What was your favorite childhood toy? / LJWorld.com

Asked at Massachusetts Street on December 10, 2007

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“I used to have a Fanner 50 cowboy pistol just like Steve McQueen’s in ‘The Magnificent Seven.’”

— Mick Wick, webmaster, Lawrence

“Lite-Brite, no doubt. It was all the pretty bright colors.”

— Angie Varney, general manager, Topeka

“I had all types of horse figurines, from My Little Pony to the more realistic ones, and I would set them all up in herds around my room.”

— Katie Barlow, park manager, Lenexa

“Legos. I liked to build and have the ability to be constructively creative.”

— Charlie Naramore, Kansas University sophomore, Lawrence

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bobberboy 6 years, 4 months ago

cake and ice cream

janeyb 6 years, 4 months ago

A bicycle that didn't belong to my brothers first, and nintendo.

Crossfire 6 years, 4 months ago

"You'll shoot your eye out, kid."

asiansensation 6 years, 4 months ago

My hand...its multi-use capabilities were endless.

Crossfire 6 years, 4 months ago

What's playing on Paul's iPod? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8tWES3-_ok

Crossfire 6 years, 4 months ago

Poor boys Yo-Yo... When you have a little cold and your spit is thick, so you can let it down and then suck it back up before it hits the ground or breaks off.

spywell 6 years, 4 months ago

I liked my army men and then I'd set them up the the woods and shoot at them with my BB gun.

Kathy Getto 6 years, 4 months ago

gogo - I still have my son's Dukes of Hazzard cars. For me, I would have to say my bike.

justfornow 6 years, 4 months ago

How in the hell do you get your post removed, Blue73harley-jayhawk1234 on a thread about "what was your favorite childhood toy" must have been one that I didnt have. Thanks Mom and Dad.

gogoplata 6 years, 4 months ago

Its hard to pick one Star Wars people Go Kart - a piece of junk I bought for $50 but when I could get it running it was great. BB Gun General Lee Hotwheel

Defender 6 years, 4 months ago

Everything Evel Knievel!

justfornow 6 years, 4 months ago

I also had the shogun warriors, had all but forgotten about them, also really liked my stretch armstrong.

Pink_Sock 6 years, 4 months ago

My Shogun Warriors.....Mazinga and Godzilla were my favorites.

http://i40.photobucket.com/albums/e205/dinelakota/Dragun1.jpg http://i40.photobucket.com/albums/e205/dinelakota/Gaiking1.jpg http://i40.photobucket.com/albums/e205/dinelakota/Mazinga1.jpg http://i40.photobucket.com/albums/e205/dinelakota/Raydeen1.jpg http://i40.photobucket.com/albums/e205/dinelakota/Godzilla.jpg

GretchenJP 6 years, 4 months ago

Barbies, Merlin, Shrinky Dinks, Lite Brite, Spirograph

Marion Lynn 6 years, 4 months ago

My Erector Sets, my American Flyer train set and my Schwinn bicycles; a Corvette and a Black Phantom, all of which for some odd reason, I still have!

Also my Roy Rogers double holsters with a pair of Hubley Model 1861 Army Colts; the ones with the gold cylinders, chrome plated and two-piece ammo which accepted Greenie Stickum Caps.

Only have one of the Colts as one of the neighbour kids stole the other one from the fort that Dad built for us.

Those Colts are great because they were made from moulds pulled off a real one!

Have a few of my science toys; the Hero steam engine, the telegraph sets, the one-tube regenerative receiver that I buit from plans in Alfred P. Morgan's "The Boy Electrician", which uses a 1H4G vacuum tube and coils that I wound myself using waxed paper tubes and bases taken from old four-pin vacuum tubes.

It still works because I bought a NOS 1H4G on eBay, plugged it in, hooked up the batteries and found the BBC right off!

Genuine National Vernier dial and hooked up to Astatic headphones!

Someplace in the cave is my Wimhurst Electrostatic Generator which my Grandfather helped me build but the Tesla Coil seems to have gone away in the years.

