About this transcript: This is a full AI-generated transcript of 100 Forgotten Toys of the 1960s and 1970s We Begged Our Parents to Buy (3 HOURS) from 3 Hours of Growing Up in America and Lost American Memories, published November 13, 2026. The transcript contains 29,652 words with timestamps and was generated using Whisper AI.
"In 1977, Kenner sold kids an empty cardboard box for Christmas. No toy inside, just a promise. Kids cried with joy anyway. That box is number one on this list. Number 22 was banned by the federal government after it killed a little girl in California. Number 59 heated metal molds to nearly 400..."
[00:00:00] Speaker 1: In 1977, Kenner sold kids an empty cardboard box for Christmas. No toy inside, just a promise. Kids cried with joy anyway. That box is number one on this list. Number 22 was banned by the federal government after it killed a little girl in California. Number 59 heated metal molds to nearly 400 degrees, and Mattel sold it to second graders. These 100 toys ruled Christmas mornings, Sears catalogs, and Saturday morning cartoons. Then, they vanished. Hit subscribe. Let's count down. Number 100. Wacky Packages. For a dime, you got a wax paper pack from Topps, a slab of pink gum so stale it shattered like window glass, and a handful of stickers that made fun of everything in your mother's pantry. Crust toothpaste, Rats crackers, Cap'n Crud cereal. Every product your parents trusted got twisted into something ridiculous. Topps first tried the idea in 1967 as die-cut cards. Then, they relaunched it as peel-off stickers in 1973, and it exploded. Kids stuck them on notebooks, lunchboxes, bedroom doors, and school lockers. Principals across America started banning them because the stickers would not come off without a razor blade and a lot of swearing from the janitor. Here is the part almost nobody knows. One of the young artists working on wacky packages at Topps was Art Spiegelman. Decades later, he won a Pulitzer Prize for his graphic novel, Mouse. The paintings themselves were often done by Norm Saunders, an old pulp magazine illustrator who had painted covers for detective stories in the 1930s. So, the stickers you slapped on your little brother's forehead were painted by a legend and written by a future Pulitzer winner. Your mom found them stuck to the refrigerator, the dog's food bowl, and the back of the family Bible. She never got all of them off. Somewhere in America, a kitchen cabinet still has a faded, wacky package on the inside of the door. Nobody remembers who put it there. Everybody remembers why. Number 99. Magic Rocks. You saw the ad in the back of a comic book, right between the X-ray specs and the Charles Atlas bodybuilding pitch. Watch them grow before your eyes. For about a dollar, the mailman eventually delivered a little packet of colored pebbles and a bottle of what the box called Magic Solution. You poured the solution into a glass of water, dropped the rocks in, and waited. Within hours, strange crystal towers started sprouting upward. Blue, pink, green, purple, twisting toward the surface like a coral reef on another planet. The magic solution was sodium silicate, the same stuff sometimes called water glass. The rocks were metal salts. When they hit the solution, they formed hollow tubes that grew upward through a process called a chemical garden, something scientists had been playing with since the 1600s. But nobody told you that. You just knew it looked like alien life growing in your mother's juice glass. The man behind the American version was Harold von Braunhut, a marketing genius who also sold sea monkeys and X-ray specs. He understood something about children that toy companies still chase today. Kids do not want a toy. They want to feel like they discovered something. Magic Rocks sat on bedroom windowsills for months, slowly gathering dust, the water turning cloudy. Until one day, your mom poured the whole thing down the sink. You never forgave her. You also never bought another set. That was the strange magic of Magic Rocks. You only needed them once. Number 98. X-ray specs. See the bones in your hand. See through clothes. That second line was the one every 11-year-old boy read three times. The ad in the back of the comic book showed a grinning kid looking at a skeleton hand while a shocked young woman stood nearby. The price was about a dollar, plus postage. You mailed in your quarters taped to a piece of cardboard and spent the next four to six weeks checking the mailbox every afternoon like you were waiting for a draft notice. When they finally arrived, they were flimsy cardboard glasses with a cartoon eyeball printed on each lens. You put them on, held your hand up to the light, and there it was. A dark shadow outline inside your fingers. It looked exactly like bones. You were stunned for about four seconds. Then you looked at your sister and saw nothing but your sister. The trick was a tiny feather sandwiched inside each lens. The fibers of the feather bent the light and created a double image. Where the two images overlapped, you saw a darker area that your brain was happy to call bones. Physics, not x-rays. Harold von Braunhut marketed them for years, and the ads ran in comic books for decades. Millions of kids mailed in their money. Millions of kids were disappointed. And here is the thing. Almost none of them asked for a refund. Because somewhere deep down, every kid who bought x-ray specs knew the truth before the envelope even left the house. They just wanted to believe for six weeks. Number 97. Super Elastic Bubble Plastic. Before anyone worried about what kids were breathing, Wham-O sold a little metal tube of clear goo and a skinny plastic straw. You squeezed a pea-sized blob onto the end of the straw, rolled it into a ball, and blew gently. A crinkly, shimmering plastic bubble swelled up in front of your face. Unlike soap bubbles, these did not pop. You could toss them, bounce them, stick two together, and line them up on the kitchen table like a bunch of glossy grapes. And the smell. Everyone who ever used Super Elastic Bubble Plastic remembers the smell. Sharp, sweet, chemical, like a model airplane glue factory had a baby with a nail polish counter. That smell was the solvent, which evaporated as you blew, leaving the plastic film behind. We had spent entire rainy afternoons hunched over the stuff, getting lightheaded, and having the time of their lives. The goo got on fingers, carpet, eyebrows, and the family cat. Moms found dried bubbles wedged behind the couch cushions months later. Over the years, the formula changed, and versions of it still exist. But the original tubes from the 1970s are a sensory memory nobody can quite replicate. Ask anyone over 55 about bubble plastic and watch their face. The smell was a sign that they used to have to wrinkle their nose, and smile at the same time. That smell was childhood. It was probably not good for you. It was definitely worth it. In 1972, two inventors named Robert Klein and Leonard Fish were working on a completely serious problem. They were trying to make a spray-on cast for broken bones. The idea was a foam you could spray around an injured arm that would harden into a splint. It did not work as a splint. But when they pushed the nozzle, a long, colorful plastic strand shot out across the room. Somebody realized that was a lot more fun than a cast. Whammo bought the idea, and Silly String hit stores. For about a dollar a can, you could ambush your cousins, cover your father's car, and turn a birthday party into a war zone. It sprayed 10 feet or more. It came in neon pink, green, and orange. It stuck to everything and peeled off in long, rubbery strips. Moms hated it because it stained some surfaces if you left it too long. Weddings, Halloween, schools out parties, it was everywhere. Things got so out of hand that Los Angeles eventually made it illegal to spray Silly String in Hollywood on Halloween night. That ban is still on the books. Here is the wild part. Decades later, American soldiers in Iraq started asking family members to mail them cans of Silly String. Not for fun. They sprayed it into dark rooms and doorways to reveal hidden tripwires. The string floated down and draped over wires too thin to see, without enough weight to set them off. A toy invented by accident from a failed medical device ended up saving lives in a war zone. And it all started because two guys could not make a cast. It looked like a ray gun from a 1950s science fiction movie. A wide plastic barrel with a rubber diaphragm at the back. You pulled back the diaphragm, aimed across the room, and let go. And nothing came out. And nothing came out. At least, nothing you could see. But six or eight feet away, your sister's hair suddenly blew sideways. A candle on the dining room table went out. A stack of playing cards scattered across the floor. The air blaster fired a vortex ring. A donut of spinning air that held together as it traveled. The same physics behind a smoke ring. Because the air was invisible, it felt like actual magic. You could knock over paper cups from across the room. You could blow out every candle on your brother's birthday cake from the hallway before your mom could stop you. You could hit the dog, who had no idea where the attack came from, and spent the rest of the afternoon suspicious of the living room. It cost about $2 and needed no batteries, no ammunition, no refills. Just your arm and a target. Kids discovered that if you filled the barrel with smoke from a snuffed out match, you could see the ring flying across the room. Which was a great way to get grounded. The air blaster has been reissued in different forms over the years. But the original Wham-O version, with its sci-fi styling and that satisfying thwomp when you let go, belongs entirely to the 1960s. It was the closest thing to a real force field gun any kid ever owned. Number 94: The Pet Rock In April of 1975, a California advertising man named Gary Dahl was sitting in a bar listening to his Dahl's friend complain about their pets. The feeding, the walking, the vet bills, the mess. Dahl joked that he had the perfect pet: a rock. It never needed to be fed, walked, or bathed. It would never die, never run away, never chew the furniture. Everyone laughed. Then, Dahl went home and actually did it. He bought smooth grey stones from Rosarito Beach in Mexico for about a penny apiece. He packed each one on a bed of straw inside a cardboard carrying box with air holes punched in the sides, just like you would carry a puppy home from the pet store. And he wrote a 32-page manual called The Care and Training of Your Pet Rock. The manual explained how to teach your rock to sit, stay, and play dead. The rock was very good at all three. Teaching it to come when called was more difficult. He sold them for $3.95. In about six months, he sold more than a million of them. Some estimates say 1.5 million. Gary Dahl became a millionaire off a joke, a box, and a stone that cost him a penny. Your dad thought it was the dumbest thing he had ever seen. Then, he bought one for the office. The fad was over by early 1976, almost as fast as it started. But the pet rock became the symbol of the entire 1970s. A decade when America was tired, broke, and sick of bad news. And decided to laugh at itself by spending $4 on a rock. Number 93: Hi-Ho, Cherry-O! Before you could read, before you could spell your own last name, you could play Hi-Ho, Cherry-O! Whitman released it in 1960, and it became the first game millions of American preschoolers ever learned. Every player had a little cardboard tree with 10 plastic cherries sitting in holes. You spun the spinner and picked one, two, three, or four cherries off your tree and dropped them in your bucket. The first one to fill the bucket won, but the spinner had traps. Land on the bird or the dog, and you had to put two cherries back on your tree. Land on the spilled bucket, and every single cherry went back. Grown men still remember the cruelty of the spilled bucket. You could be one spin away from winning, one tiny cherry away from glory, and the spinner would land on that picture of a tipped-over basket, and you would have to start all over again. The game was quietly teaching their kids to count and to add and subtract. Spin a three, take three. Lose two, count back. By the time children got to kindergarten, the hi-ho-cherry-o kids already understood numbers in a way nobody had taught them. The little plastic cherries vanished into couch cushions and heating vents one by one, until the game was down to six cherries, and then four, and then the dog ate the spinner. But every kid who played it remembers that bucket, and remembers exactly who spilled it. Number 92. Don't spill the beans. Shaper released it in 1967, and it had a beautifully simple idea. A plastic pot balanced on a wobbly stand. Every player got a pile of small colored plastic beans. You took turns dropping one bean at a time into the pot. Sooner or later, the weight shifted too far. The pot tipped, and every bean in it came pouring out onto the table. Whoever made it spill had to take all those beans. First player to get rid of every bean won. It sounds easy. It was not. The pot was weighted so it would hold for a surprisingly long time, wobbling and swaying with each new bean, until everyone at the table was holding their breath. Kids learned to place beans on the side of the pot that was tilted up, trying to balance it back. Older brothers learned to breathe on it just slightly when it was your turn. The moment the pot finally went over was pure chaos. Beans bounced across the kitchen table, onto the linoleum, under the refrigerator. Some of those beans are still under refrigerators across America right now. The game cost a couple of dollars, and it was a staple on rainy days and at grandma's house. It needed no reading, no strategy charts, no adult supervision. A four-year-old could beat a grown-up. That was the magic of Shapers games. They leveled the playing field. Don't spill the beans has been reissued a few times over the years, but the original version, with that bright red pot and those rattling little beans, is a sound most people can still hear if they close their eyes. Number 91: Ants in the Pants Two years later, in 1969, Shaper did it again. This time, the game was a giant pair of plastic overalls held up by suspenders. Each player got a set of little plastic ants with springy tails. You pressed down on the back of an ant with your flipper, and it launched into the air. Landed inside the pants, and you were one step closer to winning. Miss, and it went skittering across the living room floor. The physics were completely unpredictable. Press too hard, and your ant flew over the pants, over the table, and into the fish tank. Press too soft, and it hopped two inches and fell over. Kids spent hours perfecting their technique. Some swore by a slow press. Some went for a sharp snap. Nobody ever really figured it out. Which was the whole point. The name alone was half the appeal. A seven-year-old in 1969 could say Ants in the Pants all afternoon, and technically not get in trouble, because it was the name of a game his mom bought him. And the ants themselves had a way of escaping. By February, a box of Ants in the Pants, that started with 16 ants, usually had about five. The rest were in the shag carpet, the heating vent, and the vacuum cleaner bag. Your mom found them for years, in the dryer lint, in your father's slipper, inside the piano. Ants in the Pants was not just a game. It was a slow invasion of the American home, one plastic ant at a time. Here is where things get interesting. Every single toy on this list had one thing in common. Before you ever saw it in a store, you saw it in the Sears Christmas Wish Book. Starting back in 1933, Sears mailed out a thick holiday catalog filled with hundreds of pages of toys. By the 1960s and 1970s, the arrival of the Wish Book was an event in American homes. It came in the mail sometime in the fall, and whoever got to it first owned the living room for a week. Kids would lie on the floor for hours, flipping pages, circling everything they wanted with a pen. Sometimes, they circled every single item on a page. Brothers and sisters fought over who got the catalog first. Pages tore. Corners got folded. By December, the Wish Book looked like it had been through a war. Parents used it as a secret map. Whatever had the most circles, whatever page was most worn, that was the toy that showed up under the tree. The Wish Book did something no store could do. It put every toy in America in front of kids living in small towns hundreds of miles from the nearest department store. A farm kid in Nebraska could want the exact same Johnny Seven as a kid in Manhattan. It created a shared childhood across the entire country. When Sears stopped publishing the big catalog in the early 1990s, something ended that we never got back. The Wish Book was not just a catalog. It was the Bible of American childhood, and every one of us knew it by heart. Number 90. Barrel of Monkeys It came in a little plastic barrel, red or blue or yellow, about the size of a coffee mug. Inside were 12 plastic monkeys with curved arms shaped like hooks. You dumped them on the table and picked up one monkey by the arm. Then, you used that monkey to hook the next monkey. Then, the next. The goal was to build a hanging chain of all 12 without dropping any. Drop one, and your turn was over. Lakeside Toys released it in 1965. And it was one of those toys that cost almost nothing and showed up everywhere. In stockings. At the dentist's office. In birthday party goodie bags. In the toy box at Grandma's house that also held a slinky with a kink in it, and a deck of cards missing the queen of hearts. The monkeys looked simple, but the challenge got harder with every link. By monkey eight or nine, the chain was swinging and your hand was shaking. And your little brother was standing right behind you, breathing very loudly. The bottom monkey would start to slip. You would freeze. Everybody would freeze. And then, the whole thing would collapse onto the table in a clatter of plastic. Kids also invented their own uses. Monkeys became earrings. Monkeys hung from the Christmas tree. Monkeys got hooked onto the dog's collar. Lakeside sold millions of barrels because parents loved how cheap they were, and kids loved how hard they were. The phrase "more fun than a barrel of monkeys" was old long before the toy came out. But for an entire generation of American kids, it finally made sense. Number 89. Trouble. Koner Brothers released Trouble in 1965. And it solved a problem every parent knew far too well. Dice. Dice rolled off the table. Dice went under the couch. Dice got swallowed by toddlers and stolen by dogs. So Trouble did something brilliant. It sealed the die inside a clear plastic bubble in the center of the board. They called it the Pop-O-Matic. You press down on the dome and pop. The bubble snapped and the die jumped and spun and landed on a number. That pop was the whole gang. Kids would press it over and over just to hear the sound. Pop. Pop. Pop. Parents across America heard that sound in their sleep. The rules were basically a version of the old game Parcheesi. Get all four of your pegs around the board and into home. Land on another player's peg and you sent them back to start. That was the trouble. Sending your sister back to start right before she got home was one of the great joys of a 1960s childhood. The Pop-O-Matic was so popular that Koner used it in other games too. But trouble was the one that stuck. It was so popular.
