Share Your Nostalgia

After seven days of great toys, I suppose it is my turn to wrap things up in my Toy of Your Life topic. Before I begin, I want to extend my gratitude to those seven writers who said, “Yeah, Keith. I’ll write up something for your silly feature.” Nancy, Colin, Christian, Randy, Max, Dave, and Stewart – I thank you for each contributing and making this trial run successful. I really enjoyed reading your pieces and so did my readers.

When I was approached to host this topic based feature, I was really unsure if it would work. First, I didn’t think anyone would be interested enough to write for it. I knew it had to be a topic that would be relatable to the writers as well as the readers. I think that this was accomplished. What I loved about this was that despite the diverseness of the choices, I could relate to all of them.

Right from the start, I had a turntable that was much like the one Nancy wrote about. I played my Beatles albums and my 45’s on my red one.

Colin’s Subbuteo table soccer game was completely unknown to me. However, it jogged my memory as to the electric football game I used to have.

When Christian picked Hot Wheels/Matchbox cars, I connected immediately. I had hundreds of them. As I mentioned in a comment, we spent hours outside building cities and roads for ours.

Max chose a couple. First, the Evel Knievel Stunt Cycle. I was reminded my a school buddy that they not only had the cycle, but some other Evel vehicles.

He also picked Pong. We had it, too! It was the Atari 2600 that took things to a whole new level for us.

Who doesn’t love Legos (when they are not being stepped on)? Dave’s choice was another universal love for me and the readers of this blog. I have fond memories of putting things together myself, and watching my kids build things.

Randy spoke of his Roy Rogers action figures and Stewart’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle figures needed their very own van. I had my own action figures … more on that in a moment.

I thought long and hard about what toy to choose. At first, I thought about how everyone in my neighborhood had a Big Wheel. However, in 1978, when I saw the ad for The Green Machine, I had to have it. It was a blast and a lot of the kids were envious of mine. But, I couldn’t pick this one, because it wasn’t THE toy of my life.

The other toy I begged for was called the Sound Gizmo. I loved this thing. It made all kinds of sounds and you could change the speed and pitch to make them sound different. I used this when my buddy and I would be playing outside. We’d be spies, or treasure hunters, or something. If we needed a “tool” to cut through a padlock, I’d use this thing with a laser sound and an explosion. It enhanced the imagination.

I truly believe this was one of those toys that my folks regretted getting for me as soon as I opened it!

No, when I had to chose THE toy (toys, in this case) of my life, it would have to be Star Wars action figures. My brother and I bugged my grandparents for them as soon as we knew they were available. There were plenty of commercials on TV for the figures and the various vehicles and sets.

My brother and I each had a complete set of figures, thanks to my grandparents. Grandma made sure we knew how hard she looked for those things, too. She told us how difficult it was to find Yoda or the Jawa figures. She went to great lengths not to disappoint (and spoil) us!

I don’t even know how she did it, but she got them all! I mean there were like 100 of those things! That means 200 figures at whatever they cost back in the 70’s. It was insane.

Star Wars toys were on our list from 1977 through the early 80’s! You couldn’t go wrong with Star Wars stuff. Some years it was vehicles, other years we got 12 inch Star Wars dolls.

My brother and I used to play with those figures constantly. I think he had this small three shelf thing that he turned into a three floor apartment house for his figures. We used all kinds of things with our figures. The one thing I remember most is taking those old McDonald’s Styrofoam containers and making cars or spaceships out of them.

We’d cut holes in the top of them and bingo, it was a spaceship. Need a bed for them to sleep in? Cut off the top! We used those things for everything.

There were times our front lawn was full of Star Wars ships, animals, and parts of a space station. Not to mention 200+ figures. We spent summer days playing out front. It was such a blast.

Whenever we’d spend the night at my grandparent’s house, we’d lug over boxes and bags with figures and vehicles. They went with us everywhere! They were truly the Toy of our Lives.

As we got older, characters became other people. Ben Kenobi was an old drunk guy, one of the Tuscan Raiders was always annoying people, and a Princess Leia figure became “Aunt Carol.” We don’t even have an Aunt Carol, so don’t ask me how that came about.

I could kick myself for what ended up happening to most of those figures. We cut horns off some of them. Others we put over a candle to see if they would melt. Some would get tied to a firecracker to see if we could blow them up. The lucky ones got tied to bottle rockets and took a ride down our street.

