Your Favorite Toys as a Child? Why? & Your Age?

[Racerbvd]

Hot Wheels, G.I. Joe, Legos, Evel Knievel Stunt Cycle, water guns, other toy guns. Like so many other, if you could build with it or it had wheels. We also had lots of fun building forts out in the woods. I never concidered my bikes, skate boards or surf boards toys, as they were sports.

BTW, I still play with Hot Wheels, BMX bikes & skateboards and I'm 41

[masraum]

I played with Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars from the time I was 3 until I was probably 13 or so. From the time I was 10 or 11 until I got a license, my favorite was a 20" bicycle, and from 16 on it was whatever car I had.

Almost forgot, from 10-15 I was also an avid tree climber. The taller the better.

There in my teens I also played with nunchakus, throwing stars, and BB guns.

I'm 36.

[BeyGon]

I am 63, this month, when does childhood end? I just sold my 455 Skylark Because I bought this 911 so now it is my favorite toy.

[stevej37]

I'm 53...Estes model rockets were my early teen years pastime.

[DavidI]

Lincoln logs and rocks. My friends and I used to have rock/dirt clod fights. I could not imagine my kids doing the same...

Another dumb thing we used were rubber bands stretched between your thumb and index finger which shot paperclips broken in half. Man was that stupid!

Here's another....cut the top (including the plastic ring) off a plastic 2 litre soda bottle. With sand paper, smooth the edges out and stretch a water balloon over the ring. The inflatable portion of the balloon should sit within the opening of the bottle top. This makes an excellent shooter for small pebbles and better yet, uncooked popcorn.

It's all good as long as everyone wore goggles or glasses...those were the days!

David

[Flatbutt1]

I guess this is a toy...but it was a water filled plastic rocket that you pressurized with a small air pump. when you released a small locking shoe out came the water, up went the rocket! I later moved on to Estes model rockets!

[johnco]

toys I had as a boy have grown as I have grown. bicycles and slotcars. turned into sportcars and classic cars. icky girls one day turned in licky girls. homemade bikes, gocarts and unicycles turned into building unusual and funny Mardi Gras Parade rides and building Streetrods. even Batman, Superman and Spiderman comic books eventually turned in Playboy, Hustler and other more interesting entertainment. .. probably quicker than everyhing else after those icky girls turned licky. of course, the lets go get a cold Dr. Pepper evolved into pour me another shot soon after those same licky girls appeared. learned what the "you can live your whole life without it and never miss it, but have it one time and you'll send the rest of your life chasing it" saying meant thanks to the alcohol/girl thing. $78 a week I earned at 18 that lasted sometimes until Thursday, even hitting the bars 6 nights a week, usually doesn't make it from home to the jobsite. having to spend $3-5 a week for gas, a few bucks a day for food, a dollar here a dollar there then hurt me more than the $20, 30,000 or more I go thru a month (not usually my money) paying for supplies and equipment today. getting older has it's benefits in the quality and price of your toys., but there are plenty of penalties you could never have imagined then. I think I'd give up the cars and money from now, the comic books, bicycles and bb guns from then. most of it actually. for a bunch more of those girls I was warned about. hehe

[LeeH]

I'm 43. My favorites were GI Joe (still have every bit of it) and Hot Wheels. As I got older it was my Yamaha Motobike (BMX bicycle) and Star Wars toys.

[mattdavis11]

A Folgers can may not be a toy, but it was an essential part in the lives of many of my neighborhood comrades. I'm 32.

[strupgolf]

56 yrs old here. My favorite's were the old slot car tracks that were found in many towns around Chicago.We would spend hours getting the cars tuned to win a race or two. Also HO scales train layouts, and slot car tracks. I still love trains, and I also have the slot car's and track to be built for my grandson. Also plastic models of any kind, Revell, Monogram, etc. were great. I cant believe the price of modles today.

[Super_Dave_D]

I had a sweet Washing Machine box!! Good times!

[Aerkuld]

This has really got me thinking.
I'm 38 and if I was really pushed to name a single favorite then it would be Lego. I woould spend hours by myself or with friends building all sorts of stuff.
Marbles was very popular at elementary school. I had some that were my Dad's from when he was at school. But nothing could beat a big metal ball bearing and we had a British Timken factory down the road so there always seemed to be a few about. Tapered rollers needed a strange technique though.
I had a Scalextric slot car set too and would spend hours on that. I had loads of track and cars and sold nearly all of them when I reached my teens to fund my growing RC car racing hobby.
I used to build plastic model kits, mainly WWII aircraft and had a strage fascination for some of the wierd kits of the experimental German planes.
We used to play outside on bikes, or just tramp around the countryside when we got older and had loads of 'secret' places to go and mess about. I will always remeber loosing a metal Matchbox Spitfire and I loved that plane - I bought another one years later so that my boys could play with one.
Oh, and cardboard boxes! My Sister and I were the envy of the neighbour hood when my parents bought one of those huge horizontal cabinet freezers. That thing came in a box that must have been 8 feet x 4feet x 4 feet. My Dad cut out windows and doors and it used to be able to fold flat so it could be kept on the garage floor. It was there for years. I'm sure it was the best box ever. Come to think of it, Dad built us a tire swing in the garage too. That was way cool, except I guess it was a tyre swing being in England at the time.
My parent tell me that I would never ever complain of being bored during the summer break.