[00:21:51] Speaker ?: It is still sold today.
[00:21:51] Speaker 1: If you pressed that bubble a hundred times as a kid, and you definitely did, then the sound is permanently wired into your brain. Pop. Somebody's going back to start. Somebody's crying. Somebody's mom is yelling to stop pressing the bubble. Trouble was named perfectly. It caused nothing but. Number 88. Hands Down. Ideal released Hands Down in 1964. And it might be the most physically violent board game ever sold to children. The center of the game was a plastic unit with four colored hand-shaped paddles. Players drew cards, trying to collect matching pairs. When someone got a pair, they slapped their paddle down. Then, every other player had to slap their own paddle as fast as possible. The last one to slap lost and had to give up a card. Here is what happened in real life. Kids slapped those paddles with everything they had. Full arm swings. Fists. Elbows. The whole table shook. Glasses of milk went over. Fingers got pinched between paddles. Little sisters ended up crying because their big brother slapped the paddle so hard, her hand bounced off it. The game was meant to test reflexes. It actually tested how much noise four children could make before a parent came downstairs. The commercial showed happy kids laughing and slapping. Real Hands Down was closer to a bar fight. Plastic paddles cracked. Springs broke. Most families had a version where one hand stayed permanently down because the spring inside gave out sometime around Easter. But when it worked, it was electric. That half second after someone slapped, when everyone else lunged forward at once, was pure adrenaline. Hands Down disappeared from most shelves by the 1970s. But anyone who played it remembers the sound. That sharp crack of plastic, followed by somebody yelling, "I was first!" Nobody was ever first. Everyone was always first. Number 87. Booby Trap Parker Brothers released Booby Trap in 1965, and it was a game of nerves. The board held a tight cluster of round wooden pieces of different sizes, all packed together. On one side sat a spring-loaded bar, pressing hard against the pieces and holding them in place. You took turns pulling out one piece at a time. Each piece you safely removed earned you points. But if you pulled the wrong piece, and the bar sprang forward even a little, you triggered the trap, and your turn was over. The tension was incredible. Every piece you removed loosened the pack a little more. The bar crept forward, waiting. Kids learned to study the board like bomb technicians. Which piece was holding the pressure? Which piece was free? Hands hovered. Breath held. Then, with two fingers, you would lift a piece straight up. Slowly. Slowly. And, snap! The bar would lurch forward, and everyone at the table would scream! The game had a satisfying wooden feel that cheaper plastic games could not match. The pieces clicked together. The spring had real weight. It felt like a serious game. Almost like something grown-ups would play. And many grown-ups did. Parker Brothers sold it for years, and it showed up at church game nights and family reunions across the country. Booby Trap eventually faded as electronic games took over in the late 1970s. But it taught a generation that the quietest moment in any game is the one right before something snaps. Number 86. The Mattel Lie Detector. In 1960, Mattel promised to turn your kitchen table into a police interrogation room. The Lie Detector was a detective game built around a mechanical scanning device with a needle and a meter. Players read through suspect cards, collected clues, and tried to figure out who committed the crime. When you thought you had your man, you slid his card into the Lie Detector, asked the question, and watched the needle swing to reveal the truth. The machine did not actually detect anything. Each suspect card had coated holes and notches that moved the needle a certain way. But to an 8-year-old in 1960, it felt like real science. Real police technology. The kind of thing you saw on television shows where detectives in hats grilled suspects under a bare light bulb. Lie detectors were in the news. They were mysterious. They were a little scary. And now you could own one. Kids immediately did what kids always do. They ignored the rules and tried to use the machine on each other. Did you eat the last cookie? Slide in a card. Watch the needle. The machine said yes. Case closed. Older brothers learned how to rig the cards. Younger sisters got blamed for crimes they never committed. Mattel's Lie Detector game showed up in a handful of versions over the years, but the original is the one people remember. Sitting around the table. The meter glowing in the lamplight. Someone sliding a card in very slowly. Everybody leaning forward to see if the needle would swing. Number 85. Green Ghost. Transigram released Green Ghost in 1965. And it was the first board game designed to be played in the dark. The game board stood up off the floor on little legs. In the center stood a glowing green ghost spinner. Underneath the board were hidden pits. And inside the pits were creepy surprises. The whole thing glowed in the dark. Here is how you played. You turned off the lights. All the lights. The board glowed an eerie green. You spun the ghost, moved your pieces, and eventually had to reach your hand down into one of the dark pits under the board without knowing what was inside. Kids screamed. Actually screamed. Because when you are seven years old and the lights are off, and your fingers touch something weird and rubbery down in the dark, it does not matter that you know it is plastic. Your body does not care. Green Ghost became a legend because almost nobody owned a complete set for long. The glow-in-the-dark pieces got lost. The pits lost their contents. The legs broke. Today, a complete original green ghost is a serious collector's item. And people who had it as kids talk about it like they survived something. Slumber parties revolved around it. Halloween nights revolved around it. Your mom would come to the doorway, flip the light on, and ask why five children were screaming in the basement. Then she would see the green glow, sigh, and turn the light back off. She knew. Everybody's mom knew. Green Ghost was worth the noise. Number 84. Mystery Date. Open the door for your mystery date. Is he ready for a dance? Is he ready for the beach? Milton Bradley released Mystery Date in 1965. And it became one of the most talked about games of the decade. In the center of the board stood a plastic white door. Players moved around collecting cards to build an outfit for a specific date. A formal dance. The beach. Bowling. Skiing. When you landed on the right space, you got to open the door. Behind it, a picture of a young man dressed for one of those dates. If his outfit matched your cards, you won. And if you opened the door and found the guy in the formal tuxedo with a corsage, every girl at the table gasped. But there was one more possibility. The dud. A scruffy guy in rumpled, messy clothes. If you opened the door and found the dud, you lost the round. And everyone shrieked. The commercial jingle was impossible to forget. Girls sang it at recess for years. Mystery Date was a little window into exactly what American culture thought 10-year-old girls should be dreaming about in 1965. The perfect date. The perfect outfit. The perfect boy behind the door. Looking back, it feels like a time capsule. But kids at the time did not think about any of that. They just wanted to open that door. The click of the latch. The swing of the door. The half-second before you saw who was standing there. That suspense was everything. And the dud became a punchline that lasted decades. Everyone knew someone who reminded them of the dud. Number 83. The Ouija Board. The Ouija Board had been around since 1890. But in 1966, Parker Brothers bought the rights from the William Fold Company and pushed it into toy stores across America. The timing was perfect. The country was fascinated with the supernatural. The occult. Horoscopes. And the strange new spiritual ideas of the late 1960s. In 1967, Parker Brothers reportedly sold around 2 million Ouija boards. That year, it outsold Monopoly. A talking board for contacting spirits outsold the most famous board game in America. It was sold right next to Candyland and Operation. And kids bought it for exactly one reason. Slumber parties. Five girls in sleeping bags. The lights off. A single flashlight. Everyone's fingers resting on the plastic planchette. Is anyone here? Silence. Then, slowly, the planchette would start to slide toward "yes". Somebody always swore they were not pushing it. Somebody always was. But nobody ever admitted it. Scientists later explained it as the "ideomotor effect". Tiny, unconscious muscle movements that you do not realize you are making. But try telling that to an 11-year-old at 1 in the morning when the board just spelled out the name of her dead grandfather. Many parents grew uneasy with it. Some church groups warned against it. Some moms threw it in the trash, only to find their kids had rescued it from the garbage can. The Ouija board was the only toy in most houses that kids were genuinely a little afraid of. And that was exactly why they wanted it. Number 82. Perfection. Lakeside released Perfection in the mid-1970s, and it was the most stressful 60 seconds of any child's day. The game was a yellow plastic tray with 25 shape-shaped holes. A star, a triangle, a square, a circle, a cross. 25 different little shapes, all dumped in a pile. You wound up the timer, pushed down the board, and started fitting pieces into holes as fast as you could. If you got every piece in before the timer ran out, you won. If not, the board exploded. That is not an exaggeration. When the timer hit zero, the spring-loaded tray shot upward, and every single piece flew into the air. Pieces hit the ceiling. Pieces hit your face. Pieces landed in the cat's water bowl. And the ticking. That timer ticked loudly the whole time, like a bomb in a war movie. Tick, tick, tick. Your hands would shake. You would grab the wrong shape. You would try to jam a hexagon into a pentagon hole. And with three pieces left, pop. The whole board erupted. Kids played it over and over. The shock never really went away. Even when you knew it was coming, the pop made you jump. Parents tried it once, and swore never again. The game has been reissued many times, and people today make videos of themselves playing it as adults, still flinching at that pop. Perfection taught a generation about pressure, speed, and how to dig small plastic stars out of shag carpet. It was the only game where losing was more exciting than winning. Number 81, Stratego. Milton Bradley brought Stratego to America in 1961. And it was the game that made kids feel like generals. Two armies faced each other across a battlefield. Each player had 40 pieces, standing up so only you could see what they were. Marshal's, generals, colonels, majors, scouts, miners, bombs, and one flag. Your goal was to find and capture your opponent's flag. You moved your pieces forward, and when two pieces met, you revealed them. The higher rank won. But there were tricks. The spy, the lowest piece on the board, could defeat the marshal, the highest. But only if the spy attacked first. Bombs destroyed anything that touched them, except miners, who could defuse them. Kids spent forever setting up their pieces. Do you surround your flag with bombs, which is obvious? Or do you hide it in the open, somewhere nobody would look? Do you send your scouts out early to find out what you were facing? Every game was a puzzle of bluffing and memory. Stratego was a game for the kid who liked to think. The kid who read the war books in the school library. The kid who stared at the board for five minutes before moving one piece, while his cousin begged him to just go already. It was one of the first games that felt like real strategy. The kind you might play against your father and actually win. And when you did, when you finally captured his flag after an hour-long war on the kitchen table, it felt like you had grown up a little. Here is something that changed American childhood forever. In the 1960s, toy companies discovered Saturday morning television. Before then, toys were mostly sold to parents. Mothers saw them in stores or catalogs and decided what their kids would get. But once networks started packing Saturday mornings with cartoons, toy companies realized they could talk directly to children. Mattel was one of the first companies to bet big on this, back when it sponsored the Mickey Mouse Club in the 1950s. By the 1960s, everybody was doing it. Suddenly, every kid in America was sitting cross-legged on the carpet with a bowl of sugary cereal, watching commercials designed by grown men with psychology degrees. The commercials were loud and fast. The toys always looked bigger than they really were. The kids in the ads were always having more fun than you. And at the end, in tiny words most kids could not read, were two phrases that broke a million hearts on Christmas morning, batteries not included, and each sold separately. You would rip open your present, see the toy from the commercial, and then realize it did nothing because there were no batteries in the house. Or you would get the action figure, but not the car, the boat, the fort, the horse, the sidekick, all sold separately. Those two little phrases built entire empires. By the 1970s, concerns about advertising to children led to new rules and guidelines. But by then, an entire generation had already learned to want things from a television screen. Saturday morning was not just cartoons. It was the most powerful sales room in America. Number 80: Battleship People played Battleship with pencil and paper as far back as World War I. But in 1967, Milton Bradley turned it into a plastic game. And suddenly, every kid in America needed one. Each player got a case that opened like a laptop. Inside, two grids. On the bottom grid, you placed your five ships. The aircraft carrier, the battleship, the cruiser, the submarine, and the destroyer. On the top grid, you tracked your shots. Then you took turns calling out coordinates. B-4, miss. G-7, hit. Red pegs for hits. White pegs for misses. Hundreds of tiny pegs that ended up in every crevice of every house in America. Your mom's vacuum cleaner sounded like a machine gun for years because of battleship