Favorite Toys

[Daddio]

For me it was my GI Joes hands down.

I am 39 (soon to be 40) so I mean the full-size GI Joes that were about 12 inches high. (they seemed huge when I was a kid).

I started out with the GI Joes that had the plastic molded hair and positioned hands. Then of course came Joe with "life like hair" and then the infamous "kung-fu grip".

Between my friends and I we had all the optional goodies too. I had the helicopter and the boat (complete with alligator and octupus - depending on whether or not you were playing that Joe was boating on fresh or salt water). My friends had the 6 wheel ATV, the jeep etc. We had the various uniforms, civies, guns, knives, hand grenades, helmets, tons of boots and shoes...you name it.

Winter was the best time of year of all. After plowing our street the plow-truck would make this enormous pile of snow at the end of the block. We would bring shovles and carve forts and caves in the snow and play GI Joe in Alaska, the South Pole, exploring the Ukraine in search of Russian spys and Russian Barbie Dolls (that is another topic all to itself)...etc. Usually Joe was closer to James Bond than a soldier. A spy is so much more fun than just a grunt.

My other favorite toy/s is one year (i think I was 9 or 10) my dad bought me my own set of tools, a tool box and a tool belt. I was in heaven. I would wear that toolbelt around everywhere I went. I looked like a 9 year old verson of Sneider from "One Day at a Time".

Other than that, I was happy with carboard boxes and rolls of duct tape. My parents still tease me that I was more happy with the empty boxes than the toys themselves.

[Igotalife]

Daddio-my bro's played with GI Joe's too. They were the rough and tumbled boyfriends for Barbies.

If you happened to hold on to any of them, they are extremely valuable nowadays if they are in good shape and all.

[octobergirl]

I hereby declare monchichi's for everyone. The word can't help but put a smile on your face and a jingle in your head.

Oh! That brought back sweet memories, cute little toys! I had to go to eBay and find a picture.

[nlmcp]

I'm loving this thread! I still have Little People at my Mom's house. I'm waiting for my daughter to get a little older (she's two now) so that she doesn't choke on them. She has the ones that they make now, but they are much bigger than the older ones.

We have some of the orginal wooden ones from I think the early 1950's. Plus some from the sixties when I was little and then others from when my kids were little, they keep getting bigger and bigger.

I used to love Barbie, but mine didn't have even close to the stuff they have now. Plus Trouble and the game of Life.

Always wanted an EZbake oven but never got it, got one for my kids but they hardly use it, they like to use the microwave and the big oven.

[Wisconsinswede]

Bama, you in here?

(I followed the buzzing noise)

[Jay]

Some toys I remember:
1) Tonka dump truck
2) Spirograph
3) Etch-a-sketch (couldn't draw curves if my life depended on it)
4) Hot wheels
5) Hang On Harvey
6) Board games like snakes and ladders, parchessi

Wah, I miss my toys!

[Paulie]

I totally missed this thread the first time around! How the heck did that happen?! I love toys. My desk at work is COVERED in toys. I used to collect Star Wars action figures when I was a kid. My dad gave me grief for all my "dolls" I played with, but hey sorry, man, they were cool! I still have a bunch of them on my desk, including a Jango Fett that makes shooting sounds, as a number of people on this site already know. Preeyow! Preeyow!

It's funny, too. As I read through this list, I see tons of things that I still love playing with. Or that my kids do. Lots of "old school" toys are available today (like Sit 'n' Spin and Lite-Brite), and some of those are making a HUGE comeback (like My Little Pony, which is a major fad at my daughter's school right now). One thing I still like playing with are Shrinky Dinks. I make little zipper holder thingies and refrigerator magnets for the kids. For my daughter's sixth birthday party, I had a bunch of pre-cut Shrinky Dinks available for the kids to color, and I cooked 'em for everyone in the Shrinky Dink oven. I was on oven detail for almost the entire party! This steady stream of children kept showing up and wanting theirs cooked. Coming in to the party, my wife didn't know how popular an offering my Shrinky Dink idea would be, but she later conceded that it was huge.

Unklescott mentioned Clue. That is my all-time favorite board game. And I LOVE board games. We have literally cabinets FULL of games. But that's always been my favorite. Clue Master Detective is fun, too. More of everything: rooms, people, weapons. The hardest thing about Clue growing up is you needed three players to play. My folks never wanted to play with my brother and me. So, in high school, I wrote a program to serve as the third player. I spent hours drawing up heuristics for my computer player, but I have to admit, the poor guy never did win a game. He never seemed to be "confident" enough to make an accusation. I strongly suspect I screwed something up somewhere in his programming. Oh, well. At least my brother and I got a few more games in, under the possibly misguided belief that the computer player was a worthy adversary.

[queenb]

Some ofmy favorite toys were Lite - Brite and Easy- Bake oven, but I'd have to say that at our house, the Creepy Crawlers (and Fun Flowers, Incredible Edibles, and all of the rest of those heated mold type of toys) got a real workout. Remember the "Plasti - Goop" you made them out of? We even had it in glow in the dark and glitter colors!
Seriously, though, one thing I loved couldn't be bought in the store. My Dad built and installed custom cabinets as a side job before he finished college, and when he finished installing a kitchen nothing was better than getting one of those big boxes that a refrigerator or dishwasher came in (Hell, we were so poor at the time us kids didn't even know what a dishwasher was, actually)
We would use crayons to turn the box into a house or store, or rocket ship, unless my brother got ahold of it first, then it was always a car.
Of course there was always our other toy, "the creek".
*******

Just another random thought - No way would any of my favorite stuff be sold today in its orignal form, due to dangers of skin burns or setting something on fire, and no way in HELL would you let kids use a steak knife to cut up an big cardboard box! And no swinging on vines over the creek either, most likely.(Yep, all this stuff was way before age 10, with no supervision)

[masashi]

My one and ONLY favorite toy:

the "X-BoX"

[Texicana]

* I had Zippy the Monkey too, until a friend stole him. I had my initials on his shoes and her mom refused to give him back. I got a brand new one though
* The Fisher-Price yacht with the diving board
* most of the tiny Dawn fashion dolls that are worth a mint now
* non Barbie fashion dolls such as Cher (with a rotating scalp so she could be blonde or brunette), Brooke Shields, Dolly Parton, and the hard to find Darci doll
* Fisher Price's My Friend Mandy doll. I don't know what happened to my original doll, but I got a replacement last year from Ebay, still in the box with all her accesories, which is not bad for a doll that came out in 1978.