The other topic about the cardboard box got me thinking about some of my favorite toys as a kid.

If you had to pick ONE toy from your childhood that was your favorite, which ONE would it be?

I'd have to go with the 12" G.I. Joes. I had the painted hair figures, the Adventure Team figures with the Life Like hair and beards. A talking Joe, the headquarters and the helicopter. I used to spend hours upon hours playing with those Joes.




Don Cardi

Wow. I thought this would be an easy question, but after thinking about it, I'm stumped to pick one toy. I guess I'd have to say my favorite "toy" was my "hockey stick". From age 12 until my late teens, we used to play hockey almost every day. Street hockey in the summer, and ice hockey in the winter.

I had two.

I guess I was about 9 years old when I got a BB gun rifle. My mother came from the same school as Jean Shepherd's mom (You'll shoot your eye out"). I was forbidden to get any actual BB's for it, but being it operated on compressed air (after you "bent" the barrel and pumped it a few times) I soon learned you could jam the end of the barrel into dirt which "loaded" the barrel and then it could be shot out. My friend Mike Race had one too, and we'd stand 20 feet apart and fire away at each other. He went on (years later) to become a highly decorated Marine in VietNam and a detective seargant in NYC's Police Dept. while I became an anti-gun believer. I guess he was a better shot.

The single best "toy" I ever got was Christmas, 1958. There, with my other gifts was a very large wrapped box. I was told I had to save it for last (to open). When I finally opened it I just stared in amazement. It was my brother's train set (which he felt he had outgrown). This wasn't an HO set.... it was larger. The locomotive had to weigh about 5 pounds and like the rest of the set there was no plastic.... this was all steel!!

There wasn't much track (maybe about 15 feet) and none of the little add-ons (like station houses or little trees) but it didn't matter. You could put water in the engine and it'd turn to steam and it had a whistle. Oh, how I loved that set.

I played with it for about two years before it wore out (hey, it was about ten years old at that time). Every year at Christmas I still get the urge to set up a train set but I never had another one. I guess there's no going back, huh?

I think I could also say my favorite toy was my CB radio, since I still "play" with radios. I have 3 antennas on the roof, and various Ham Radios and scanners in almost every room of my house.
:rolleyes:

Was it a Daisy Red Ryder?



A lionel train set?


Don Cardi

When I was a kid it was my HO train set. My dad had boxes of Lionel O scale stuff from when he was a kid. I spent time with my HO set all the time. I'd set it up in my room, the living room, down the hall and anywhere I could run it. I just had the rails, a few engines and a bit of rolling stock.

I had a layout when I was 15 set up in my room. My parents had me take it down after a year because it took up all the free space in my room.

When I was three I remember my dad told a client he couldn't meet with him. He told him he had to go spend time with his son. My dad came and set up his O scale stuff.

Then he showed me the coolest thing that those old O scale engines do- they make blue sparks when they round the corners when the lights are off. That was so cool.

My Nintendo...

Gee, mine are all gonna be girly girl things compared to you guys.

I don't know any one favorite. When I was a little girl I loved playing with paper dolls (don't know if they even make them anymore); I had a "Sleeping Beauty" paperdoll cutouts with a castle and such.

I loved the hula hoop, riding what we called then a "skinny wheel" bike. Mine was always taking a beating. ha ha. My dad would get so made cause he always had to fix it.

Roller skating was fun also. I remember having a little route that my friends and I would skate.

Oh, and believe it or not I used to climb trees and had a next door neighbor, Georgie, who'd I'd play baseball with. Ha ha ha. Me. Can you imagine? He'd pretend to be Mickey Mantle and I was Rocky Calavito, who's name I must have gotten from my family, since I can't say I know anything about him really.

Yea, no fancy toys or computer games. I was outside constantly. Those were the days.

TIS

Wow, today's really a childhood flashback day, isn't it?

Well of course there were always Barbies and stuff to play with, but my favorite thing ever was clomping around the house in my mom's high heel shoes. I guess I still like that, because like 75% of my shoe collection has high heels.
And for some reason, it would always piss my mother off to see me in her shoes. Finally she decided there were a few "lesser" pairs that I was allowed to play with, but Chanel and Gucci and stuff were off limits. Which of course I'd gravitate more towards, naturally-- only because I wasn't supposed to. You know, she always told me I'd twist my ankle in high heels, but I never did and still never have... the only times that I've ever twisted my ankle in my life, I was in sneakers, either running or playing tennis or basketball.