pegs. And the cheating. Oh, the cheating. Brothers moved their ships mid-game. Sisters lied about hits. Kids peeked over the top of the case. Wars started over whether someone had actually said D-5 or B-5. Then in 1977, Milton Bradley released Electronic Battleship. And the commercial introduced one of the most famous lines in toy history. You sank my battleship! Kids said it at school. At dinner. At church. Grown-ups started saying it. The electronic version made explosion sounds and talked back, which felt like the future. But the original plastic version, with its click-in ships and those maddening little pegs, is the one most people grew up with. It turned every kitchen table into a naval war in the Pacific, one coordinate at a time. Number 79. The Game of Life. In 1960, Milton Bradley turned 100 years old. To celebrate, the company hired a toy designer named Ruben Klaymer to reinvent one of its very first games, the Checkered Game of Life, from 1860. What Klaymer came up with was a three-dimensional board with plastic mountains, bridges, and buildings, a big spinning wheel in the middle, and little plastic cars. You put a pink or blue peg in the driver's seat, and off you went into adulthood. You went to college or straight to work. You got married and added a peg to the passenger seat. You had kids, and your car filled up with tiny pegs until it looked like a clown car. You bought insurance, bought a house, paid taxes, got a promotion, and hopefully ended up at Millionaire Acres instead of the poor farm. The money in the game had the face of television host Art Linkletter printed on it, because he was the game's celebrity spokesman. The spinner was the heart of it, that clicking, ticking wheel in the center of the board. Kids would spin it as hard as they could, trying to make it go for 30 seconds. Sometimes it flew off its post, sometimes it got stuck between numbers, and the arguments began. Life taught kids about money, insurance, and taxes before they understood what any of those words meant. It also taught them that adulthood was basically a long drive in a station wagon full of kids, which, looking back, was pretty accurate for 1960. Number 78: Toss-A-Cross Ideal released Toss-A-Cross in 1969, and it took tic-tac-toe off the paper and onto the lawn. The game was a 3x3 frame of spinning plastic blocks. Each block had an X on one side, an O on another, and a blank on the rest. Players stood back and tossed beanbags at the blocks, hit one, and it spun around. Whatever symbol landed face up was what counted. Get three in a row, and you won. It sounds simple, and it was, but the spinning blocks added total chaos. You would aim for an empty block and hit it perfectly, and it would spin all the way around and land on your opponent's symbol. You would aim at one block and accidentally hit two. You would knock out your own X and give away the game. Kids played it in the backyard, in the basement, in the driveway. It was one of the few games that needed a throwing arm, so the athletic kids finally had a reason to get excited about family game night. The beanbags were the weak spot. They split. They lost their beans. They got thrown at siblings, at the dog, onto the roof. By summer's end, most families were tossing balled-up socks instead. But that was fine. Toss across did not care what you threw. It just spun and clattered and kept score. It showed up at church picnics, school field days, and birthday parties across the country. A simple game that got kids off the couch, decades before anyone was worried about kids staying on the couch. 77. Battling Tops Ideal released Battling Tops in 1968, and it was gladiator combat for spinning tops. The arena was a round, sloped plastic dish. Each player had a top with a little colored figure on it and a string launcher. You wound the string, loaded your top into the launcher on the edge of the arena, and when everyone was ready, you all pulled at once. The tops shot into the arena, spinning, crashing, bouncing off each other. The last tops, still spinning, won. The noise was incredible. Clack, clack, whirr. Tops slammed into each other and ricocheted around the rim. One would wobble. Everyone would scream. It would recover. Then another hit, and down it went. Each match lasted maybe 20 seconds, and every second felt like a heavyweight fight. Kids developed theories about how to pull the string. Hard and fast, slow and steady. Some pulled at a slight angle. Nobody's theory worked any better than anybody else's, but everybody swore by theirs. The tops each had their own name and personality printed on them. So kids picked favorites and defended them fiercely. If your top lost, it was the top's fault. If it won, it was your skill. Battling Tops was a perfect little toy. No batteries, no complicated rules, just strings, tops, and the urge to see whose would last longest. Strings broke, launchers cracked, and tops disappeared one by one until you were battling with two. Still worth it. Battling Tops was the sound of a 1960s rec room. Clack, clack, whirr, and somebody yelling that it was rigged. Number 76, Kerplunk. Ideal released Kerplunk in 1967, and it might be the most nerve-wracking game on this entire list. A clear plastic tube stood on a base. Near the middle, players poked about 30 thin plastic sticks through holes in the tube, crisscrossing in every direction. Then, you dumped a pile of marbles in the top. The marbles rested on the web of sticks. Now, players took turns pulling out one stick at a time. Every time a marble fell, it landed in your tray. Whoever had the fewest marbles at the end won. The early sticks were easy. Pull one out, nothing happens. Pull another, a marble shifts but holds. But as the web of sticks thinned, the marbles started to sag. You could see them sitting on just two or three sticks, wobbling, waiting. You would slowly slide a stick out, and one marble would roll a quarter inch, and everyone would gasp. Then, suddenly, Kerplunk! Eight marbles would come crashing down at once, rattling into the bottom. Kids got very serious about Kerplunk. They would get down eye level with the tube and study it from every angle, like a doctor reading an x-ray. They would tap sticks gently to see if they were load-bearing. The sticks got lost, the marbles got lost faster, and most families ended up playing with knitting needles, and whatever marbles they could find. But nothing beat that final collapse. The moment when someone pulled the wrong stick, and an avalanche of glass poured down. Kerplunk was named after the sound, and for anyone who grew up with it, that sound still makes their heart skip. Number 75. Hungry Hungry Hippos Nilton Bradley released Hungry Hungry Hippos in 1978, and parents across America have been trying to recover ever since. Four plastic hippos sat around a round arena, each a different color. Players pushed down a lever on the back of their hippo, and its head shot forward, mouth open, gobbling up marbles in the middle of the board. Whoever gobbled the most marbles won. The original hippos even had names: Lizzie, Henry, Homer, and Harry. There was no strategy. None. You just slammed your lever as fast and as hard as humanly possible. And so did everyone else. Four kids smashing four levers at once created a noise like a shipyard during wartime. Clack, clack, clack, clack, clack. It went on until every marble was gone, which was usually about 15 seconds. Then you poured the marbles back in and did it again, and again, and again. Parents sat in the next room with their heads in their hands. Some hid the game on high shelves. Some lost it on purpose. Some quietly removed the marbles one by one, hoping nobody would notice. But kids loved it with a pure, uncomplicated love. It was the one game where a four-year-old could beat a ten-year-old, because speed mattered more than brains. And smashing that lever felt fantastic. Hungry Hungry Hippos is still sold today, and it is still just as loud. If you grew up in the late 1970s, that clacking sound is buried somewhere deep in your memory, right next to the sound of your mother saying, "Please, just one more round, and then we are done." Number 74, Mousetrap. Ideal released Mousetrap in 1963, and it was less a game than a construction project. The box held dozens of plastic parts: a crank, gears, a boot that kicked a bucket, a ball that rolled downstairs, a rickety diving board, a little diver who flipped into a tub, and at the very end, a cage that dropped down a pole to trap a mouse. The idea was simple. As you moved around the board, you built the trap piece by piece. Once it was finished, you could turn the crank and try to catch another player's mouse. The board game part was boring. Everyone knew it. What kids actually wanted was to build the machine and set it off. Turn the crank. The gears turn. The boot swings and kicks the bucket. The ball rolls down the stairs, through the chute, hits the rod, knocks the diver off, he flips into the tub, the post shakes, and the cage comes down. In the commercial, it worked perfectly every time. In real life, the ball stopped halfway down the stairs about 70% of the time, and someone had to nudge it with their finger. The design was inspired by the crazy contractions of cartoonist Rube Goldberg. Pieces went missing almost immediately. The tiny diver was the first to go, then the ball, then the cage. Most families ended up with a mousetrap that was missing so many parts, it was basically a piece of cardboard and a crank. But nobody threw it away. Because one day, you might find the diver again. Mousetrap taught a generation of future engineers that machines rarely work the way the commercial says. Number 73, Twister. On May 3, 1966, Johnny Carson played a game on The Tonight Show with the actress Eva Gabor. She was wearing an evening gown. They were on their hands and knees on a big plastic mat covered in colored circles, twisting around each other while the audience howled. The game was Twister, and before that night, it was a flop. Milton Bradley had almost given up on it. Sears had reportedly refused to put it in its catalog because it seemed too suggestive. Competitors had sneered that it was sex in a box. After Johnny Carson and Eva Gabor rolled around on national television, Twister sold out across America. By some accounts, more than 3 million copies sold in its first year. The rules were simple. A spinner told you to put a hand or a foot on a colored circle, right hand red, left foot green. Players tangled together until someone's elbow buckled or someone's knee touched the mat, and everyone collapsed in a pile. It was the first game where the players themselves were the pieces. It broke every rule about personal space that 1950s America had built. Teenagers loved it for obvious reasons. Kids loved it because it let them climb all over each other. Adults loved it at parties after a couple of drinks. And grandparents watched from the couch, horrified and fascinated. Twister became a symbol of the 1960s. A decade when Americans were loosening up in every way. And it all started with a talk show host and an actress in a gown falling over each other on live television. Number 72. Operation. In the early 1960s, a University of Illinois industrial design student named John Spinello built an electric game for a class assignment. It involved a metal box and a probe. And if your hand shook and the probe touched the side, it buzzed. He got an A. Then, a Chicago toy design firm bought the idea from him. Spinello was paid $500 and the promise of a job. He never got the job. Milton Bradley released the game in 1965 as Operation. And it has sold millions of copies since. The patient was a man named Cavity Sam. Lying on the operating table with a big red nose that lit up whenever you messed up. His body was full of little holes, each holding a tiny plastic ailment. Water on the knee. A tiny bucket. Butterflies in the stomach. A wishbone. A broken heart. A charley horse that was literally a little horse. Writer's cramp. A tiny pencil. You used metal tweezers attached to a wire. If the tweezers touched the metal edge of the hole, the buzzer went off, Sam's nose glowed red, and your turn was over. That buzzer was terrifying. It came out of nowhere, loud and angry. Kids jumped every time. Operation had a way of making steady-handed children shake. Kids discovered that the funny bone and the wrenched ankle were nearly impossible. Batteries ran out, and suddenly, Sam was the calmest patient in history. John Spinello's $500 game became one of the best-selling games ever made. Decades later, when he needed surgery and could not afford it, people raised money online to help him. The inventor of operation needed an operation, and the generation that grew up playing his game paid for it. Number 71: Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots Lewis Marks & Co. released Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots in 1964, and it was boxing for kids who could not legally box. Two plastic robots stood in a yellow boxing ring, the Red Rocker and the Blue Bomber. Each player held a control unit with two plungers, one for each fist. You pressed the plungers, and your robot punched. Land a solid blow on your opponent's chin, and his head popped up on a spring with a loud click. You knocked his block off! The commercials made it look like a heavyweight title fight. In your living room, it was two kids frantically mashing buttons, both robots flailing wildly, until someone's head shot up. Then you pushed the head back down and did it again, and again. There was a real technique buried in there if you looked. Some kids learned to wait for an opening, then throw a precise uppercut. Most kids just mashed and hoped. Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots was one of those toys that felt bigger than it was. The ring was only about a foot across, but when two brothers were going at it, it felt like Madison Square Garden. It was the perfect way to settle arguments. Who gets the last popsicle? Rock 'Em Sock 'Em. Who has to take out the garbage? Rock 'Em Sock 'Em. The toy has been reissued for decades, and it even inspired a movie. But nothing compares to the original. That first click when the head shot up. That half-second of stunned silence. And then, the winner leaping off the couch, arms raised, while the loser demanded a rematch. Here is where things get personal. Several of the most famous toys you just heard about came from the same mysterious place. A toy design firm in Chicago called Marvin Glass & Associates. Marvin Glass was one of the most successful toy inventors in American history, and you have probably never heard his name. His firm designed toys and sold the ideas to the big companies: Mr. Machine, Mousetrap, Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots. Operation came through his firm, too, after they bought John Spinello's idea. The studio was famously secretive. Visitors described heavy security, locked doors, and a culture of paranoia about competitors stealing ideas. Toy companies would come in to see what Glass had cooked up, and his designers would unveil prototypes like jewels in a vault. In the 1960s, Marvin Glass became a sort of rock star of the toy world. He was known for being brilliant, demanding, and a little bit strange. What made his firm special was its understanding of one thing. Kids do not want toys that just sit there. They want toys that do something. Toys that move, buzz, pop, collapse, punch, and break apart. Look at the list. The cage drops in Mousetrap. The head pops in Rock 'Em Sock 'Em. Sam's nose buzzes in Operation. Every one of those toys had a moment of action. A payoff. That was the Marvin Glass formula. And for a generation of kids, it was the formula for a perfect Saturday afternoon. On the 4th of July in 1956, a man named Milton Levine was at a family picnic in California, watching ants swarm over the food. He remembered collecting ants as a boy. He went home and designed a thin plastic case filled with sand, with a little farm scene silhouetted across the top. A barn. A windmill. A silo. He called it the Ant Farm. And through the 1960s and 1970s, it became one of the most famous science toys in America. But here was the catch that every kid remembers. The Ant Farm came without ants. Inside the box was a coupon. You filled it out, mailed it in, and a few weeks later, a little tube of live red harvester ants arrived in your mailbox. The ants came from the desert, and the company only sent workers, never a queen, because shipping queens was not allowed. You poured them into the farm, and over the next days, you watched them dig tunnels through the sand, carrying grains one by one, building whole highways and rooms. It was hypnotic. Kids would sit for an hour just watching. But without a queen, the colony could not reproduce, and worker ants only live a few months. So, eventually, one by one, the ants died. And many kids learned their first lesson about death from that little plastic farm on their dresser. Some knocked it off the dresser and learned a very different lesson as a hundred angry ants spread across the bedroom. Milton Levine's ant farm sold millions. Uncle Milton, as the company called him, gave a generation of kids their first real look at nature, through a quarter-inch of plastic. Number 69: Sea Monkeys If you read a comic book in the 1960s or 1970s, you saw the ad. A happy family of strange little creatures with crowns, smiles, and tails, living in a castle under the sea. The father had a crown. The mother had a bow. The kids were waving. Instant life, the ad promised. Watch them grow. The illustration was drawn by Joe Orlando, a comic book artist who later became a top editor at DC Comics. And for about a dollar and some change, you could own these magical pets. What actually arrived in the mail was three little packets of powder and some instructions. You put the first packet in water to prepare it. A day later, you poured in the second packet, which held the eggs. And then, a day or two later, you looked closely at the water and saw tiny, moving specks. That was it. No crowns, no castle, no smiling family. Just microscopic dots swimming around in a jar. They were brine shrimp, a hardy species whose eggs can survive dried out for years and come back to life in salt water. Harold von Braunhut, the same marketing genius behind X-ray Specs, began selling them in the 1950s as Instant Life and renamed them Sea Monkeys in the early 1960s. And here is the strange part. Even though every kid felt cheated at first, many of them got attached anyway. They maimed their sea monkeys. They fed them the little scoop of growth food. Some kept colonies alive for months. A few kept them for over a year. Sea monkeys were the ultimate 1960s lesson in advertising versus reality. And somehow, kids loved them anyway. Number 68. The Chemistry Set There was a time in America when a 10-year-old could open a box from the toy store and find a metal cabinet full of real chemicals. Glass test tubes. Little bottles with labels you could barely pronounce. An alcohol burner. A test tube holder. A manual full of experiments. A Sea Gilbert, the same company that made erector sets, sold them. So did Chemcraft, made by the Porter Chemical Company of Hagerstown, Maryland. In the 1950s, Gilbert had even sold an atomic energy lab with actual uranium ore in it. By the 1960s, the chemistry set was the gift every serious kid wanted. The sets were sold as a path to becoming a scientist. And kids took that seriously. They made invisible ink. They changed liquids from clear to purple. They made smoke, fizz, bubbles, and smells that cleared the house. They also made things the manual did not suggest. Every family has a story about the chemistry set. The burn mark on the basement table. The singed eyebrows. The smell that would not leave the curtains for a week. The day Dad came downstairs and asked what that noise was. Over the years, safety rules tightened and the dangerous chemicals disappeared from the boxes. Lawsuits and regulations made toy companies nervous. By the 1980s, chemistry sets had become mostly harmless kits with baking soda and food coloring. A.C. Gilbert went out of business in the 1960s. And the golden age of the chemistry set went with it. But a surprising number of scientists, engineers, and doctors working today will tell you exactly where their career started. In a basement with a metal box and a test tube that should not have been bubbling quite that much. Number 67, Kenner's girder and panel building set. Before Legos took over American toy boxes, kids who wanted to build skyscrapers had Kenner's girder and panel. The set came with plastic columns, long girders that snapped together, and flat-colored panels that clipped onto the frame like walls and windows. You built the skeleton first, just like a real construction crew, and then covered it with panels. In an hour, you could have a modern office tower standing three feet tall on your bedroom floor. The sets came in a cardboard canister or a big box with a picture of a gleaming city on the front. The skyline of mid-century America. Glass towers, steel frames, the future. Kids built banks, apartment buildings, airports, and bridges. And Kenner kept expanding the line. There was even a hydrodynamic version with water pumps, so you could build a refinery or a factory with real water running through pipes. Some versions included motorized parts, elevators, and moving pieces. For a kid in 1965, it felt like being an architect and an engineer at the same time. The panels were the weak link. They cracked, they bent, and they went missing. But the girders lasted forever. You can still find old girder and panel parts at estate sales, mixed in with Lincoln logs and tinker toys in a coffee can. And something about holding those pieces brings back exactly what it felt like to be seven years old, dreaming about building something big. Today, an architect will sometimes mention the set in an interview. The toy that made them want to design buildings. Girder and panel quietly built a generation of builders. Number 66. Estes Model Rockets. In 1958, in a little town called Penrose, Colorado, a man named Vern Estes built a machine to mass-produce small model rocket engines. Model rocketry had been growing in popularity, but making engines safely was hard. Estes solved it. And by the 1960s, as the space race made every American kid dream of being an astronaut, Estes Rockets became the most exciting thing you could build in your garage. You ordered a kit from the catalog or bought it at a hobby shop. It came with a cardboard body tube, balsa wood fins, a plastic nose cone, a parachute, and a decal sheet. You glued, sanded, and painted it at the kitchen table, waiting forever for each coat to dry. Then you took it to an open field with your dad, set it on the launch pad, clipped the wires, stepped back, put the key in the launch controller, and counted down. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, whoosh! The rocket shot hundreds of feet into the sky in a second, trailing smoke. At the top, a little charge popped the parachute out, and it floated slowly back to Earth. Unless it did not. Unless the wind took it two fields over. Unless it landed in a tree, or on a roof, or in the neighbor's pond. Every kid who launched Estes Rockets lost at least one. Some lost dozens. But the launch was worth it. For a few seconds, in a field in Ohio, or Kansas, or Texas, you were NASA. Estes Rockets are still sold today, and millions of kids have built them. A surprising number of real engineers say it was the first thing that made them want to work in aerospace. Number 65, Aurora Monster Models. In 1961, the Aurora Plastics Corporation released a model kit of Frankenstein's monster. It cost about a dollar. The kids snapped it up so fast that Aurora followed with Dracula, the Wolfman, the Mummy, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, the Phantom of the Opera, and more. You bought the box, glued the plastic pieces together at the kitchen table, then painted them with tiny bottles of enamel paint. When you were done, you had your own monster standing on your dresser, glaring down at you at night. The ads ran in magazines like Famous Monsters of Filmland, which every horror-loving kid read cover to cover. The models connected to the classic universal monster movies that were being replayed on late-night TV in the early 1960s. Suddenly, a whole generation of kids was obsessed with monsters. Then, in 1969, Aurora released glow-in-the-dark versions, and bedrooms across America got a whole lot scarier after lights out. In 1971, Aurora went too far. It released a line called "Monster Scenes," which included a laboratory, torture devices, and a female figure called "The Victim." Parents and protest groups were outraged. Stores pulled the kits, and Aurora backed down. Today, those kits are wildly valuable to collectors. Aurora itself eventually faded and sold off its molds. But anyone who glued together a Frankenstein in 1963 remembers the smell of model glue, the paint on their fingers, and the pride of putting a finished monster on the shelf. Sometimes, the glue got on the carpet. Sometimes, the wolfman's head fell off. It did not matter. You built him. #64: Shrinky Dinks In 1973, two mothers in Brookfield, Wisconsin named Betty Morris and Kate Bloomberg were looking for a craft project for their son's Cub Scout den. They discovered that if you drew on a thin sheet of a certain kind of plastic and put it in the oven, it shrank to about a third of its size and got thick and hard while keeping the drawing perfectly. They started selling kits at a local mall. Then, a big department store picked them up. Then, the whole country caught on. The kits came with sheets of clear plastic, sometimes printed with outlines of cartoon characters. You colored them with colored pencils, cut them out, laid them on a cookie sheet, and slid them into the oven at a low temperature. Then, you crouched down and watched through the oven window. That was the best part. The plastic would curl up, twist, and wiggle like it was alive. You would panic that it was ruined. And then, in a few seconds, it would flatten back out a tiny, thick, perfect version of what you drew. Kids made keychains, necklaces, magnets, and pins. They made gifts for grandma that grandma pretended to love. The plastic was the same polystyrene used in food containers, the number six recycling kind. Clever kids discovered they could shrink the lids from takeout containers and get the same effect for free. Shrinky Dinks are still sold today. But the original kits from the 1970s, sitting in front of the oven door with your mom, watching your drawing curl and then shrink into something solid, was a small piece of magic, straight out of a Wisconsin kitchen. Number 63, Spirograph. In 1965, a British engineer named Dennis Fisher showed off a drawing toy at a toy fair in Nuremberg, Germany. He had been working on designs for bomb detonators. And while experimenting with gears, he realized they could make beautiful spiral patterns. Kenner brought it to America in 1966, and soon it was in toy boxes across the country. The set came with plastic gears and rings, each with teeth around the edge and little holes inside. You pinned a ring to the paper, placed a gear inside, put a pen through one of the holes, and moved it around and around. What came out was mesmerizing. Loops inside loops, flowers, stars, patterns that looked like they had been drawn by a computer, years before most people had seen a computer. Change the hole, and you got a completely different design. Change the gear, and you got another. Use three different colored pens, and you had something your mom would actually hang on the refrigerator. But Spirograph had a dark side. Every kid knows it. You are going around and around. The pattern is almost done. It is looking perfect. And then, the gear slips. The pen skids across the paper in a jagged line, and the whole drawing is ruined. The little pins that held the ring down were also legendary for getting lost or stepped on. Moms found Spirograph pins in their feet for years. But when it worked, it was art. A kid who could not draw a straight line could make something beautiful. Spirograph is still sold today, and it still slips at the worst possible moment. Number 62. Etch-a-Sketch. A French electrician named André Cassagnes invented it in the late 1950s. He called it l'écran magique, the magic screen. The Ohio Art Company bought it, gave it a better name, and released it in 1960, just in time for Christmas. It was a red plastic frame with a gray screen and two white knobs. Turned the left knob, and a line moved sideways. Turned the right knob, and it moved up and down. To erase, you turned it upside down and shook it. Inside was a mix of fine aluminum powder and tiny plastic beads. The powder coated the inside of the glass. A