10 Toys That Remind Us Of Our Childhood

Kids nowadays have it pretty great where the subject of toys is concerned. They have the coolest toys – things like iPads and Xbox 360s and Bakugan and Bey Blades and a whole slew of stuff that make adults wish they were kids now. However, the things we had back then weren’t so bad. They kept us entertained for hours and in a child’s eyes, these were the awesomest, fantastickest, wonderfullest stuff you could ever have.  Dust off your shoes, because we’re going to take you on a trip down memory lane with these ten toys from your childhood!   

 

Flying T

Also known as a Space Propeller, this little toy was ingenious in its simplicity and fascinating for its use of physics and aerodynamics. Basically a propeller attached to a stick or straw, the Flying T was placed in between both palms. To play with it, one rubbed both palms in opposite directions, causing the whole toy to spin upwards like a miniature helicopter. Some kids would make games out of either having two Space Propellers battling in mid-air against each other, or seeing as to who could fly the highest or longest. Flying Ts were usually available in bright candy colors as prizes in cheese flavored corn curl snacks although in places like Vancouver, Canada, they’re available as stand-alone toys that even come in glow-in-the-dark green for night flights.

Photo from www.scitoyscatalog.com 

 

Trapeze Toy (Acrobat Toy)

A novelty available in carnivals and fairs, the trapeze toy traces its roots to the early part of the 20th Century. Originally made of wood and string, the trapeze toy was a miniature acrobat held together by cunningly placed cords and elastic bands who held himself up on a horizontal bar that was in turn suspended on two posts, like that ancient medieval work out device, the hated pull-up bar. To play with the trapeze toy, all you had to do was squeeze and relax your palm as you held the two posts. The tension and slack created caused the acrobat to perform flips and maneuvers normally reserved for Cirque de Soleil. Tiny versions of this toy exist in plastic, with the acrobat being made of thin tiny sheets and his bar, of thin straws.

Photo from www.stalbansmuseums.org.uk 

 

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View-Master

More than fifty years old, this fascinating device was a stereoscope – a special viewer that allowed the user to see three-dimensional images that were actually two photographs of the same subject seen via specially calibrated lenses. The View-Master viewfinder looked like a pair of clunky square-ish binoculars. A slot in the front of the lenses was for loading the viewfinder with reels that had fourteen stereo-calibrated photos to show seven full-color 3-D scenes per reel. Usually, one disc would be able to tell short children’s stories or comics and Peanuts and Mickey Mouse were regular subjects of View-Master reels, often done with static dolls shot on miniature sets. However, movies and TV shows such as Star Wars, E.T., Doctor Who and Star Trek often retold episodes through several reels (which are now considered highly collectible memorabilia now).    

Photo by RobertFrancis via flickr creative commons 

 

Wooden Noisemaker Gun

An old-time Christmas favorite, these balsa wood guns were often sold in wet markets, tiangges and oddly enough, church yards, for some harmless merrymaking to usher in the New Year. Cobbled together with unvarnished and unpainted but finely sanded planks of wood, these guns had an external crank that you could wind.  The crank turned a gear that lifted a slat of wood until it snapped back and hit the gear, making a sound like a gunshot. Repeatedly turning the crank made the gun sound like it was firing repeatedly. This toy was the alternative to lighting fireworks for more safety-conscious households, although the constant rat-tat-tatatat sound was enough to drive more than a few parents slightly bonkers.  

Photo from lh5.googleusercontent.com 

 

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Rubik’s Cube

This maddeningly difficult puzzle was conceived by Hungarian Architecture professor Erno Rubik in 1980 and has since become one of the signature toys of that decade. It is a cube with six different colored faces, each one composed of nine different cubes that rotate on three pivot mechanisms. The object of the puzzle was to get all the faces of all the cubes to show a solid color each. Of course, the easiest way to do that was to disassemble the toy and put it back together again with the right colors (the Rubik’s Cube squares fit snugly without glue or screws), but many persevered to master the various moves to complete the puzzle fairly. The Guiness Book of World Records’ fastest time to solve one of these monsters is 5.66 seconds. Perhaps you can do better?

