intelivision. I never had one, but was so jealous of my friends who did.

Ellie - when I was 7, I dearly wanted a Lite Brite. My grandma decided a Lights Alive was WAY better because it didn't have all those little pieces. I wanted all the little pieces! For twenty years, I was pissed that I never got the Lite Brite. I got one for Christmas several years ago from my husband. My grandma kept taking it away to play with it.

I wanted: an electric race car track, drums, and a rock tumbler.

I had: dolls, puzzles, and coloring books.

I still want the damn rock tumbler.

Has anyone seen the 'retro' toys at Target lately?

I'm like what the HELL I'm not that damn old...
and promptly bough two of the wind up of radio popup toys.

Sigh. Marketing whore.

Yeah, I loved my Light Bright! I also had the doll that you fed this cherry shit and then she peed on you. Now I think back on that and wonder why I was so amazed.

Easy Bake Oven was fun. I loved our Atari...and Q-Bert. But really my world opened up with the Original Mario Brothers and Duck Hunt. We spent one summer watching my dad beat The Legend of Zelda...it was great.

I loved the lemon thing that strapped to your ankle by a long tether. Then it spun around and you jumped over it. And over it..and over it.

What was that thing called??

"activate interlocks....dynatherms connected...infracells up...megathrusters are go!...

LET'S GO VOLTRON FORCE!!!"

I had a ton of Star Wars (even some obscure ones....Snaggletooth...Walrus Man...I had the Hoth Battle Playset with the collapsing arch and exploding command center), GI Joe....Transformers...My favorite was Shogun Warriors...I also had the big Godzilla, and Rodan as well (the big one with "flapping wings and snap-close claws")...PLay-Doh Barbershop....Weebles mickey mouse clubhouse...Weebles Treasure Island...I ahd the 18" tall ALien figure (with Glow-In-The-Dark parts)...what about Inhumanoids? Entertech Squirt Guns?

Atari 2600....had all teh "cool" games, and some bizarre ones. River Raid, Space Invaders, Pitfall, Pitfall 2...but anyone remember the Swordquest games? Reactor? Wizard of Wor? Anyone even HEARD of Gopher?

original NES.....anyone else remember a game called "Thundercade"? I loved Pro Wrestling....and Tecmo World Wrestling...WCW was terrible, as was Wrestlemania...and the Castlevania series, best series of ALL TIME.

Ellie:

You had the She-Ra castle? Shame we never met..I had He-Man's Castle Grayskull AND Skeletor's Snake Mountain AND Hordak's FrightZone AND the Evil Horde Slime Pit. Those first three all came from the same place...generous grandparents on birthday/X-mas. :)

I'm realizing that most of these toys have current versions still available.

Then there are the ones re-packaged to trigger this same nostalgia so we all spend $20 over the value to buy for our kids the toys that we loved as a kid.

Hippy Mom: Was it a skip-it? A friend had one I was a kid, but I sucked at it. Just like hula hoops and everything else requiring coordination, really.

I wanted a Lite Brite sooo bad, but my father was extremely anti anything with small pieces or artsy. When I babysat a family toward the end of high school who had one, I would play with it after the kids would go to bed. Even more, I wanted a K-nex set. Legos would have sufficed, K-nex could make things that weren't square. I had to hold off from buying a set of blocks for my nephew that wouldn't fit in their house partially because I wanted to play with them too. I'm a bad aunt.

My brother and I got a SNES when I was about seven for Christmas. He's relinquishing his half to me for my birthday this year. I'm so excited! Now I just have to get my dad to hand over the original NES....

Whackbar, I kicked some serious ass at RiverRaid. And I mean serious ass. I haven't played that in almost 20 years now.

My sisters both loved Megamania on the Atari. Do you remember that one? It was like Space Invaders, but with food. And my mom was a fan of Kaboom.

Pogo-ball. Loved it!

KS

the space invaders-ish one with food was Plaque Attack, I thought. I remember megamania, though.

I was Supreme at Joust....I once got the 53rd Wave. yes, 53rd. At 28 it stopped generating anything other than Shadow Lord enemies.

My mother reigned at Circus Atari. She routinely flipped the score over...on her FIRST life.

This was definitely Megamania. It had chocolate chip cookies, burgers, bow ties, and some mouth opening things that I could never figure out what they were.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8u3Ol52MAw

Hey KS

Did you ever figure out that game, "Journey:Escape"? It just seemed to endlessly repeat the same four or five levels...I once spent three and a half hours on it. Did I miss something?

mamawho - you could actually stay on the pogoball?? That's damn impressive.

I am ragingly jealous of whoever had a Lite Brite! I wanted one SOOOOO bad. Also wanted the EZ Bake, and I also didn't get that. My mom tried to make up for that by teaching me how to use her big, commercial -size stand mixer when I was eight. It just wasn't the same.

We had lots of books, a record player, and a castle. The castle didn't go with a TV show...it was just a castle. My sisters and I could not have cared less about the castle. But we had serious battles over who got to play with the pink dragon that came with it.

GG - I managed to stay on the pogoball for long stretches of time. I could even jump rope while on the pogo ball. Before you get all impressed, I never quite got the hang of riding a bike.

Sa-weet. Jump rope on a pogo ball?

And c'mon. No one else did the soap on the trampoline?

WbW - "By the power of greyskull!" w00t!

We did soap up the hallway of my dorm. It was the world's longest slip'n'slide. Did you know that Tide glows under a black light? We replaced the flourescent tubes with blacklights. It's no wonder I flunked out the first time around.

I did know the tide trick. One of my friend's rooms was sprayed all over with detergent. It looked like a glowy bomb went off in there.

Did you also know that one bottle of tequila between two girls on tequila night is a very bad idea? It leads to barfing in your friends trashcan and taking off all of your clothes and getting in her bed. Then all of your other friends who split bottles of tequila come and check and see if you're really naked. It also leads to spanish folk songs while stumbling into the walls trying to get to the bathroom. I will tequila night no more forever.

However, a soapy hallway sounds fun. We had the most relaxed dorms in the world, so I can totally see our dorm getting into that.

Ellie, you had She-Ra's castle? God damn, i thought i was the only one who remembered her. I had the doll of She-ra and one other, i can't remember who... that golden goddess type lady with the plastic aura thing, white dress... forget her name. I did go to a fancy dress party as Cat-ra once. When i was 10 or so. Wish i'd thought to do it again when i was like 22 and had the body for it. :/

DaD loved He-Man when he was a kid, and transformers of course. I think his first big-kids' toy was a transformer of some sort. Start of a life-long love affair with mechanized alien lifeforms in disguise. The animation for He-man is laughable when you look at it nowadays. (But Battle of the Planets still rules.)

We had the Atari, and i do miss it. My brother got it, i think, and still plays it i imagine. Our most favourites were Defender and Carnival. But the tank pong game was awesome, "invisible tank pong" used to have us in hysterics for hours. I don't laugh half as much as computer games these days. I think it's cos they replaced the joy stick. Games these days lack joy.

I know a girl who... how do i say this tactfully... er... lost her virginity in an otherwise minor trampoline accident. To all outward appearances she was unscathed, but i suspect that bothered her a bit... in case her first 'proper' boyfriend thought she was lying to him or something.

I knew about ezi-bake ovens, but that's like the absolute last thing i would have ever asked for. It didn't blast off, it didn't have a robotic voice, (that i know of) it didn't wear a cape and thigh-high boots, didn't have blue hair, or a lightening bolt down the side, huge chibi eyes, an arch-nemesis, a tv-phone or a secret weapon on a volcanic island. Didn't even have dynatherms. And did it have megathrusters? I doubt it.

DaddyGeekBoy: I know about the re-releases. I bought them all. And you know what? They were NOT the same. The quality of the new console was much lower, and it does make a difference that the new ones used a 3V power supply instead of a 9V.

The original just had a more solid feel.

Michael...either that or we were weaker when we were younger.

i agree, the new re-release of anything is always way 'weaker'. made of cheaper products, slightly smaller, weight a whole lot less... Anyone else seen Dylan Moran talk about the old bakelite telephones vs modern mobile phones? Hysterical...

But Barbie these days isn't a patch on the old Barbie. Old Barbie could so kick new Barbie's weak poxy arse.

But you know what I dig but have not bought? Those collections of 2600 games that you van plug into your TV, but it comes in an old 2600 joystick. Anybody else seen or tried those? I sold my 2600, and 5200, too long ago but I'd love to play combat again with that controller.

COMBAT!! that's what it was called. i just remember it as tank pong, but that was only one of the many games on that chunky ole cartridge.

i think my dad has the device you're describing, he's a nut for electric nostalgia. Even has a mechanical bird somewhere or other. I haven't used it though. Nor seen it in action, i don't hang at their house often.