Always wanted to build like a ten foot Tesla Coil just to annoy the neighbours!

Might do that anyway and boy would a ten-foot Tesla throw some lightning!

PrincessConsuelaBananaHammock 6 years, 4 months ago

It's a toss up - either my Snoopy Sno Cone maker - man that thing ROCKED - spend 45 min. grinding 2 ice cubes into little pieces so you could pour kool-aid over it and call it a sno-cone! OR the Rainbow-Brite rainbow castle - it was bright colored and made out of that puffy parachute stuff and came with the Rainbow brite dolly and all her little friends!

Dorothy Hoyt-Reed 6 years, 4 months ago

My bicycle. It gave me my first taste of independence. I would jump on it and ride all over town (Ottawa). It was great.

Chris Golledge 6 years, 4 months ago

"..1978 Honda XR-75.."

Damn, I had one of those! My best friend had an Indian that I could beat and then a Suzuki that I couldn't.

Speaking of.. I hesitate to say this, but where I grew up we used to get out the toy guns like those mentioned above and have battles as cowboys and Indians. For some reason, there were never as many that wanted to be Indians.

I miss the dirt bike days, but I'm glad those other games are gone. (At least I haven't seen them.)

blackwalnut 6 years, 4 months ago

The dollhouse my daddy made for me out of a wooden apple box.

The toys are truly awful these days. Everything has a battery and talks, sings, flashes or beeps.

notobsessed 6 years, 4 months ago

I had a metal two story doll house that I spent a lot of time with. Rearranging the furniture, putting the babies to sleep and such.

sunflower_sue 6 years, 4 months ago

My Baby Beans (that poor doll got put through so much...but I still have her!) and a deck of playing cards.

Windlass 6 years, 4 months ago

I feel so sick at Christmas time. Think I'll just get out of here.

Windlass 6 years, 4 months ago

We had those green army plastic men, too. Dad did tours in Korea and Nam - positive that's why.

Windlass 6 years, 4 months ago

The most meaningful thing I ever had was a radio. And when I had some of my first radio's they were the transistor radio's, and you could get AM stations on them. They were so cool, and everybody had to have one.

Then there was an ant farm, and Gumby and Pokey.

Christine Anderson 6 years, 4 months ago

Mrs. Beasley, Little Lost Baby, Easy Curl by Kenner, and a Push Me, Pull You.

Haiku_Cuckoo 6 years, 4 months ago

Happy Fun Ball (despite its lengthy list of warnings and disclaimers):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXG8RNTp5EM

justfornow 6 years, 4 months ago

A 1978 Honda XR-75, I still think about what a great time I had to this day.

ohjayhawk 6 years, 4 months ago

Anything that had to do with being a police officer or a firefigher. I had a large plastic replica of Squad 51 that was pretty cool.

sgtwolverine 6 years, 4 months ago

Legos and GI Joes. Good times. If only the toys I wanted now were as inexpensive as those toys ...

coolmarv 6 years, 4 months ago

Green plastic army men and Hot Wheels.

Norma Jeane Baker 6 years, 4 months ago

Be careful, BorderRat. You'll shoot your eye out. (HO, HO, HO)

acg 6 years, 4 months ago

LOL vavs, brought to you by Whammo, eh?

BorderRat 6 years, 4 months ago

My Daisy Red Ryder BB Gun with the compass in the stock and that thing that tells time.

Norma Jeane Baker 6 years, 4 months ago

Rock 'em Sock 'em Robots...

Julie Craig 6 years, 4 months ago

We had dart guns which were fun until my older cousins pulled the rubber tips off and shot us with the plastic stick things. We played a lot with dolls, Lincoln Logs, roller skates, the record player and Monopoly.

vavs0929 6 years, 4 months ago

The bag o glass.... :)

RETICENT_IRREVERENT 6 years, 4 months ago

Different times when many of us were sprouting. On my first escape I would have gotten farther, but my Yamaha 60 ran out of gas. What kind of parents get their kid a motorcycle and a backpack and not expect them to explore?

coolmom 6 years, 4 months ago

my bycycle and a bb gun. we had six kids and would take our "harmless" bb guns to the woods down the street and run around shooting each other and having a great time. i think one of my brothers still has a bb inbedded in his rear. we would also raid their g.i joe dolls and hang them in the basement from the rafters in response to damage done to our barbies lol. good times....our parents mad us quit the hanging stuff in the basement as it creeped them out. but they did continue to buy us bb's lol go figure.

blue73harley 6 years, 4 months ago

R_I - All I can say is that some dress codes are good.

Regarding the old cap guns, check out just how realistic these things were...

http://www.nicholscapguns.com/mattel.htm

Kat Christian 6 years, 4 months ago

Barbie & Shirley Temple Dolls.

RETICENT_IRREVERENT 6 years, 4 months ago

Blue, Your 6:18 post conjured up memories of Zappa's song "Catholic Girls".

blue73harley 6 years, 4 months ago

Jeez...

Okay, I'll play nice.

I had a Mattel Fanner just like Mick's. They used "Shootin' Shells". These looked like actual pistol cartridges, were spring-loaded and the plastic bullet would shoot out of the barrel. I think they had "caps" that you stuck on the end of the cartridge to add to the realistic effect. This is way before there were any product safety people around to spoil the fun.

I also had a Mattel derringer/belt buckle that would swing out and shoot the unsuspecting bad guy.

I still have a "Monkey Division" bazooka that is realistic enough that a friend of mine who borrowed if for a costume party was detained by the police.

And I did play with GI Joes...with the neighbor girl and her Barbies!

Bassetlover 6 years, 4 months ago

The games Mousetrap, Operation, Chutes & Ladders, plus Sorry. Also Barbie/Midge/Ken/Alan/Scooter and Skipper dolls.

Andini 6 years, 4 months ago

Gift certificates from Last Call & Naughty But Nice

salad 6 years, 4 months ago

Lawn Darts! ....ahh, the days when a toy could kill a kid. Good times....

Logan5 6 years, 4 months ago

This question kind of dates everyone. I had a hoop that I rolled up and down our dirt road with a stick. At night we'd catch lightening bugs and pull their tails off to smear on the hoop. We also had fun catching grasshoppers to feed to the garden spiders that made webs over the hog pen.

rocketmom67 6 years, 4 months ago

baby dolls--the more bodily functions the better! also Barbies. My best friend and I spent hours "playing Barbie". We had these two particle board boxes and those were our seats, our condo, our mall. It was the 70's--there was no A/C, nothing on TV, no video games so we had to be creative--those are some of my best memories!

RETICENT_IRREVERENT 6 years, 4 months ago

Probably my rucksack. Carried all the gear a boy needed. I was probably 8 or 9 the first time I escaped. I made it two days before being recaptured.

mom_of_three 6 years, 4 months ago

My favorite toys were the "Best of the West" family. There were cowboy and cowgirl action figures with horses and wagons and my sister and I would play with those all day. We also had a sack of toy horses.. All our horses were realistic (no pretty ponies), and we would have our barbies ride them. A few had a broken leg but would still stand. We probably had about 30 in total. I wish I knew what happened to them.

Jonathan Allison 6 years, 4 months ago

I loved my GI Joes. I also liked making Lego cities. Was pretty fond of Micro-Machines as well. I definitely loved my cap guns too.

My brother and I had these double barrell shotguns and the cartridges were shaped like real shotgun shells, of course they were much much smaller being for little kids. But it was emphasized that they were not to be treated like toys. We had to watch all the Eddie Eagle NRA Gun Safety videos and such. Our dad actually got us lots of "replica" weaponry/military stuff and we enjoyed playing war games and the like. We had these Air 17 BBguns that looked like mini assault rifles. They are still cool. But I remember the days my brother and I climbed into the attic in the shed and found Dad's old Daisy BB gun, I must have been in around 6th grade but we killed a bird that day and I felt awful because I never thought we'd actually hit it. The only guns we were allowed to shoot at eachother were the nerf rockets and those kind of guns.

jonas 6 years, 4 months ago

Man, pink all over the boards today. What gives?