Cashflyer - that MR50 is cool. My 6 year old lad has a 1981 Honda Z50 that we bought for $75. I've just finished putting a new engine and gearbox in it and now he has a bike that looks almost new.

[trekkor]

How many of you made "mufflers" for your bikes with cards in the spokes? We used Pringles cans, too.

Awesome thread. I miss being a kid.

Anybody make "sleds" out of cardboard and hit the big hills?


KT

[mattdavis11]

The Schwinn Scrambler I had could fit an empty/half crushed soft drink can between the frame and tire to make a great sounding exhaust.

I made do with what I could afford. My first serious investment was a Mongoose bicycle to use while throwing a paper route. My parents didn't have much money. 5 boys and no toys. We had the world as our playground though, still do.

[YTNUKLR]

Building model cars, I think 1/24th scale. A few Nascar, for some reason, and then some other random Ferraris and things.

Built a "Ship in a bottle"

Built a few 1/43 (very small!) models as a kid

Tons of legos, capsela was fun

My BMX I got when I was about 6

Skateboard

Gran Turismo on Playstation

Aurora slot cars...dang, I miss those things

Estes model rockets

Tamiya 1/10th R/C Formula 1 car..Ferrari 412T1, miss it as well...now it's a $$$ collector item, though mine didn't survive my childhood intact

M80s & bottle rockets..sometimes I'd make my own

Fire was also very entertaining

I'm 20-born in 1987

[VINMAN]

Originally posted by mattdavis11
The Schwinn Scrambler I had could fit an empty/half crushed soft drink can between the frame and tire to make a great sounding exhaust.

I made do with what I could afford. My first serious investment was a Mongoose bicycle to use while throwing a paper route. My parents didn't have much money. 5 boys and no toys. We had the world as our playground though, still do.

One of my major events as a kid was when I saved enough money to buy a set of Roger Decoster forks for my Scrambler. That was considered major bling back then!

[Tim Hancock]

A pc of plywood was always a good thing to have to build a bicycle ramp.

note 1: Little red wagons do not suffice as a support for a plywood ramp, especially when attempting to jump over little brother and neighbor kid on BMX bike!

note 2: While a milkcrate may be strong enough as a ramp support for bmx bicycle, it should never be used when attempting a third gear jump with a Honda Z50 after watching Evil Kneivel on TV!

unrelated note 3: When lighting fire cracker in end of old cheap flintlock looking cap gun, then immediately inserting paintspray can tip and shaking it down inside, DO NOT point at little brothers face!

unrelated note 4: When throwing corncobs at cars from a few rows in the cornfield, pick a cornfield that is not across the road from your house and be sure to not hit the farmer who owns the field as he drives by. Also do not involve your little brother as he will undoubtedly cave under the ensuing interrogation.

[johnco]

as kids, we seemed to always have more fun with things we made ourselves than the toy of the week at that time. I got the bright idea one day to take a 1/4 rope, tie it 10-12ft high in a tree, the other end 50-60ft away to a utility pole. a little pulley and an old fan belt for a seat an it was ready. you would get a little speed up and if you were good you could stop with your feet before slamming into the pole. soon we had lines of kids wanting to ride, cars stoping to watch. great fun!. every now and then the pulley would jump track and hang up wearing the rope out until it finally broke. can you guess who's turn it was? nothing like falling 6-8ft, landing in a sitting position. a couple inches of rain in a day is just a shower down here. perfect for ditch surfing. tie a rope on a piece of plywood, 8-10 friends to run pulling you down the block while we tried headstands, backwards,etc., sailing my pirouge(canoe) down the block after building a mast and sail from a closet pole and my tent. cut the front forks from one bike, jam onto another bike's forks and we all had choppers with playing card or ballons in the spokes motors. reverse the crank, turn uside down, weld pole for seat and handle bars, all our bikes were 6 ft tall. we didn't need to go buy our toys

[Tim Hancock]

Our neighbor built the industrial version of what you described above John. He attached a cable high up in a huge old tree up behind their house and ran it probably 200' to tee into a cable tied bewteen to trees down by their barn which was on a lower elevation. When everything was tight, you could make it all the way and would get a pretty good whip at the end as you let go. I was the test "pilot" for all test runs after any modifications. He made a triangular steel bar to hang onto and it of course was attached to the pulley that ran on the cable.

This neighbor probably is responsible for how I turned out, as my dad was not very mechanical at all.

[austin552]

Nothing was better than burning up the road on my bigwheel.