Today, when I walk into a store with vintage toys, I see how much some of those figures are selling for and I shake my head. I suppose I wish I had taken better care of them so I could pass them down to my kids. Other times I wish I still had them in the package they came in, because those are worth more money. But then I think about it. What kind of memories would I have today if they never came out of the package?!

Hours and hours my brother and I played with those figures. We had so much fun with them. It was an amazing time where we could create our own scenarios and fire up the imagination. There was an empty script and we got to write it. Darth Vader didn’t have to be a bad guy if we didn’t want him to be. Chewbacca could have bad gas if we wanted him to. Jabba the Hut could join Jenny Craig or Weight Watchers. Han Solo could be a door to door Amway salesman!

Those days were so special. Those figures led to thousands of stories, hundreds of laughs, and a memory strong enough to cause me to seek out other folks to share their favorite toy memories with you and me.

I hope you enjoyed the posts from the last week. Thank you again to those bloggers who participated. If you haven’t visited their blogs, please do. Maybe I can find another topic and we can do this again? Suggestions? Let me know.

Thanks for reading!

Friday Photo Flashback

This week’s Friday Photo Flashback is brought about by my wife. The kids both have bikes with training wheels on them. We’ve had them outside a few times on them and Andrew seems to get how to pedal, but Ella needs a bit of help.

My wife is what I would call a “Tik Tok-er.” Between that and Pinterest, she always seems to be coming up with creative things for the kids and projects for me. She video called me this week and said, “The kids want to show you something.” She turned the phone around and there were my two kids on their bikes – in out living room!

The bike’s training wheels were each lodged inside a tennis shoe. This does two things 1) the bike doesn’t move and 2) it raises the back tire up a bit so it spins while they pedal. Brilliance! They will be pedaling in no time outside!!

It made me think to when I first learned how to ride a bike. I remember being terrified when my dad took off the training wheels! Today’s photo shows a very proud Keith on his first ride without falling!

This historic event took place at the first home I lived in. Isn’t it amazing that I can remember the entire address and phone number from this house and have trouble remembering where I left my wallet on most days!?

At the time our house was the last one on the block. There was a field next to our house. There was a pond that we’d catch tadpoles at in the summer, and play on the ice in the winter. They have since built a bunch of homes where the field was. about 10-15 years ago, I DJ’d a wedding out that way and had to take a drive by the old house. I was really surprised at how much had changed.

I know that I am riding toward our driveway in the picture. I probably fell off that bike countless times and fell on our neighbor’s lawn while trying to figure out how to balance. I don’t remember much about the bike except that it was black and had big fenders over the tires. I also notice from this photo that it would seem to be a girl’s bike – URGH!

My folks must have known I would fall and scrape my knees, so they picked an extremely ugly pair of plaid pants for me to wear for the occasion. Brown shoes, plaid pants and a mustard colored shirt – I am a style ICON here, huh? It appears that I am either holding something in my left hand OR that just might be that Rrraw Power thing that made the motorcycle noise. I honestly don’t remember. I think it would be weird for me to try to ride my bike for the first time while holding onto something, though.

I don’t really remember much from the neighborhood, but I remember that big white rock at the corner across the street from me. I want to say that the owner used to edge his lawn with a really wide edger. My bike tire got caught in it once and I fell against that rock. FYI for all the adults reading – kids on bikes HATE lawns that are edged!!

It’s kind of fun to see that old blue and white Suburban in that driveway. I wish I had more pictures of the many old cars my folks drove. One thing you can barely notice (and this is where I wish old photos were clearer) is what looks like a Big Wheel on the sidewalk between the parent on the sidewalk on the kid on the bike in the street. I could be dead wrong, but it sure looks like those 1970’s yellow Big Wheel handlebars to me.

We moved from this house in the winter of 1976. I truly wish I had more pictures of the outside and inside of that house. I’ve often thought about going to the house and explaining that I used to live there and asking to have a look around. In today’s society, I highly doubt anyone would let that happen!

Child’s Play

I follow a lot of nostalgia pages on Facebook. On one of the “Kids of the 1970’s” pages, they posted a picture of a toy that took me back to when I was 6! I can still remember the Christmas morning I received it. “Santa” had taken it out of the box and it was there on the floor in front of the tree. It was the Fisher Price Adventure People Daredevil Sport Van. I remember seeing it in the “wish book” and wanting it because it had a guy with a motorcycle.

I didn’t know that was what it was called, and it was only after searching for it on Google did I find out. What I found when I searched for it was numerous other Fisher Price Adventure People sets that I had as a kid, as well as many other toys from my childhood I had long forgotten.

The Wish Book

Every year, before Christmas, JC Penney, Sears, and Montgomery Ward would put out their “Wish Book”. My brother and I were told that this was “Santa’s catalog” and that he and his elves could get us whatever we saw in the book. We would take magic markers and circle hundreds of toys that we had hoped to get. We’d often number them in order of importance so that mom and dad knew which toys were a “top priority” for us! It was an annual tradition for us and I remember my brother and I spending many hours trying to pick out exactly what we wanted.

Star Wars Figures

In 1977, Star Wars hit theaters and was a HUGE hit. As kids we had to have every figure! My grandmother came through for us and made sure we not only had every one, but both my brother and I each had a set! There were SO many great toys to go along with those figures. My brother had the Death Star Space Station pictured above, while I had the ultimate space ship, the Millennium Falcon!

I remember it being huge and I used to fly it around in the front yard when we were playing outside. We spent countless hours playing with those Star Wars toys!!!

Jaws

One toy I found while searching was the Jaws Game. It came with junk like a wagon wheel, fish bones, a tire, and other stuff that you put in the shark’s mouth, specifically on his lower jaw. The jaw was connected to a rubber band. You had to one by one remove a piece of junk without the jaw snapping up on you.

Rockem Sockem Robots

Another great one from my childhood, this game can still be bought in stores today. It was one of my favorites growing up. Why robots? I don’t really know, other than the fact that when you got the right punch, the loser’s head popped up. I

Stretch Armstrong

This was the TOP toy on my list one year. It was the coolest thing! Here’s a wrestler that you could bend and stretch like nobody’s business! He was awesome! We had a lot of fun with Stretch. It was a sad day when he sprung a leak. It was also cool to see what made him stretch. I don’t remember how it happened, but something must have punctured the skin of poor Stretch. Inside was this red jelly-like substance. It almost looked like he was bleeding. We tried to tape him up, but that was the end of Stretch.

Evil Knievel Stunt Cycle

When I posted the picture that has wound up being the inspiration for this blog on Facebook, other friends chimed in with their favorite toys. My friend, Allyson, mentioned The Evil Knievel Stunt Cycle. Evil was quite the entertainer and was always doing stunts. This cycle sat on some platform and you cranked this handle and then pushed a button to let the cycle go and do its thing. Personally, I never really got it to do the spectacular stunts in the TV commercial, but it was still cool.

Weebles and Little People

Two of the toys I remembered as soon as I saw pictures were the Weebles and Little People. The Weebles were basically eggs. They were plastic and had people on them. They had a commercial that said “Weebles wobble, but they don’t fall down!”

The Little People were/are made by Fisher Price. When I was a kid, these things were made out of wood. They had no legs or no arms. There were round figures with no feet or hands. I think everyone I know had the Little People Farmhouse. The one figure I remember most is the dog.

Outside Vehicles

I had one of the coolest bikes. It had curly handle bars and I had the coolest thing on it. It was called Rrraw Power. It was an attachment you put on your bike handlebar grip. You twisted the handle and it made it sound like a motorcycle! A kid tried to steal my bike once cause he wanted it!

Before my bike, I had two of the most coveted modes of transportation for kids. The first one, the Big Wheel. The name said it all. It was basically a tricycle, but the front wheel was huge! It had a cheap hand break that was worthless and if you skidded enough, you would flatten the wheel.

The Big Wheel was cool, but the Green Machine was cooler! It was really a Big Wheel with the steering done by two handles that controlled the back wheels. The seat was a bit more comfortable, too. I loved my Green Machine and loved doing spin outs on it!

Sit and Spin

This was probably one of the stupidest toys we owned, and probably the reason I still get vertigo on occasion. The name says it all. You sit and you spin. You control how fast or how slow. It was basically your own personal merry-go-round. The name actually sounded more like an insult than a toy.