Gootsie 6 years, 4 months ago

My Chatty Cathy, Lincoln Logs, and most board games.

Harley got censored and then had to drive K-10. What a start to a week!

Kam_Fong_as_Chin_Ho 6 years, 4 months ago

AFX slot car race set, endorsed by Jackie Stewart.

acg 6 years, 4 months ago

I had this toy that was a chick's head, with really long hair and it sat on this pedestal thing. You were supposed to do her hair and makeup. The stand had all of these little places where the hair styling stuff and the make up went and I just loved that thing. You could cut her hair and then more would come out when you turned the dial (I think we got like 10 cuts out of it before it ran out of hair) and the rollers would really make her hair curl. I loved that thing. My sister, that hateful B, melted half of her face with a curling iron, but still, scarred and sporting a pixie I loved that toy.

thebcman 6 years, 4 months ago

pywacket says, "If our kids tried playing the games we played back then, they'd be in juvie home, or at the guidance counselor!" -- ain't that the truth !! and how did we ever survive without child seats, seat belts, and all the various assortmant of crap bestowed upon kids these days. It is truly amazing !!!

Flap Doodle 6 years, 4 months ago

I had a rock to wind a piece of string around.

Pywacket 6 years, 4 months ago

Lincoln Logs, Legos (we had 1st generation--red and white, a few blue accent pieces, doors & windows, and nothing else), my turquoise & white trike (photos show it to be decidedly deco in style!), and my stuffed Rin Tin Tin, who now guards a prominent shelf in my closet.

My friends & I loved us some cap guns, too. If our kids tried playing the games we played back then, they'd be in juvie home, or at the guidance counselor! We'd play cops & robbers or cowboys (girls) and Indians and tie each other to a tree--and leave for about 10 minutes! We tried to talk like the people on Gunsmoke or old James Cagney movies--whatever we thought sounded tough. Hee.. good times.

The_Original_Bob 6 years, 4 months ago

Blue's comment was totally fine. He just talked about his favorite childhood toy being the neighbor girl. Didn't catch Jayhawk's comment, but it looks as if someone in the OTS control booth has an itchy trigger finger today.

trinity 6 years, 4 months ago

geeeeesh, blue&jayhawk-whose toes did ya's step on this morning, already??? it's a TOY question fer cryin' out loud! ;)

hmmm lemme see...i loved my crissy doll, she had this gawdawful orange-ish hair that you could yank out of the top of her head to make longer-then a knob in her tummy that you twisted to make the hair shorter! she was pretty hip...her predecessor was thumbelina, awww she was so cute!

Bone777 6 years, 4 months ago

Oh I forgot, My Big Wheel.....

thebcman 6 years, 4 months ago

Gnip-Gnop, Battleship, Mr. Mouth, Sorry, Yahtzee .. my next door neighbors had those little cars (had pedals you could actually drive) shaped like ketchup and mustard bottles that were dang cool

Bone777 6 years, 4 months ago

Screamin' Deamons, Stretch Armstrong, and cap guns that looked so real you could get shot by a cop.....

The_Original_Bob 6 years, 4 months ago

Liquor cabinet.

jayhawk1234 6 years, 4 months ago

This comment was removed by the site staff for violation of the usage agreement.

idarastar 6 years, 4 months ago

I loved that square yellow box that had different shapes cut out and the multi-colored shapes that fit in the holes. Is there a name to that? I also really liked my glow-worm.

jonas 6 years, 4 months ago

Transformers. They still are, too.

gphawk89 6 years, 4 months ago

Tyco model train set. Spent countless hours causing head-on collisions and derailments, running over pedestrians, crashing into auto traffic, tumbling off damaged bridges, and an occasionally making a successful run around the track. I hate to think what that set would be worth now if I hadn't destroyed most of it...