stylus, connected to the knobs by a system of strings and pulleys, scraped the powder off, leaving a dark line. Shaking it coated the glass again. It sold for about $3, and Ohio Art could barely make them fast enough. They were made in Bryan, Ohio, and that little town became the home of one of the most famous toys in the world. Drawing a straight line was easy. Drawing a diagonal line was hard. Drawing a circle was nearly impossible. Most kids drew stairs, then houses that looked like stairs, then just stairs again. And then they discovered that their big sister could shake it from across the room and ruin their masterpiece. Some kids were tempted to break it open to see what was inside. And they learned that aluminum powder gets everywhere. Etch-a-Sketch is still sold today, decades later, and it has barely changed. There are artists who make stunning portraits on it. But for most of us, it was a red box full of stairs. Number 61. Lightbrite. Lightbrite. Making things with light. Hasbro released Lightbrite in 1967, and it was one of the first toys that let kids make art that actually glowed. The toy was a box with a light bulb inside, and a black panel with hundreds of tiny holes on the front. You laid a sheet of black paper over the panel. The paper had a printed design with letters on each dot, telling you what color to use. Then you poked little colored plastic pegs through the paper and into the holes. When you turned on the light, every peg lit up, and your picture glowed in the dark. It was magical. Clowns, flowers, sailboats, trucks, cartoon characters, all glowing like neon signs on your bedroom floor. Kids would finish a design and turn off all the lights and just stare at it. The commercial jingle got stuck in kids' heads for decades. The pegs were a disaster for parents. Hundreds of them, tiny, shark-tipped. They ended up everywhere. Barefoot dads walking into the kitchen at night found them the painful way. Vacuums choked on them. And once you used a sheet of paper, it had holes punched all through it, so you could not really use it again. Clever kids figured out they could make their own designs on blank black paper, which was where the real creativity came in. Lightbrite has been reissued and updated many times. But the original, with that big warm bulb that got hot to the touch and the box of rattling pegs, was one of the most beautiful toys of the 1960s. Here is where things get interesting. If you want to understand the toys of this era, you have to understand the back pages of comic books. In the 1960s and 1970s, comic books were the internet for American kids. They cost about 12 to 25 cents, and they reached millions of children every month. And in the back of every comic book was a section of ads unlike anything else. Sea monkeys. X-ray specs. Magic rocks. Whoopie cushions. Hypno coins. Charles Atlas promising to turn 97-pound weaklings into muscle men. A hundred toy soldiers for a dollar, packed in a footlocker. A full-sized submarine you could ride in, which turned out to be a cardboard box. The ads were small, cheap, and wildly exaggerated. The illustrations promised wonders. The real product was always smaller, flimsier, and less amazing. But that did not stop millions of kids from cutting out the coupons and mailing in their money. You would tape quarters to a piece of cardboard, slide it in an envelope, and mail it off. Then you would wait. Four to six weeks. Sometimes eight. Every day you would race to the mailbox after school. Many companies, like the Johnson Smith Company, built entire businesses on these mail-order novelties. The disappointment, when it finally came, was a rite of passage. But so was the waiting. The anticipation. The weeks of imagining exactly what your sea monkey castle would look like. In a strange way, that waiting was the real toy. The comic book back page taught a generation to dream big and expect a little less. And it taught them never to fully trust an advertisement again. Number 60. The Mattel Vacuform. In 1962, Mattel gave kids a miniature plastics factory. The Vacuform was a metal box with a heating element on top and a pump handle on the side. You clamped a thin sheet of colored plastic into a frame, held it over the heater until it went soft and saggy, then flipped it down over a mold. Then you pumped the handle like crazy, sucking the air out from under the plastic. The soft sheet sucked down tight over the mold. And when it cooled, you had a perfect plastic shape. Cars. Boats. Animals. Masks. Signs. Coins. You could even vacuum form your own toys, using objects from around the house as molds. Kids made plastic copies of anything they could find. Dad's keys. Mom's spoons. Their own little action figures. It felt like a real industrial machine, because it basically was. The same vacuum forming process was used in factories to make packaging and plastic parts. And it got hot. Seriously hot. The heating plate was a burn waiting to happen. Every kid who owned a Vacuform remembers touching the wrong part at least once. The smell of melting plastic filled the house. Moms worried about fires. Dad secretly loved it and kept helping long after the kid lost interest. Toy safety rules later made toys like the Vacuform much harder to sell. Today, the original machines are collector's items, and adult hobbyists still use them. But in 1962, Mattel handed 8-year-olds a heating element, sheets of plastic, and a pump, and said, "Have fun!" And they did. Number 59. Creepy Crawlers In 1964, Mattel released The Thing Maker, and the first set was called Creepy Crawlers. It came with a hot plate oven, a set of heavy metal molds shaped like bugs, spiders, worms, and snakes, and snakes, and little bottles of a liquid called Plastigoop. You squeezed the colored Plastigoop into the mold cavities, set the mold on the hot plate, and waited. The goop bubbled and set. Then, you used a little tool to lift the hot mold off the heater and dunk it to cool. Pop out the creatures, and you had rubbery, wiggly bugs. The hot plate reached around 390 degrees Fahrenheit. That is hotter than you bake most cookies. And Mattel sold it to elementary school children. Burns were common. Kids touched the plate. Kids touched the molds before they cooled. Kids dropped hot molds on the carpet and left a perfect scorched rectangle that stayed for years. The smell of hot Plastigoop was unforgettable, thick, and chemical. But oh, the bugs. Kids made hundreds of them. Neon green spiders, glow-in-the-dark worms, purple centipedes. They put them in their sister's bed, their brother's cereal, their teacher's desk drawer. They hung them from ceiling lights on threads. In 1966, Mattel released The Fright Factory, which let you make fake scars, shrunken heads, and skulls. Later sets made soldiers, flowers, and more. Today, creepy crawlers would never make it past a single safety review. But in 1964, Mattel figured kids could handle a 390-degree hot plate. And for the most part, they did, with only a few scars to show for it. Number 58. Incredible Edibles In 1967, Mattel took the Thing Maker idea and made it edible. Literally. Incredible Edibles worked just like creepy crawlers. Same kind of hot plate. Same kind of metal molds shaped like bugs, worms, and creepy creatures. But instead of Plastigoop, you squeezed in a sugary candy goo called gobbledy goop. When it cooked and set, you got rubbery, chewy candy bugs that you could actually eat. For a nine-year-old, this was the greatest idea in the history of mankind. You could make candy. And not just candy, but disgusting-looking candy. Spiders you could bite the legs off. Worms you could slurp. Centipedes you could dangle in front of your mother before eating them whole. Gobbledy goop came in different flavors and colors. And the candy tasted, well, like sweet rubber. But nobody cared. Here is the problem nobody thought about. Kids now had two different Thing Makers that looked almost the same. Many kids had both. One made edible candy bugs. The other made inedible plastic bugs. And sometimes, kids got them mixed up. The molds looked similar. Every parent's nightmare. Combined with the same scorching hot plate, incredible edibles did not last long on the shelves. But for a brief, glorious moment in the late 1960s, kids could cook candy spiders in their bedrooms and eat them with no grown-up help at all. Ask anyone who had it. They will tell you it tasted terrible. And they will tell you they would kill to have one more. Number 57. Susie Homemaker. Deluxe Reading, the company that also sold toys under the topper name, launched the Susie Homemaker line in the mid-1960s. And here was the shocking part. These toy appliances actually worked. Susie Homemaker ovens baked. The mixers mixed. The washing machine washed. There was a toy sink. A toy dishwasher. A toy vacuum cleaner. A blender. An iron. A hair dryer. A whole suburban kitchen scaled down for girls. And nearly every piece really did what it said. The marketing was pure 1960s America. Little girls were being trained to be little housewives. The commercials showed girls baking cakes and doing laundry with huge smiles, just like their mothers. Looking back, it is a strange mirror of the era. But at the time, girls loved them. Because they were not pretend. When you baked in the Susie Homemaker oven, you got a real cake. When you ran the mixer, real batter splattered across the kitchen. Some of these appliances got genuinely hot. And safety concerns followed the line. The ovens were said to run very hot. And parents worried about burns. The company went through financial trouble. And by the early 1970s, Topper went bankrupt, taking Susie Homemaker with it. Today, the original appliances in their boxes are prized collector's items. And women who grew up with them talk about them with real affection. Many of them learned to cook their very first cake in a Susie Homemaker oven. Standing on a stepstool in their mom's kitchen. Beaming at a lopsided little chocolate cake that tasted like victory. Number 56. The Easy Bake Oven. If Susie Homemaker was the real deal, the Easy Bake was the legend. Kenner released it in 1963, and it sold for $15.95, which was serious money back then. The oven was shaped like a real kitchen range, in turquoise or yellow. And here was the genius. It was powered by two ordinary 100-watt light bulbs. Those bulbs got hot enough to bake a tiny cake. You mixed up the little packet of cake mix in a miniature pan, slid it into the oven through a slot on one side, and waited. When it was done, you pushed it out the other side. Kenner reportedly sold about half a million Easy Bake Ovens in the first year alone. Girls across America were baking little cakes, cookies, and brownies. The cakes were about the size of a coaster, and tasted mostly like warm sugar. Nobody cared. The fact that you made it, with no grown-up, using a light bulb, was the whole point. And the light bulb was part of the magic. It made the oven feel safe, compared to the scorching hot plates of other toys. Little kids figured that if it was just a light bulb, it could not be dangerous. They were mostly right. Over the decades, the Easy Bake changed shapes and colors. When incandescent bulbs began to be phased out in the 2000s, Kenner's successors had to redesign it with a real heating element. In 2006, the Easy Bake Oven was inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame. It has sold tens of millions of units. But nothing compares to that first turquoise oven from 1963, and the first tiny cake that came out of it. Number 55, the Snoopy Snow Cone Machine. Hasbro released it in 1979, and every kid in America with a television suddenly needed one. The machine was shaped like Snoopy's red doghouse, with Snoopy lying on the roof. You dropped ice cubes into the top. Then, you turned the crank. Inside, a blade shaved the ice into fluffy snow that came out into a little paper cup. You poured flavored syrup over it, and you had your own snow cone, without ever leaving the house. The commercial made it look effortless. Kids cranking happily, piling up mountains of shaved ice. In real life, cranking was hard. Really hard. It took forever, and your arm would ache. And after five minutes of cranking, you had about two tablespoons of snow. Usually, an older sibling or a parent had to take over. And the ice cubes had to be just the right size, or the machine jammed. But when it worked, it was summer in a cup. Cherry, grape, lime. The syrup soaking into the ice and staining your lips and tongue bright red or purple. Kids would sit on the back porch, sticky and happy. The Snoopy Snow Cone Machine became one of the most famous toys of the late 1970s and early 1980s. It has been reissued many times. But the original, with its slightly crooked Snoopy and its stubborn crank, is the one people remember. Ask anyone who had one, and they will tell you the same thing. The commercial lied about how easy it was. And they would buy it again tomorrow. 54. Kenner's Give-A-Show Projector Before VCRs, before cable, before anyone had heard of home movies on demand, there was the Give-A-Show Projector. Kenner sold it for years through the 1960s and into the 1970s, and it turned every bedroom into a movie theater. The projector was a plastic box shaped like a little movie projector, powered by flashlight batteries. You slid in a thin strip of color slides, pointed it at a wall, turned out the lights, and clicked through the pictures one by one. Each slide strip told a story with famous characters: Popeye, Flintstones, Superman, Batman, Bugs Bunny, whatever was popular that year. The set came with a whole stack of slide strips, and kids would put on shows for their family, reading the captions aloud and doing all the voices. You would gather your parents, your grandparents, and the neighbors, sit them on the couch, and put on a show. That was the name, Give-A-Show. The picture was dim, usually the batteries were half-dead, so the image was a yellowish blur on the wall. The focus never quite worked, the slides got scratched and bent, but to a seven-year-old, it was Hollywood. You were the projectionist, the narrator, and the star. Kids would charge their siblings admission with pennies and make tickets out of construction paper. Give-A-Show taught a generation the joy of putting on a show, even if the only audience was the family dog, who fell asleep halfway through the second strip. 