Photo by huangjiahui via flickr creative commons 

 

Blow and Spin Top

The Blow and Spin Top was a delightful gadget – it was a disc the size of a large coin or Smiley Face button with fins arranged in a rotary fashion.  A tiny beveled pin on the underside of the toy suspended the whole disc and allowed it to rotate.  Playing with the Blow and Spin Top was easy enough – the toy was placed on a flat, even surface like a table or floor and was blown at.  Air would get caught in the fins and cause the toy to spin and kids would duel by blowing these toys toward each other, sometimes resulting in accidental head butting, spraying and in extreme cases, kissing.  Although the Blow and Spin Top craze hit the Philippines in the Eighties and Nineties, some examples from the U.S. exist that are at least seventy years old.  The Cracker Jack snack company was making versions of these toys in tin although local companies were manufacturing them out of sheets of plastic. 

Photo from ebay.com 

 

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He-Man and the Masters of the Universe

Many a child of the late 1980s was enthralled by the thirty-minute informercial called He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, a franchise designed by Mattel to sell impossibly steroid-puffed fantasy figures. And boy, did we all eat it up! These 7” figures were made of solid plastic and had the coolest-looking weapons and accessories. Never mind that the characters were anatomically bizarre, such as Ram Man, Mekaneck, Tri-Klops and the inappropriately named Fisto, it didn’t matter because every kid wanted to have them accompany He-Man, Teela and Man-At-Arms on their wild and wooly adventures. Even the playsets and vehicles were of a grand scope – the Castle Greyskull playset had two levels, trapdoors, removable minarets, a moving dungeon portcullis and drawbridge.  

Photo from mastersoftheuniversetoys.co.uk 

 

Teks Cards

Before Magic: The Gathering and other collectible card games, Filipino kids were collecting thick wads of teks cards, so named because they were actually serialized comic strips with lots of text (teks) in speech balloons. These cards were flipped into the air by placing three to five cards between the thumb and forefinger and snapping them. The game’s rules depended on the number of cards that remained upright versus those that were facedown, as well as in what pattern they landed. Many of these cards were printed on cheap cardboard stock, depicting characters and scenes from Sesame Street, Spider-Man, James Bond, Scooby Doo and more (without any regard for copyright back in those days), all translated into Filipino.  

Photo from muppet.wikia.com 

 

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Strawberry Shortcake

These food themed dolls all started out with the eponymous Strawberry Shortcake, whose claim to fame was as a pre-teen doll who had red hair, dressed in then-trendy Eighties fashion and was strawberry-scented. The other dolls of the series matched seemingly edible scents with their corresponding names, such as Lime Chiffon, Angel Cake and Butter Cookie. The dolls also came with pets, also brightly colored and similarly perfumed. Almost good enough to eat, the Strawberry Shortcake gang left a lovely fruit-filled fragrance in many a budding female’s boudoir, and were more appealing to girls who were not yet old enough for Barbie.

Photo by Sunfrog1 via flickr creative commons 

 

Anime Robots

For an entire generation of kids, the defining moment of anime’s arrival to the Philippines came as a wave of giant robot cartoons such as Voltes V, Daimos and Mazinger Z. The toys these franchises made were no less awe-inspiring. Comprising several interlocking parts, these die-cast metal and plastic robots had brilliantly crafted secret weapons that fired torpedoes and detachable fists, interlocking joints that attached space ships together and were arguably the first Transformer robots before Optimus Prime and Company. What kid wouldn’t have sold his grandmother to Santa for the chance to own a fully articulated Voltes V robot back in the day?   

Next story: The 10 Toys that Make Us Nostalgic

Photo by JOE WU via flickr creative commons