My cousins and I also used to take cardboard and sticks and stuff to the beach and make forts on the sand, pretending that we got stranded on some island... or we'd make rafts and go "out to sea" (which meant like 50 feet in from the shore) and we'd shoot seagulls with BB guns (which you're not allowed to do, as we've been told several times by police and lifeguards). After we hit the "last straw" with the lifeguards and we knew we couldn't get away with it anymore, we'd take rubber bands with us and snap those at the gulls. That proved to be even more fun. :p


As for something that really was meant as a toy, TIS, I've always loved hula hoops too! And as little as a couple of years ago, we'd have bonfires at the beach with my high school friends, and we'd have hula hoop competitions. After all those years, it's still fun, and great exercise for toning abs!

The cardboard box whatever it was came in. There's even a thread for it because we all know it's true.

Mine were all kinds of dogs, big or small, made of whatever.

TIS as Rocky Colavito!! Alright!!

TIS - FWIW, Colavito was one the best outfielders and hitters of his day (the mid 50's through the mid 60's). He is, of course, Italian so I expect your family would be extra proud of him.

Other uncomplicated/old fashioned games I enjoyed were hopscotch, jacks, Jump Rope.. ha ha I don't anyone plays those anymore.

Oh, and what little girl doesn't remember playing "house". All you'd need is a pair of your mom's heels, and a "housedress" :p and you're imagination would go from there.


TIS

I have to admit that I loved my Barbies. I think that they were probably my favorite, those and my Dawn dolls and dollhouse. I also went almost everywhere with a book because I loved to read. My other favorite were these giant blocks that looked like enormous Lego's, but they were made of styrofoam. I used to love to build a castle for my chicken (probably the only kid who lived in a Bronx apartment that had a pet chicken). I also loved racing cars.

SC, Mr. Babe took his father's old train set (probably from the 1930's as his father was born in 1933) and set it up under the Christmas tree two years ago. It didn't have enough power, so I bought him a transformer from a specialty store, and it does go now. Wish we could leave it up all year long, but we don't have the room. It weighs a TON as it is all steel.

Did you dress your Dawn doll like this for my GI Joes?




Don Cardi

I can't see the picture!!

However, I will tell you that Mr. Babe had an Evel Kneivel doll. He went to the top of a huge hill, put Evel on his bike, wound it up and let him go. The only remains that he found of Mr. Kneivel or his motorcycle was a foot peg.

My Playstation.

The original die cast metal Optimus Prime

Does anyone remember this?


Back in the day, when I received it for my birthday, it was like the greatest gift I ever got.

I had one of those, I also used to play those old school hand held sports games.

Those HH games such as Mattel Football, and Baseball, have been re-released and sell for about $10. I've seen them in Radio Shack and Circuit City. Also, Atari released the "ATARI Flashback 2.0" which looks just the original Atari 2600, and has 40 of the most popular games built in. It's a steal for $30.

BOO-YA. The Million Dollar Man.

Sega Genesis
Nintendo games
Jurassic Park toys
Transformer (Beast Wars) toys

And this is the toy I always wanted but never got.

SB,

I never had a Barbie. She came out right about the time I grew out of dolls. I was somewhere between the "Betsy Wetsy" & Barbie. I loved playing with dolls though when I was a little girl.

TIS

Lincoln Logs, the wooden ones. Great for rainy days when I was a kid.

Then I moved on to radio, I still remember my first shortwave radio.

That dinosaur looks really cool. I would like have one of those on my table, even at this age :p

My favorite toy besides wrestling figures, was this drawing game that you plugged into the tv and you could select like 5 or 6 different scenes. Then you could add people and trains to it and "put it in motion". That thing kept me busy for hours.

Then there was nintendo and all that, I actually feel old when I'm in class with 17/18 year olds who were more the genesis era than the Nintendo era and they have the balls to badmouth nintendo. I just bought a nintendo a few months ago, it still keeps me occupied but when I was young I'd get up on a saturday morning and you couldn't pry my hands off that remote until sunday night

MADBALLS WERE COOL

Mine were the Barbie dolls (and Ken, Skipper, Francis, Alan etc.)



and the LEGO bricks. Actually I wasn't able to build much more than an ordinary tower, but I loved it.

Anyone remember this game:



My dad and I used to play for hours.


Don Cardi