53. The Viewmaster The Viewmaster had been around since 1939, when it was sold mainly as a souvenir, showing scenic pictures of national parks and tourist attractions. But in the 1960s, the company was bought by GAF, and Viewmaster transformed into a children's toy. Suddenly, the round reels were packed with cartoon characters, TV shows, fairy tales, and superheroes. Batman, The Flintstones, Lassie, Disney movies, Star Trek. If kids watched it, there was a Viewmaster reel for it. You slid a round paper reel into the top, held the viewer up to your eyes, pointed it at a window or a lamp, and pulled the lever on the side. Click! A new picture appeared, and it was in 3D. Real, startling 3D. Each picture was made of two slightly different images, one for each eye, and your brain combined them into a scene with depth. Characters looked like they were standing right in front of you. Seven pictures per reel, each with a little caption on the paper booklet that came with it. The click of the lever was half the fun. Kids would click through the same reel a hundred times. Click, click, click. The reels got bent, and the pictures got scratched, but Viewmasters were nearly indestructible. Every house seemed to have one in the toy box, along with a stack of reels from vacation spots the family visited. Today, you can still buy them, and old reels sell at flea markets. Somewhere in your parents' house, there is probably still a reel of the Grand Canyon, or Bambi, or the Partridge family, waiting to be clicked. Number 52: The Fisher-Price Movie Viewer In 1973, Fisher-Price released a toy that let preschoolers watch real movies with no grown-up help at all. The Movie Viewer was a chunky plastic device shaped like a little camera, with a crank on the side. You popped in a plastic cartridge, held it up to your eye, and turned the crank. A short film played inside the viewer, a cartoon or a little animal adventure. Cranked faster, and the movie went faster. Cranked slower, and it slowed down. Cranked backward, and it played in reverse. There was no sound. There were no batteries. It was all mechanical, just like the old Nickelodeons from a century earlier. But to a four-year-old, it was a portable television. Fisher-Price sold cartridges with Disney characters: Sesame Street, Mickey Mouse, Winnie the Pooh, and others. Kids would watch the same 30-second cartoon over and over and over, cranking until their arm got tired. Playing it backward was the big secret. Every kid discovered it. Watching Mickey walk backward. Watching a ball fly up into someone's hands. Watching water jump back into a bucket. It was hilarious. It was the first time many kids realized movies were just pictures moving fast. The Movie Viewer was built like a tank, as almost all Fisher-Price toys were in the 1970s. Many survived being dropped down stairs, chewed by dogs, and handed down to younger siblings. Today, people who had one say it was their first experience of owning their own movie. No parents choosing the channel. No waiting for Saturday. Just you, a crank, and Mickey walking backward. Here is something nobody talks about. These toys were expensive. Really expensive. In 1963, when the Easy Bake Oven came out at $15.95, the federal minimum wage was $1.25 an hour. That meant a worker making minimum wage had to work almost 13 hours to buy one toy oven. Even by 1968, when the minimum wage rose to $1.60, a $12 toy was a full day's work. By 1974, the minimum wage was $2, and a big toy might still cost $10 or $20. For a family with three or four kids, Christmas was a serious financial undertaking. This is why so many of us remember asking for one big toy, and getting it, and then getting socks, oranges, and a coloring book for everything else. This is why the Sears wishbook circles mattered so much. Parents could not just buy everything. They had to choose. And sometimes, they chose wrong. And sometimes, they could not afford it at all. Many parents put toys on layaway in October and paid them off week by week until Christmas Eve. Others saved green stamps and traded them in. Some families pooled with relatives, so that one aunt bought the G.I. Joe, and the grandparents bought the Jeep. When you look back at that toy you begged for, the one that finally showed up under the tree, understand what it cost. Somebody worked extra shifts for that. Somebody skipped something they wanted. That was the hidden price tag on every toy on this list. And most of us never thought about it until we became parents ourselves. Number 51. Kenner's Close and Play Phonograph In the 1960s, playing a record was something grownups did. The family hi-fi was expensive, delicate, and off-limits. Touch the needle wrong, and you could ruin a record or the stereo. But Kenner gave kids their own record player, and it was built so a five-year-old could not mess it up. The Close and Play was a small, colorful, portable phonograph. You put a 45 record on the turntable, closed the lid, and the record started playing by itself. The needle dropped automatically from inside the lid. Opened the lid, and it stopped. That was the genius. No needle for kids to grab. No arm to knock. Just close and play. Kids carried them around by the handle like little suitcases, playing Disney songs, children's records, and eventually their older siblings' pop singles. The sound was tinny and scratchy. The motor ran on batteries, and when they started to die, the music slowed into a deep, warbly drawl that was hilarious and slightly terrifying. Close and Play phonographs showed up in bedrooms across America through the 1960s and 1970s. For many kids, it was the first piece of music equipment they ever owned. It was where they first heard the Beatles, the Monkees, the Jackson 5, or whatever their big sister was obsessed with that year. They wore out the grooves of the same single over and over, closing the lid and starting it again. Before Walkman's, before Boombox's, the Close and Play was a kid's first taste of musical freedom. Your own songs. Your own room. Your own little record player that nobody else got to touch. Number 50. The Fisher Price Music Box Record Player. In 1971, Fisher Price made a record player for even younger children. And it did not need electricity, batteries, or a needle. The Fisher Price Music Box Record Player looked like a little orange and white phonograph. It came with five plastic records, each in a different bright color, each with a song on both sides. You put a record on, turned the crank to wind it up, swung the arm onto the record, and it played. But not with a needle. Each plastic record had bumps on it, and the arm worked like the comb inside a music box. The songs came out in a tinkling chime. London Bridge is Falling Down, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Jack and Jill. Simple songs, played in that bright, plinky music box sound. Toddlers loved it. They loved putting the records on, swinging the arm, and watching them spin. They loved winding it up. And the toy was practically indestructible. You could drop it, throw it, step on it, and it would keep playing. For parents, it was the perfect toy. No noise to speak of, no batteries to buy, no wires. A toddler could entertain themselves for an hour. For kids, it was their first record player, and they felt incredibly grown up using it. Fisher Price kept selling it for years. Many grown adults today can hum the exact version of London Bridge that came off that little red record, music box chimes and all. It was the soundtrack of millions of nurseries in the 1970s. And it still plays, even 50 years later, if you can find one at a yard sale. Number 49: The Fisher Price Chatter Telephone In 1962, Fisher Price released a pull toy that would become one of the most famous toys in American history. The Chatter Telephone looked like an old rotary phone with a smiling face. It had wheels, a pull string, a receiver attached by a cord, and a real rotary dial that clicked when you turned it. When you pulled it across the floor, its eyes rolled up and down, and it made a chattering sound. Hence the name. Toddlers loved it. They dragged it behind them everywhere. Through the kitchen, down the hallway, across the yard. They held the receiver to their ear and had long, serious conversations with grandma, with the mailman, with the dog. They dialed the dial, clicking it around and around, listening to it ring. It became the first phone millions of kids ever used. Here is the funny part. By the time kids of the 1990s and 2000s played with the Chatter Telephone, almost no real phones had rotary dials anymore. Kids were playing with a toy version of a technology they had never seen. Fisher Price kept making it anyway, because toddlers loved it. Toy collectors and historians call it one of the most beloved preschool toys of all time. It shows up in museum exhibits about American childhood, and it even made an appearance in a Toy Story movie. For many people, it is the very first toy they remember. That cheerful face, those rolling eyes, the chatter chatter sound as it bumped down the hallway behind you. Number 48. The CNC. The farmer says... In 1965, Mattel released the CNC, and it became one of the most famous educational toys ever made. It was a round, flat, plastic toy with a picture wheel on the front. In the center was an arrow. Around the edge were pictures of animals. A cow, a pig, a duck, a dog, a rooster. You pointed the arrow at an animal, pulled the lever, and a voice came out of the toy. The cow says moo. How did it talk? There were no computer chips in 1965. Inside was a tiny record and a needle, powered by the pull of the lever. That was the same technology Mattel had used in chatty Cathy dolls. When you pulled the string, a spring spun the record, and the needle played the matching sound. It was a little phonograph hidden inside a plastic disc. For toddlers, it was mind-blowing. A toy that talked back. They pulled the lever hundreds of times a day. Moo. Oink. Quack. Woof. Some parents went slightly crazy listening to the cow say moo for the 400th time. Mattel made other versions too. Letters. Numbers. Bugs Bunny. Mickey Mouse. Each one taught kids something new while they played. CNSA has been reissued and updated for decades, eventually switching to electronic sounds. But the original, with that slightly scratchy, slightly creepy voice coming out of a hidden record, is the version millions of American kids heard first. And if you grew up with it, you can still hear the farmer's voice clear as day. Number 47. Mr. Potato Head. Mr. Potato Head came out in 1952, and it has a famous claim. It was the first toy ever advertised on television. But here is what most people forget. The original Mr. Potato Head did not come with a potato. It came with a set of plastic eyes, ears, noses, mouths, hats, and pipes. You had to supply your own potato from the kitchen. You stuck the pieces into a real potato with little spikes on the back. That caused problems. Moms complained that their potatoes were disappearing. Kids left decorated potatoes under beds and in closets until they rotted and sprouted. The spikes on the plastic parts were sharp and safety concerns grew. So, in 1964, Hasbro started including a plastic potato body in the box. No more stolen produce. No more rotten potatoes under the bed. The parts got rounder, safer, and bigger. Kids made endless combinations. Glasses where the mouth should go. Ears on top of the head. A mustache on the forehead. A pipe sticking out of an ear. Every child created a monstrous, ridiculous face at least once and laughed until they cried. Mr. Potato Head got a wife, Mrs. Potato Head, and a whole family of accessories. Decades later, he became a movie star in Toy Story and found a whole new generation of fans. But the version of the 1960s and 1970s, with the hard plastic body and the box full of loose pieces that you could never find again, belongs to the Baby Boomers. Somewhere in your parents' house, there is still a single plastic Mr. Potato Head ear, sitting alone in a drawer. Number 46. Weebles. Weebles wobble, but they don't fall down. In 1971, Hasbro's play school line introduced Weebles, and that slogan became one of the most famous jingles in toy history. Weebles were little egg-shaped people with weighted bottoms. Pushed them over, and they rocked back upright. Pushed them again, and they popped back up. No matter how hard you knocked them, they would not stay down. Little kids found this endlessly fascinating. They would push a Weeble over a hundred times just to watch it pop back up. They would line them up, knock them all down, and watch them all rise again like an army that refused to be defeated. Weebles came in families, with mothers, fathers, kids, and pets. Then came the play sets, the Weebles tree house, the Weebles circus, the Weebles playground, and the most famous one of all, the Weebles haunted house, where little Weebles could be scared by a glowing ghost. What made them perfect for toddlers was their shape. No arms or legs to break off. No small parts. A Weeble was basically indestructible, and a two-year-old could hold one in each hand and carry them around all day. Weebles stayed popular through the 1970s and came back several times. Today, people still use the phrase "Weebles wobble but they don't fall down" to describe someone who keeps getting back up no matter what life throws at them. That is a pretty great legacy for a little plastic egg with a smile painted on its face. Number 45. The Fisher Price Play Family. In the late 1960s, Fisher Price introduced a line of play sets that would become legendary. The Play Family farm, the Play Family house, the school, the garage, the airport. Each set came with chunky little wooden and plastic people, round heads on cylinder bodies, and a cheerful play set to put them in. The figures later became known as little people. The farm came with a barn that made a "moo" sound when you opened the door. These toys were built for small hands. The people fit perfectly between a toddler's fingers. The houses had doors that swung, garages with ramps and elevators, and a parking lot where the little cars rolled down and around. Kids would spend hours moving the little people through their day. Wake up. Go to school. Visit the farm. Drive to the airport. Go to bed. It was a whole world in miniature. The original little people were small. Many of them were small enough that they could pose a choking risk. And in later years, Fisher Price made the figures bigger and chunkier for safety. But the original versions, the slim little wooden and plastic people with their simple painted faces are the ones Baby Boomers and Generation X remember most fondly. Many families still have a box of them in an attic somewhere, waiting for grandchildren. The farm with the mooing barn door has become a symbol of 1970s childhood. Open it and you can practically hear it. That was the sound of a quiet afternoon in the living room, a toddler on the carpet, and a whole tiny world unfolding. 44. Little Kittles In 1966, Mattel released a line of tiny dolls that became a collecting obsession. Little Kittles were small. Really small. Some were less than an inch tall. Others stood a few inches. They had big heads, rooted hair, and sweet painted faces. And they came in endless varieties. There were Kittles in little storybook settings, like nursery rhyme characters. There were Kittles inside tiny lockets you could wear around your neck. There were cologne Kittles sitting inside little perfume bottles. There were Kittles in tiny ice cream cones. Kittles in lollipops. Kittles in jewelry. For little girls, they were like treasure. Small enough to fit in your pocket so you could carry them to school, to church, to grandma's house. Small enough to hide in your hand. Small enough to collect dozens. Each one had its own name and its own world. Girls would trade them at recess and compare collections like baseball cards. The tiny size was also their weakness. Kittles disappeared into couch cushions, down heating vents, under car seats. Little brothers buried them in the backyard. Moms vacuumed them up by accident. Few girls ever kept a full collection. Mattel kept the line going until the early 1970s, when it faded away. Today, little Kittles are serious collector's items. And a complete original set with all its tiny accessories can be worth a lot of money. Women who grew up in the 1960s talk about them with a special kind of affection. They were not just dolls. They were secrets you could hold in your palm. Number 43. Chatty Cathy. In 1960, Mattel released a doll, The Talk. Chatty Cathy was a little girl doll with freckles, a blonde or brunette bob, and a pull string on her back. Pull the string, and she said one of 11 phrases. "I love you. I hurt myself. Please take me with you. Tell me a story. May I have a cookie?" It was one of the first talking dolls ever mass produced. And kids lost their minds. Inside her body was a tiny record and a needle, powered by the spring in the pull string. The same technology Mattel later used in the CNC. The phrases came out in random order, so you never knew what Cathy was going to say next. Later versions of Chatty Cathy were voiced by June Foray, the actress famous for voicing Rocky the Flying Squirrel in the Rocky and Bullwinkle show. Chatty Cathy became one of the best-selling dolls of the 1960s, second only to Barbie. Girls pulled her string thousands of times. And eventually, the voice box started to wear out. Her voice got slow and low and garbled. "I love you," in a deep, creepy drawl. Many women who grew up with Chatty Cathy remember the day she started sounding like a horror movie. Some were so scared, they hid her in the closet. Mattel made Chatty Cathy through the mid-1960s, and she spawned a whole family of talking dolls and toys. Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone even did a famous episode called Living Doll about a talking doll named Talkie Tina who threatens the family. Everybody knew exactly which doll they were talking about. Number 42, Mrs. Beasley. In 1966, CBS premiered a sitcom called Family Affair. It was about a bachelor raising his late brother's three children in a New York apartment. The youngest girl, Buffy, carried a doll everywhere she went. A plump, grandmotherly doll in a blue polka dot dress with little square glasses perched on her nose. Her name was Mrs. Beasley, and in 1967, Mattel made her available to every little girl in America. The Mattel Mrs. Beasley had a soft body, a vinyl head, and those famous square glasses. She had a pull string, and when you pulled it, she spoke in a gentle, grandmotherly voice, offering soothing little phrases. Girls who watched the show wanted to be just like Buffy. They carried Mrs. Beasley to the grocery store, to bed, to the dinner table. She became a security blanket for an entire generation. And then, the glasses. Every Mrs. Beasley owner lost the glasses. Every single one. They were small plastic frames that slipped off at the slightest touch, and they disappeared into the same void as light bright pegs and mousetrap balls. Today, original Mrs. Beasleys with their glasses intact are rare and valuable. Family Affair ran until 1971, and the young actress who played Buffy, Anissa Jones, sadly died young in 1976. That tragedy gave Mrs. Beasley a bittersweet place in pop culture memory. But for the girls who loved her, Mrs. Beasley was pure comfort. A doll who looked like a grandmother, who talked like a grandmother, and who made a little girl feel safe. Number 41. Chrissy and the Growing Hair Dolls. In 1969, Ideal released a doll with a secret. Chrissy was an 18-inch doll with long, auburn hair. But she had a button on her tummy and a knob on her back. Pushed the button and pulled her ponytail, and her hair grew longer. Turned the knob on her back, and it pulled back in short again. A doll with a growing hairstyle. Girls could give her a short bob in the morning and long, flowing hair by afternoon. Chrissy was not the first. Back in 1963, the American Character Company had released Tressie, a fashion doll whose hair also grew, controlled by a little key in her back. But Chrissy took the idea and made it a phenomenon. She was a different kind of doll from Barbie. Bigger, younger looking, less about fashion, and more about hair play. Ideal soon released a whole family. Her cousin Velvet in 1970, with blonde growing hair. Then Carrie, Mia, Tressie again, Cinnamon, and others, each with their own growing hair trick. Girls spent hours brushing, braiding, and styling. They gave Chrissy ponytails, pigtails, buns, and wild 1970s hairstyles they saw on television. Of course, the hair mechanism eventually wore out, or got tangled, or the ponytail got pulled out by a jealous little brother. Many Chrissy dolls ended up with a single tuft of hair sticking out of their head. But for a time, Chrissy was the doll every girl wanted. Today, collectors hunt for originals still in the box. And women who had one remember the feeling of pushing that tummy button and pulling her hair out. Longer and longer. It felt like magic. Here is where things get painful. If you grew up in the 1960s or 1970s, there is a very good chance your mother threw away your toys. Maybe you went off to college, and when you came home, your room had been turned into a sewing room. Maybe your family moved, and the movers left boxes behind. Maybe there was a basement flood, a garage sale, or a spring cleaning that went too far. Somehow, the G.I. Joe's, the Hot Wheels, the Barbies, the Easy Bake Oven, and the comic books just vanished. And then, decades later, you find out what those toys are worth. Original G.I. Joe's in good condition can sell for hundreds or thousands of dollars. Rare Hot Wheels Red Lines can sell for thousands. Early Star Wars figures in their packages can be worth even more. Every adult who grew up in that era has a story about the toy that got away. My mom gave my comic books to the church rummage sale. My dad sold my train set at a yard sale for two dollars. My little brother traded my Johnny 7 for a bag of marbles. But here is the thing. The toys were valuable precisely because almost everyone threw them away. If every kid had kept their toys in perfect condition, they would be worth nothing. The value came from loss. And maybe there is something right about that. These toys were meant to be played with, broken, lost, and loved until they fell apart. A G.I. Joe that spent five summers in a sandbox fighting imaginary wars lived the life it was made for. Your mother did not ruin your childhood. She just ended it the way all childhoods end. One box at a time. 40. Dance Arena In 1968, Mattel released a ballerina doll that could actually dance. Dance Arena was a slender doll in a pink tutu and leotard with a crown on her head that looked like a little tiara with a button on top. Pushed down on the crown and Dance Arena spun on her toes in a graceful pirouette. Moved the button and her arms moved too. She leaned, bowed, twirled, and danced. For little girls who wanted to be ballerinas, Dance Arena was a dream. She came out at a time when girls across America were taking ballet lessons in church basements and community centers, wearing pink tights and practicing positions in their living rooms. Dance Arena was the perfect dancer. Always graceful, always on her toes, never tripping over her own feet the way real eight-year-olds did. The commercials showed Dance Arena twirling across stages and into the hearts of young girls. And in real life, she did spin beautifully. As long as her batteries were fresh and the floor was smooth, on carpet, she struggled. On wood floors, she flew. Girls would play music on the record player and make Dance Arena perform recitals for their families. Mattel also released a smaller version called Baby Dance Arena. The doll was popular for several years before fading away. Today, original Dance Arenas are collector's items, especially when their delicate crowns still work. But for the girls who had her, she was more than a doll. She was a promise that someday they might dance just like her. Number 39. Dawn Dolls. In 1970, Topper released a line of fashion dolls that challenged Barbie directly. Dawn was a small doll, just about six and a half inches tall, much shorter than Barbie's 11 and a half inches. She had long flowing hair, big eyes, and a closet full of glamorous outfits. And she came with friends: Angie, Jessica, Glory, Dale, and a whole cast of characters, including boyfriends like Gary, Kevin, and Ron. Because Dawn was smaller, her outfits were cheaper, and girls could collect more of them. The fashions were pure early 1970s glamour. Shimmering gowns, mod mini dresses, fur-trimmed coats, sparkling evening wear. Topper sold a Dawn fashion show stage with a runway, and girls could have their dolls walk down it like models at a real fashion show. Some versions even had a mechanism that made the dolls glide along the runway. Dawn had a short but brilliant life. Topper was already struggling financially, and in the early 1970s, the company collapsed into bankruptcy. Dawn disappeared from shelves almost as fast as she appeared. Girls who loved her were left with whatever they had already collected. That short lifespan made Dawn a cult favorite. Today, women who grew up with her talk about her with real affection. And collectors pay good money for original dolls and outfits. She was the little doll who dared to take on Barbie. She lost the war, but she won the hearts of thousands of girls who preferred her smaller size, her sparkling style, and her whole fabulous gang of friends. Number 38. Baby Alive. In 1973, Kenner released a doll that did something no doll had done quite so convincingly before. Number 4. Baby Alive ate. You mixed up little packets of special doll food with water, spooned it into her mouth, and she chewed. Her mouth moved, her cheeks moved, and the food disappeared. And then, because Baby Alive was very much alive, the food came out the other end, into her diaper. Girls were absolutely fascinated. Here was a doll that needed to be fed, burped, and changed, just like a real baby. Little girls took it very seriously, playing mother with a level of commitment that impressed their own mothers. They fed Baby Alive breakfast, lunch, and dinner. They changed her diaper. They washed her bottle. It was baby care training disguised as a toy. And then, there were the messes. The doll food was not always easy to clean out. If you did not wash Baby Alive properly, the leftover food inside could go bad. And you ended up with a doll that smelled like something had died inside her. Mothers spent a lot of time rinsing Baby Alive out in the bathroom sink. Some girls figured out they could feed her real food, like applesauce or pudding, which usually ended badly. But Baby Alive was a huge success. Kenner kept making her for years, and she has come back in many new versions over the decades. Today, little girls still feed Baby Alive and change her diaper. But it all started in 1973, with a chewing doll and a mother wondering how exactly to clean pureed peas out of a plastic baby. Number 37. Twist and Turn Barbie. Barbie came out in 1959, so she is not exactly forgotten. But in 1967, Mattel pulled off one of the cleverest marketing moves in toy history. It released Twist and Turn Barbie. She had a bendable waist that let her twist and pose like a real model. She had real eyelashes, a softer face, long straight hair, and a mod 1960s look. And Mattel announced a deal. Bring in your old Barbie doll, plus a small amount of cash, about a dollar and a half, and you could trade her in for a brand new Twist and Turn Barbie. Girls across America took the deal, hundreds of thousands of them. They walked into stores with their beloved old Barbies, handed them over, and walked out with the new modern version. It was incredibly successful. And it also meant that thousands of the original early Barbies were taken off the market. Some of those early Barbies would be worth a fortune today. Twist and Turn Barbie was a symbol of a changing America. The 1960s were in full swing. Fashion was getting younger and wilder. Mini skirts, go-go boots, and bold colors were everywhere. Barbie got a makeover to keep up. She also got new friends, like Stacy and Francie, and a whole new mod wardrobe. Girls loved being able to pose her in a twist, as if she were dancing at a party or walking down a runway. Many women who traded in their old Barbie still wonder what happened to her. Some still feel a little pang of guilt. You traded in your best friend for a younger model. Mattel made it so easy. Number 36. Mr. Machine. In 1960, Ideal released Mr. Machine, and he was one of the most memorable robots of the decade. He stood about 18 inches tall, with a clear plastic body so you could see all his gears inside. Red arms and legs, a big round face, and a black top hat. You wound him up with a key, and he walked forward, swinging his arms, clanking, ringing a bell, and opening and closing his