“We can rebuild him…”

Those words were spoken in the intro to the TV show The Six Million Dollar Man. He was an astronaut who is injured when his spaceship crashes. He is then rebuilt with machine parts. He’s kind of like a cyborg. He has bionic hearing, sight, and strength. I had the Six Million Dollar Man Doll. The coolest thing about him was you could look through the back of his head and “see through his bionic eye”. This meant looking through a red piece of plastic and seeing things through it.

Colorforms and Shrinky Dinks

I had TOTALLY forgotten about Colorforms! I remember having a Batman set, a Scooby Doo set and the Charlie Brown set pictured below. It came with a background scene and plastic pieces with characters and accessories that you could stick and peel on and off.

Shrinky Dinks were something we had, but I don’t ever recall them working right. You had this hard plastic things that you colored with a marker or something and then you put them in an oven. The idea was that they shrunk into a harder plastic that you could use for a key ring or something. I never really liked them….but I am sure we had them.

Doctor Doctor

One of my favorite games growing up was Doctor Doctor. It was kind of like Clue in that you had to, through process of elimination, figure out a problem. In this case, find the diagnosis for what was wrong with the patient.

Electronics from my youth

Before X-Boxes, Nintendo Switches, and even Gameboys, we had some primitive hand-held gadgets and games. It was so fun to see some of these things as they came up in searches for toys of the 70’s.

The Little Professor

Not a game. Not even a gadget. It was a calculator! I guess the school of thought was “if we made a calculator that looked like a character, kids will dig math.” For what it is worth, I think it let you play math games on it, too.

Speak & Spell

I can still hear its “hello” in the computer voice that greet you when you powered it up. Today we have “Spell Check” on every computer and word processing program, but believe it or not, back in the day, you had to know how to spell. This little gadget helped you to do just that. It would say the word you needed to spell and then you had to spell it. One downfall was the computer voice. Sometimes you couldn’t understand what word it was asking you to spell.

The Sound Gizmo

This was a MUST have for me as a kid. It was one of my favorite toys! The cool think about this toy was it made noises. With the push of a button, you could have made a gunshot, an explosion, a helicopter, a train, a phaser, a siren, a motor, and more! You could have the sound be constant, looped, or have it fade out. There was a way to pitch the sound up and down, or control the speed of the sound. As a kid who played outside and had a wild imagination, this toy was the best! If we were pretending to crack open a safe with dynamite – we had an explosion. If we were playing cops and robbers – we had a gunshot and sirens. If we were in a spaceship, there were numerous sounds we could make! It took our imaginations to a new level! I remember my old boss at Honey Radio, Richard D, used this on the air often for sounds, too!

Quiz Wiz

Trivia has always been a love of mine. I am full of useless facts. I love shows like Jeopardy or shows that are trivia based. Trivial Pursuit was a very popular game in our house. Trivia was also something that I used on a daily basis for contesting when I worked on the radio. My love of trivia may have stemmed from the Quiz Wiz Game. It had cartridges with questions. I spent many hours learning trivia tidbits from this game.

Electronic Sports Games

Again, before the fancy graphics of Madden Football, we had hand-held games. They were primitive with red dots representing base runners, quarterbacks, and hockey pucks, but we loved them. Coleco was the company that put out most of these games. They were very popular! A few years ago, I couldn’t believe it when I went to Walmart and saw that they had re-released the Coleco Football game. I know there was also a hockey, basketball, and baseball game. Most of these were one player games. I had them all. The one I loved the most was Head to Head Baseball which allowed two players to play. One could pitch and one could hit. I remember it because it was shaped very much like a baseball stadium.

It was one of my favorite games until ……

Atari 2600

This was the game changer! Yeah, we had Pong. This could do SO much more. You could play Pac-Man on it (it was a very crappy version)! It was a big year for my brother and I when this arrived. We loved Maze Craze, Pitfall, Megamania, Kaboom, River Raid, Sea Hunt, and so many other games. The original games still remain popular today and can be found on systems that are now preloaded with many of the ones from the past. You don’t even need the game cartridge today!

Oh, the many hours of fun I had growing up.

Final Thoughts

Kids today look at the toys from the past and laugh. Many of them will never know what it means to go out and “write your own adventure.” They will never conjure up an amazing scenario by simply using their imagination. That is sad. The memories that were brought about by seeing all of these toys during a simple Google search have made me smile so much that my jaw hurts.

Relive a bit of your childhood with me. Share your favorite toy from when you were a kid! I’d love to hear about it!