
The trial run of Share Your Nostalgia continues! This was an idea suggested to me by some fellow bloggers. The topic for this feature is “The Toy of Your Life.” Was there one toy that you considered the “best?” When you think of yourself as a child, what is the toy that immediately pops into your mind? What was the toy that you brought to Show and Tell or took with you everywhere?
Today, I welcome a blogger who is no stranger to followers of my page. My good buddy, Max runs the Power Pop Blog (https://powerpop.blog/) and features a lot of great musical posts. He has written guest blogs for my site in the past, and I have returned the favor for his blog. Even though we’ve never met in person, I feel like I’ve been friends with Max for years. I love chatting about music and life with him.
Max and I are about the same age. I believe one of the first conversations we had was about one of my early blogs. Is it a coincidence that the blog was about toys from my childhood? Probably. So what toy is Max picking? Is it one I had too? Let’s find out…
Thank you Keith for inviting me to do this. I really appreciate it! I hope you do more in the future.
Whenever I see red, white, and blue not only do I think of the flag but I think of Evel Knievel. A hero to many in the 1970s… He is responsible for more broken arms, legs, bruises, bumps, and scrapes than anyone… Kids set up homemade ramps and then jumping them with their bicycles. I said kids…it wasn’t exclusive to boys because I remember some girls jumping also.
Riding down hills standing on your seat, popping wheelies, jumping ramps with your buddy stupidly laying in-between. We wanted to be Evel Knievel jumping over those cars or buses.

He was THE Daredevil… There are Daredevils around today but no one has reached the popularity that Knievel achieved. Not only did he jump and crash he looked cool jumping and crashing. He was like a cool Elvis in a jumpsuit jumping various objects.
I got the Evel Knievel Stunt Cycle and Figure when I was 8 years old on Christmas Eve. I have a picture that I can see halfway unwrapped. I immediately started to play with it that night. Over the next couple of months, I would jump everything in sight.

I would make it jump on our porch, our outside dog, and finally, I got a great idea. It took me hours to set it up but I finally got it right. I had ramps going over my mom’s car. I never could get it to go completely over but I got it really close when it came down on the trunk…who needed the Snake Canyon? My mom wasn’t a big fan of the Stunt Cycle…when Evel missed and hit the flowers…some flowers would be missing. When I revved it up in the house…more than one glass shattered making mom shut down my jumping activities.

I wouldn’t mind getting one now to tell you the truth!
Another…well Keith could disqualify this but it was a toy to me…it was called Pong.

Basically, it was magical! It would connect to your television, and you could play table tennis all day long. It was the forerunner of modern games that we have today. It was simple black and white, but I can’t tell you how it felt playing the thing.

I got it around 1977 and we just didn’t have things like this. There is one thing I remember well though…mom made me play it at night or on rainy days. The days were made for kids to go out and play baseball, play in the creek, or ride their bicycles for miles. What I wouldn’t give to relive one of those days being 11 again.
I wish the audio was better on the original commercial:







