13 replies to this topic

[Dave Crevie]

How come they didn't have toys like this when I was a kid?

 

 

This one could have saved me a ton of money and work over the 1/4 scale  F-4U I built. This one is only 1/7 scale, but looks to be just as much fun. And a lot less work to prep for flight.

 

[Bill from NH]

Dave, these probably weren't antiques when we were kids.   My dad had tools. My next-door neighbor drove truck for a Maine lumber company, so most often we were building buggies, wagons, and camps using lumber. My dad built the house I grew up in so when we had questions, he was a wealth of information.

[Dave Crevie]

Those two planes are new releases. We all built our toys from whatever junk we could scavenge up. After I cobbled together a couple of push carts out of 2 4s we stole from construction sites, my dad bought me an oxyacetylene welding outfit and taught me to weld. From then on my go-karts were made from EMT a family friend donated from his hardware store. The same store I went to work for when I turned 15.
 
And my folks also built our house, with help from relatives and friends. The same house I still live in. You won't see that anymore. It's a different society.

[bbr]

This is what I had for five years... LOL.
 

[Bill from NH]

In Maine as a kid, we had wooden square logs. I don't recall if they were Lincoln Logs or were made by someone else. Red & white plastic bricks, maybe by Hasbro, were popular for building too. When my own kids were young, we bought a 65-70 lb. box of Vermont hard maple blocks cut to different lengths & shapes. Once my grandkids outgrew them, we donated them to the church nursery.

[Dave Crevie]

I didn't sleep well last night, and as usual, my brain ran rampant. I thought about what toys I would be into if I was a kid today. None of the neighborhood kids are into guns, or cowboy/Indians or war like we were. Except for one, who has a special .22 rifle he uses in shooting competitions. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be doing video games. I'm seeing a lot of electric go-karts and mini trail bikes lately. That's encouraging. Have things come full circle?
What do ya'all think?

[Bill Seitz]

I don't know, but it still seems to me it's the usual "toy" crap that lasts minutes/hours and then gets tossed aside for the next item. Nothing like Lincoln Logs, wood blocks, and wood trains we played with for years.  Or the various vehicles with pedals or even a wagon. I did eventually do some model building, though wasn't particularly good at it, but the r/c models were out of reach. I was lucky to have slot cars, and see what hobby has stuck around and lasted into retirement.

[Mike Patterson]

I've got some Lincoln Logs. I've got the plastic red brick building blocks that Bill mentioned. I've got some kind of Kenner building set that uses plastic beams to build skyscrapers/office buildings. And some Tinker Toys. That's all in the attic. I've got the Lionel trains and Erector set in the basement. Here's a LINK to a thread about some of my stuff.

 

Edit: The red brick building blocks were called 'American Bricks'. The Kenner's correct name is 'Girder and Panel Building Set'.

[Pappy]

We were poor, the only thing we had was a cardboard refrigerator box that we rolled down a hill in. 

[Bill from NH]

I never met a kid who didn't like cardboard boxes for houses & other things. Both of my kids had them are well as friend's kids. One girl I built with even built a cardboard shelter for her 4H rabbits' cage.

[mickey thumbs]

Yep, appliance boxes were the holy grail of cardboard boxes in my neighborhood.

 

We salvaged wood scraps from construction site waste piles and built all kinds of things. One that comes to mind was a warship with a torpedo launcher made of a rubber band between two nails firing a clothespin.

[Dave Crevie]

In the 1950s new construction was booming and corrugated cardboard appliance boxes were plentiful. So much so that my town held a cardboard box regatta for the kids. You built a boat using the cardboard boxes and duct tape. Then painted them with latex paint to waterproof them. The paint was donated by a local paint store, and was mostly mis-mixed colors returned by customers. The regatta was held in a large pond in a city park. The pond had an island in the middle, and the race was one lap around the island. Most boats fell apart, but many actually finished. The city only did this three years , but it was fun while it lasted.

[Dave Crevie]

How about a VTOL Go-Kart?

 

https://youtu.be/q5h...W_SD-1okdfVXpQc

[Phil Hackett]

Somewhere in an used bedroom there's a treasure of Boomer toys and items such as this: