Sweet Toys
I have two kids - who shall remain semi-anonymous in this blog - who love toys. Cool toys. Toys like spaceships, hot wheels, imitation light sabers, and jets.
As I see them vibing on their toys, I am reminded of a number of the super-sweet toys of my youth:
1. Evel Knievel Stunt Bike. Hours and hours spent on the floor with that one.
2. G.I. Joe in Space. My brother had that.
3. Ernie puppet. My mom got this for me. I thought she'd had Ernie killed and brought to me.
4. Super-cool slot cars.
5. Intellivision. Don't get me wrong - I had an Atari 2600, which defined "super-sweet" for a long time - but there's something about the Intellivision that goes a step beyond. Sea Battle? Beyond super-sweet.
What are the super-sweet toys of your youth? Let's define "youth" broadly - let's say between the ages of five and fifteen.
I'm looking for flashbacks here - the kind that remind me of watching Mork and Mindy while wearing my "Tron" tee shirt and planning how I can get my mom to drive me to the mall with my friends so that we can go see "E.T." and then go roller-skating.
Tron rocked.
posted by Kevlar Pinata @ 9:33 PM
9 comments
9 Comments:
slot cars! yeah!
lawn jarts were in the corner of the garage and i wasn't allowed to touch them...they were forbidden and dangerous. and i loved them. almost severed a toe once. right in between my big toe and the next one. right freakin there.
atari: adventure. anybody else ever find the invisible key that took you to the hidden castle? i got it. i was badass at that.
and then i discovered geeky rock music, and everything changed.
I loved that fun castle one. My mom probably feared my eyes would cross from playing it so much.
Dear Teo, what on Earth is a Lawn Jart?
I had the Evel Knievel bike and the bus/van.......I wish i was a kid again. Those were the days jumping it down the stairs....
Lawn jart: Imagine a regular dart only 20 times as big. Instead of throwing them overhand at a wall, you toss it underhand across the backyard, lofting it skyward until it falls like artilary near unsuspecting kids. They were a big thing in the early 70s, and I always heard that they were made illegal at some point. Anyway, no one has 'em anymore. I'm sure we could find some on ebay or some urban myth about them at snopes.com.
and i loved that evel knievel bike! i was frustrated by it, too, though. i'd set up the jump and it would work, but the bike would always crash in a pile of spinning plastic and rubber. he'd never make the jump and ride away with his arm raised in a sulute or anything. he'd just crash. which of course, was pretty realistic. nonetheless, i always pulled for the toy to live and ride away successfully...but he'd just zip off the ramp and crash a few feet later.
I was a video game junkie.
We started with Pong, then that hand held football game (the white one not the green one), then Simon, and then eventually the Atari and all video games. The ones we didn’t have were fascinating to me like Intelevision and then the coveted Apple II. I remember playing the Asteroids replica at my friend’s house. We got a Franklin ACE 2000 which was compatible with the Apple II. I came with a green screen and then we upgraded to color. Sea Journey, Load Runner and some adventure game were my favorites. Hours. Remember having hours? Blocks and blocks of hours. We don’t have those anymore. Does anyone remember the Kola Pad? It was a drawing pad that came out before the mouse – before the mac. I drew everything on that. Finally – the Mac came along and it was Dark Castle all the way through college. Dark Castle led to AOL and e-mail and that brings us here to the blog. It’s all connected just like that. It's all just fun and games after all. Ahh. I’ve got to go to work now.
1. Little Kiddles.
2. Flatsy dolls.
3. Barbie.
4. Shrinky Dinks.
5. Toot-a-loop with stickers. (Not a toy, but close.)
I had some stretchy green monster that was supposed to be the evil nemesis of Stretch Armstrong. And you really had to put some muscle into it to make him stretch (okay ... six-year-old, little girl muscle, but still ...). I loved it, but I didn't get to enjoy him for too long; once I popped his head off he started to ooze a pinkish jelly that mom decided might be toxic. So she took him away, even though he was still perfectly stretchable and therefore still fun.
Barbie was also considered toxic, but in a different way.
The best though (and I'm betraying my redneck past here) was my toy General Lee! No, not an action figure of the gentleman from Virginia -- the car! My sister had Daisy's jeep, but even though Daisy was way cool, her car was NOTHING compared to the General.
My sister still drives a jeep, herself, though, so I suppose she was more moved by her toy car than I was by mine. But mine was better.
Stretch Armstrong! Forgot that one - he was great!
from all time periods:
speak-n-spell (i loved that mofo, shows you what a geeeeek i am/was)
sit-n-spin
big wheels
man, lawn jarts. who knew they were so dangerous?
we had the knock off of atari's.... odyssey. my mom worked for magnavox, so that's what we got. don't even get me started. i think somewhere on my blog there's a post about it, cause i found some website with screen shots and a list of all the games. sigh.
let's see.
oh!!! etch-a-sketch! (what's with me and all the toys with hyphens?)
i think we went through a minor croquet phase, but let's face it, that shit's boring, yo!
and there were the teen years when we got nintendo and burned our eyes out on super mario and dreamed of falling tetris blocks...
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