A stroll down memory lane! (Favourite Childhood Toys)

Member Name: Nigel1

Product:	Favourite Childhood Toys
Date:	15/03/09 (129 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Satisfying to reflect on what kept us occupied and amused.

Disadvantages: A bygone era.

Here is a list of my personal toys I can remember playing with, and keeping me amused and happy during my childhood.

1).. SPACE HOPPER.. I can vividly remember having one of these for Christmas. Bright orange with that weird cartoon style 'happy' face on it, resembling, I presume, a kangaroo. Grabbing the elongated ears I would happily bounce my way up and down the street, showing off to my friends and family.

2).. MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. SET.. Again I can remember the lost years of my childhood and the sheer delight on my innocent face as I unwrapped my present revealing this little box with all the gadgets from my favourite series. The box contained a plastic walkie talkie, some plastic handcuffs, a badge, a 'Thrush' gun and a 'magic' pen with invisible ink in it!...Wow!! I could write a secret message and no one would know what I'd written because to reveal the words of world importance you had to put the piece of paper near some heat which would 'magically' make the words appear on the paper. I would go around the village clutching my 'secret' piece of paper, plastic badge on my jumper. handcuffs in my back pocket and talking into my plastic walkie talkie telling Napoleon Solo that I was on my way with the secret message!

3).. SPIROGRAPH.. How wonderful was this gadget. I'd spend rainy Sunday evenings continually spiralling the cogs on a piece of paper using various coloured pens. After a few hours I would run into mum showing her my works of art. and after her nods of approval I would go back to the Spirograph and make some more circular designs until I got bored, or ran out of paper.

4).. ACTION MAN.. I wasn't so sure about these at first. After all, dolls for a boy? But I was reassured when I could see that all my male friends had them, so I began to take more of an interest in them. You could bend their arms, wrists, legs and knees any which way, and they came equipped with rocket launchers, grenades, commando knives and any other lethal weapon any young boy could desire.

5).. ROLLER SKATES.. Now these were large, heavy metal pieces of equipment with thick rubber wheels on them. Impossible to 'ride' with any great accuracy, we adapted them into something more useful. We would extend the bar on the skate to its fullest and place a hard cover edition of the Beano on it for a 'seat'. Then we would climb the highest road we could find and sit on the Beano which had now become a sort of mini turbo charged rocket, and speed down the road, often reaching speeds of in excess of 30 miles per hour, using our feet for breaks, which wore our shoes out in days!

6).. KERPLUNK.. Still popular today, this game revolved around marbles resting on sticks inside a tube. The idea was to remove a stick and hopefully, not be the person to cause the marbles to fall. The loud sound of the marble hitting the base would add to the misery of the person who was unfortunate enough to cause the marbles to fall.

7).. WEEBLES.. Branded as 'Weebles wobble but they don't fall down', these small, egg-shaped plastic figurines could be pushed in any direction but would always reach their upright position due to weights placed in the base of the Weeble. They could be bought with limitless cartoon characters on them but, try as we may, we could never ever get them to 'fall down'.

8).. GAMES COMPENDIUM.. My set contained a few pieces of cardboard with various games on them such as ludo, snakes and ladders and draughts. The game pieces were all made of plastic, and were accompanied by some die and a little black plastic tumbler in which to shake the die. Many a night were spent with my parents and I playing these games with varying degrees of success, although I must have been a bad loser as I can remember crying my eyes out if I had to slide down the snake!

9).. ETCH-A-SKETCH.. This was a flat grey screen with a bright red plastic surround. Two knobs at the front allowed you move a stylus that made lines and shapes in the aluminium powder. Turning the wheels together made the lines curve although I never mastered this art at all. When the drawing had been made and you were ready to do another one, a simple shake of the board 'magically' erased the drawing ready for your next line drawing.

10).. WESTERN STYLE TOY GUN AND HOLSTER.. Having watched my favourite 'cowboy' films I was more than pleased when I received this toy gun and holster, which would finally allow me to emulate my heroes. The gun could be used with 'caps' which were reels of thin paper with little circular bubbles of gunpowder on them which you threaded into the firing compartment on the gun. The hammer on the gun would slam down on the 'cap' once the trigger was pulled, which would ignite the gunpowder producing an authentic gun shot noise with accompanying realistic gun smoke and smell, due to the explosion of the gunpowder!!!

Summary: If little else, the brain is an educational toy.