What was your favorite toy growing up as a kid?

Question

FunkyMonkee · Accepted Answer

I had several.
The Strange Change Machine was probably my fave but, it stopped working maybe a year after I got it. The heating element broke and there was no way to get inside and fix it. It was sort of like an electric stove with only one burner and a plastic dome over it with a sliding door. It came with these various square discs of plastic of various colours. You plug in the machine and wait for it to heat up a minute or two and then open the door and put one or more of the discs into the dome and wait 5 or 10 minutes. During those 5 or 10, the disc will slowly start to open up and turn into a hideous little space creature! The machine came in an olive green plastic landscape with craters and hillsides all over it and the rectangular indentation in it to place the machine. Once your monsters were fully opened, you set them up on the landscape any way you like and let your imagination run wild. When you were done playing with them and wanted to revert them back to their square disc shapes, you heat them again for about 5:00 and then pull them out of the machine and drop them into this big slot on the side of the machine that had a crank on it and, a sliding door across the top. Drop your heated up monster into that slot, slide the door shut and turn the crank about as far as you could and leave it that way for a couple minutes while the monster cools down. Uncrank and open the door and you've just compressed your monster back into the disc it was originally in. If you wanted to, you could crank several monsters into a single compression but, you'd end up with more of a cube than a disc. They sold extra monsters so you could build your collection.
Another was my Peanuts drawing kit. There were several plastic stencils in the kit, paper, crayons and pencils. It had a flip-over magnetic frame to hold your paper and the stencils. If you just wanted to draw your own stuff, flip the frame back into the case and draw on the flat surface. Stamped into the back of the case were several background designs. Once your drawing was done, you put your paper over these and, using the edge of the pencil lead, scrape over the background of your choice on the paper and you've now got a background behind your characters.
To draw the characters, you put a sheet up paper under the frame and choose which character you wanna draw, Snoopy, Linus, Charlie Brown, Schroder, Lucy, Violet or Sally. Put the stencil in the frame matched up to the slots at the top and bottom of the frame to hold the stencil in place then, with your pencil, draw around the edges of the first cut-outs in the stencil, move to the second set and draw those, then the third set and draw those and, you're done! In some cases, you could even mix and match, draw Charlie Brown's top with Snoopy's dancing feet. Put Schroder's head on Lucy's body, etc.. Once they're drawn, you can colour them in as you wish.
Another fave was probably my Hot Wheels sets. I had at least 3 dozen cars and enough track to go from one end of the house back to the other and still have a few stretches of track left over. Some of my friends would come over and we'd test our cars to see how far each one could go on it's own from the start of the track, about 3' high, attached to a cabinet. Wherever the car stopped, take it off the track and set it on the floor at that spot. Whichever one went the farthest, wins.
And, my other fave was the Toot Sweet Candy Machine. At this point in time (very early `70's), Willy Wonka was huge and so were multi-flavoured mini-Tootsie Rolls. You'd buy a bag of them, take one that you wanted to use in the machine and knead it a little in your fingers to soften it a bit, pull the pump handle on the machine up all the way, unwrap the candy and drop it into the hole in the center. Then, you had a choice of several mold discs to pick from. You put the mold of your choice on top of the machine and screw on the holder to keep it in place, then you pull the handle down and, because the discs were mostly clear, you could watch your candy being injected into the mold. Once the handle was down as far as it'd go, you unscrew the holder, take out the disc and pull your candy out of the disc. Some were animals or various other shapes. The best one was that there were two molds that were each half of a police-type whistle. You'd need two Tootise Rolls for that one. Once each half of the whistle was formed, you just match the two together and press slightly and you've got a working candy whistle! That's why it was called, Toot Sweet. You got a sweet you could toot! Once you've had your fun with the whistle, you can eat it.

OfMiceandMen · Accepted Answer

Hmmm... that's a tough one, it would be between my GI Joe and the girls next door.

WilmaReportu · Accepted Answer

It's no secret that we live in a society that's riddled with sexism and gender bias. And one place where this is more prevalent than ever is in the toy industry. From a young age, kids are bombarded with toys that are assigned to them based on their gender, and unfortunately, these toys are often steeped in toxic masculinity that reinforces gender stereotypes and promotes narrow, limiting views of what it means to be male or female.

For instance, girls' toys are often geared towards nurturing, homemaking, and beauty standards, while boys' toys center around aggression, violence, and dominance. This is incredibly problematic as it reinforces the idea that girls should be submissive and pretty. Boys, on the other hand, are taught that they should be tough, aggressive, and hypermasculine, which can lead to toxic behavior in adulthood.

It's time for us to take a stand against gender-biased toys and their negative impacts on children's development. We need to support campaigns like the 'Halloween Divide' fundraiser, which aims to provide underprivileged children with access to decorations that celebrate diversity and empower them to express themselves freely, free from the constraints of toxic masculinity and female opression.

LaFemmeFatale_1 · Accepted Answer

Toy Guns, Bow and arrows I had some dolls too, but I rarely played with It.

ShesRad80 · Answer

big wheel

4ngelic · Answer

barbies, playmobiles, pet shops, polly pockets, bricks/legos, mini figurines and my nintendo ds

jennifer_bloom · Answer

I had a rag doll I named Caffeina and she had a pleasant smell to her. That was my favourite toy as a kid cause it was the cutest toy I had.

Nikki1989 · Answer

I never had any. I read books and listened to music.

SquishyBuns2628 · Answer

My Bratz Scooter and my Gameboy just to play Pokémon.

LiamJHayden · Answer

Not sure it qualifies as a toy, but I have always been fascinated by music boxes. My dad would give me defective ones just to keep me from taking apart good ones to see how they work.

LavLavLuv · Answer

Barbie, Bratz, legos, play doh, sylvanian families bunnies, polly pockets, toy cashier set, toy kitchen set 😂

exitseven · Answer

I had a radio that also had a low power transmitter so I could make my own radio shows.

Still-alive · Answer

Hot Wheels, Micro machines, ninja turtles, legos

OddBeMe · Answer

Teenage ninja turtles. Had Shredders globe lair thing. Obvi the turtles took it over and squatted there.

Darkest-Knight · Answer

G. I. Joe

Miristheiss · Answer

Bike or my video game system.

AviatorTom · Answer

A ball, any kind of ball.

leahzrc · Answer

barbie and littlest pet shops

Fireguy17 · Answer

Probably my train set, erector set, slot cars.

John_Cobretti · Answer

I had a toy of Rambo

Iron_Man · Answer

Rockham, Sockum robots

HMZ444 · Answer

Hot Wheels because I love cars.

virtualwasp · Answer

gameboy

DryGermanGuy · Answer

Lego and Playmobil

sheikalana · Answer

Polly pockets.

KostasKouvalis · Answer

Max Steele

What was your favorite toy growing up as a kid?

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