mouth. And he had a slogan everyone remembered. Here he comes! Here he comes! The greatest toy you ever saw! But Mr. Machine had a second trick. He came apart. Kids could take him apart piece by piece, gears and all, and put them back together again. Ideal advertised that you could take him apart and rebuild him, which made him an educational toy and a robot at the same time. Kids saw how wind-up machines actually worked. They learned about gears, springs, and mechanics. Of course, most kids took him apart and never got him back together quite right. Pieces went missing. He walked crooked. He walked backward. He stopped walking altogether. But that did not matter. Mr. Machine was a symbol of the early 1960s, when America was fascinated by robots, space travel, and the gleaming technological future. He was designed by the Chicago firm of Marvin Glass, the same people behind Mousetrap and Rock'em Sock'em. Ideal brought him back in later years with updates. But the original 1960 Mr. Machine, with his clear body and his ringing bell, is the one collectors want. And the one kids remember marching across the kitchen floor. Number 35. Robot Commando. In 1961, Ideal released another robot. And this one was built for battle. Robot Commando was a big blue robot with a dome head and a mean look, about 19 inches tall. Here was the selling point. The box claimed, "He responded to your commands." He spoke into a microphone on a remote control, and the robot would move, turn, and attack. He could fire missiles from his arms and launch balls from his head. It was not quite as magical as it sounded. The control system was primitive, and kids quickly learned that the robot was not actually listening to their words. But in 1961, the illusion was good enough. A boy could stand in his living room, give orders into a microphone, and watch a giant robot rumble across the floor, firing at his little sister's dollhouse. It felt like the future had arrived. Robot Commando also had a scary edge. His face looked menacing. Some little kids were genuinely afraid of him. He showed up at a time when science fiction movies were full of robots taking over the world. And Robot Commando looked exactly like the robot who would lead that invasion. Ideal did not make him for very long, which means original Robot Commandos are rare today, and very valuable to collectors. The missiles and balls almost always got lost, of course. But boys who had one remember standing in the living room, speaking into that microphone with total seriousness, and feeling, for just a moment, like a general commanding the machine army of tomorrow. Number 34. Johnny Astro. In 1967, Topper released Johnny Astro, and it was the closest thing a kid could get to flying a spaceship. The toy was a launch base with a big electric fan built into the bottom, aimed straight up. Above it floated a helium balloon carrying a little lightweight craft with a tiny astronaut. You controlled the direction of the fan with a joystick, and that blast of air pushed the balloon around. Your mission was to fly it up, over obstacles, and land it on the landing pad. The space race was at its peak in 1967. NASA was preparing for the moon. Every kid wanted to be an astronaut. Johnny Astro let you feel what it was like to pilot a craft through the air, using nothing but careful control and a lot of patience. It was a lot harder than the commercial made it look. The balloon drifted, bobbed, and floated off in directions you did not intend. Kids spent hours trying to land it perfectly. And then, the helium ran out. Every family with Johnny Astro faced the same problem. The balloon eventually sagged and drooped and needed more helium, which was not exactly sitting in the kitchen cabinet. Some families went to the party store for refills. Others gave up. And many balloons simply escaped, floating up and away into the summer sky, never to return. Johnny Astro was a brief but brilliant toy of the space age. Topper went bankrupt soon after. But for a kid in 1967, watching that little balloon rise up on a column of air felt like launch day at Cape Kennedy. Number 33, Major Matt Mason. In 1966, Mattel released Major Matt Mason, an astronaut action figure for the space age. He was about six inches tall, dressed in a white space suit with a fishbowl helmet. And he was bendable. Inside his rubbery body was a wire skeleton, so you could pose him in any position you wanted. Running, climbing, floating, kneeling. That was revolutionary in 1966. Mattel built a whole universe around him. There were other astronauts, like Sergeant Storm, Doug Davis, and Jeff Long. There was an alien friend named Callisto. There was a space station, a moon crawler, a jetpack, a space sled, and all kinds of gear. Major Matt Mason was, for a few years, the ultimate space toy. He arrived just as the Gemini and Apollo programs were capturing the imagination of every American kid. After Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon in 1969, kids across America already had their own astronauts walking on their bedroom floors. The wire skeleton was his weakness. Bend him back and forth enough times, and the wire inside snapped. His arm would go limp, his leg would hang loose, and his rubbery skin would get sticky over time. Almost every boy who owned one eventually had a Major Matt Mason with at least one floppy limb. Mattel stopped making him in the early 1970s as interest in space began to fade. But he remains a cult favorite. Tom Hanks, who has spent much of his career celebrating the space program, has talked about loving Major Matt Mason. And for years, there was talk of a movie. For the kids who had him, he was proof that someday, they might walk among the stars too. Number 32. Captain Action. In 1966, Ideal released an action figure who could be anyone. Captain Action was a 12-inch hero in a blue uniform with a captain's hat. That alone was not very exciting. But his trick was this: you could buy separate costume sets that turned him into other famous heroes. Superman, Batman, Captain America, Aquaman, The Lone Ranger, The Phantom, Flash Gordon, Sergeant Fury. Each set came with a costume, a mask, and accessories. Strip off his uniform, put on the Superman suit and mask, and suddenly he was the Man of Steel. It was a brilliant idea. Instead of buying a dozen different figures, you bought one figure and a dozen outfits. Each outfit cost a few dollars, and kids wanted every single one. Ideal also released a sidekick called Action Boy, who could become Robin, Superboy, or Aqualad. And a villain called Dr. Evil, a blue-skinned alien with an exposed brain who was Captain Action's enemy. The masks were the best part. Rubbery, slightly creepy faces you stretched over Captain Action's head. They never quite fit right, and he always looked a little strange wearing them. But kids did not care. They had Superman in their hands. They had Batman. Captain Action had a short life, only a few years in the late 1960s. Superhero licensing deals changed, and Ideal moved on. But he became a legend among collectors, and original costume sets in their boxes are worth serious money today. For one shining moment in 1966, Captain Action let kids own every superhero at once. Here is something the toy industry does not like to admit. The 12-inch action figure was killed by oil. In 1973, an oil embargo sent fuel prices soaring across America. Gas lines stretched around the block. And because plastic is made from petroleum, the price of plastic shot up too. Suddenly, those big 12-inch figures with their elaborate costumes and accessories were much more expensive to make. Toy companies started looking for ways to cut costs. G.I. Joe, the king of 12-inch figures, got hit hard. In 1976, Hasbro shrank him down to an 11-and-a-half-inch version. By 1977, it introduced Super Joe, a smaller 8-inch figure. And in 1978, Hasbro stopped making G.I. Joe entirely. Other big figures faded too. Then, in 1977, a small toy company called Kenner did something that would change everything. When it got the license for a little space movie called Star Wars, it decided to make the figures just three and three-quarter inches tall. That was partly to save money on plastic. And partly so they could sell vehicles and spaceships that fit the figures. The decision was revolutionary. Smaller figures meant cheaper figures. Cheaper figures meant kids could own the whole cast. And spaceships and playsets could be built big enough to impress. Within a few years, the three and three-quarter-inch figure became the standard of the entire toy industry. Even G.I. Joe came back in 1982 at that smaller size. An oil crisis in the Middle East changed the toys in every American bedroom. Most kids had no idea. Number 31. Johnny West. In 1965, Lewis Marks and Company released Johnny West, the star of its "Best of the West" line. He was a 12-inch cowboy with a molded plastic body, a rugged face, and a whole collection of hard plastic accessories. Hat. Vest. Chaps. Rifle. Tistol. Canteen. Saddle. Lariat. Coffee pot. Frying pan. Everything a cowboy needed. And then came his horse, Thunderbolt. A big plastic stallion with a saddle and reins. Westerns ruled American television in the 1960s. Bonanza. Gunsmoke. The Rifleman. Rawhide. Every boy wanted to be a cowboy. Johnny West let them live out those adventures on the living room carpet. Marks expanded the line with a whole frontier family. Jane West. Their kids. Jamie. Jay. Josie. And Janice. Then came Chief Cherokee. Geronimo. General Custer. Sheriff Garrett. Captain Maddox. Fighting Eagle. And even a covered wagon. A buckboard. And a fort. The accessories were incredible. They were made of a hard, colorful plastic. And every figure came with a whole bag of them. Kids lost most of them within a week. Little pistols ended up in the vacuum. Hats ended up in the sandbox. But the figures themselves were nearly indestructible. They survived years of play. Being thrown off the back porch. Buried in the yard. And dragged behind bicycles. Marks stopped making the line in the mid-1970s. And the company itself faded soon after. But Johnny West remains one of the most beloved toys of the era. For a generation of boys. He was the frontier. The cowboy. And the hero. All in one. Number 30. Big Jim. In 1972. Mattel released Big Jim. Its answer to G.I. Joe. Big Jim was about nine and a half inches tall. Which made him smaller than Joe. But he was buff. Really buff. He had big biceps. A square jaw. And a sporty look. And his signature move. Was the karate chop. Squeeze his arm. And his bicep flexed. And his arm swung down in a powerful chop. Big Jim came with a little block of breakable plastic or wood. So kids could watch him chop it in half. Big Jim was not a soldier. He was an all-American athlete and adventurer. Mattel released him with sports equipment. Camping gear. Boats. And vehicles. There was a camper. A sports camper. A rescue rig. A boat. And all kinds of outdoor adventures. Later. Mattel expanded the line. With friends like. Big Josh. Big Jack. And Big Jeff. And then came. The pack. Which stood for. Professional agents. Crime killers. Giving big Jim. A more action hero. Crime fighting twist. The karate chop. Was the selling point. That made boys want him. In the early 1970s. Martial arts. Were exploding in popularity. Bruce Lee movies. Were in theaters. The TV show. Kung Fu. Was on the air. Every kid on the playground. Was practicing karate chops. On each other. Big Jim. Let them do it. With their toy. Big Jim. Was more popular. In Europe. In some ways. Than in America. But he had. A devoted following. Here too. Boys who had him. Remember. Squeezing that arm. Over and over. Watching his muscles. Flex. And his arms. Swing down. Big Jim. Was the strong man. Of the toy box. Number 29. Mego's. World's. Greatest. Superheroes. In 1972. A toy company. Called Mego. Released a line. Who changed. Superhero toys. Forever. The world's. Greatest. Superheroes. Or 8 inch. Action figures. With cloth. Costumes. Superman. Batman. Robin. Aquaman. Captain America. Spider-Man. Tarzan. The Joker. The Penguin. The Riddler. Wonder Woman. The Hulk. And many more. For the first time. Kids could buy figures. Of both DC. And Marvel heroes. In the same line. The figures. They shared a basic. Body design. And the costumes. Did the work. Each one. Had a fabric suit. Plastic boots. And sometimes. Capes. Belts. And masks. They were poseable. With jointed arms. And legs. And they were sold. In big boxes. And on blister cards. In department stores. Across the country. They also made playsets. Like the Batcave. The Batmobile. And the Hall of Justice. If a kid. Wanted a hero. Mego. Had him. The costumes. Were where things. Got funny. Spider-Man's outfit. Was a little baggy. The Hulk. Had a soft. Lumpy look. Capes. Got lost. Almost immediately. Boots. Fell off. And vanished. Into the carpet. Care. For the first time. They could have Batman. Fight the Joker. On their bedroom floor. Mego. Sold millions. Of figures. In the 1970s. And it became. One of the biggest. Toy companies. In America. Today. Collectors. Call the 1970s. The Mego. Era. And original Mego. Figures. In good condition. Are worth. Serious money. For a generation. Of kids. Those 8 inch. Heroes. In cloth suits. Were their first.
[02:18:55] Speaker ?: Introduction.
[02:18:55] Speaker 1: To the superheroes. in theaters. Around the world. Number. 28. Mego's. Planet of the Apes. In 1968. Planet of the Apes. Hit movie theaters. And terrified. And thrilled. Audiences. Charlton Heston. Crash lands. On a planet. Where apes rule. And humans. Are animals. The movie. Spawned sequels. And a television series. And in the mid. 1970s. Mego. Turned it. Into a toy line. That became. One of the company's.
[02:19:25] Speaker ?: Biggest hits.
[02:19:25] Speaker 1: The figures. Were eight inches tall. Just like. Mego's. Superheroes. With cloth costumes. And highly detailed. Ape faces. Cornelius. Zira. Dr. Zaius. General Urko. General Ursus. Galen. And the. Human astronauts. Meego.
[02:19:42] Speaker ?: Mego.
[02:19:42] Speaker 1: Meego. Meego. Was a sensation. In the early 1970s. There were. Lunchboxes. Comic books. Trading cards. And. Halloween costumes. And the.
[02:20:05] Speaker ?: Meego.
[02:20:05] Speaker 1: Figures. Were at the center.
[02:20:07] Speaker ?: Of it.
[02:20:07] Speaker 1: Meego.
[02:20:08] Speaker ?: Also.
[02:20:08] Speaker 1: Had huge success. During those years. With its. Star Trek line. Featuring. Kirk. Spock. McCoy. Scotty. Uhura. And. A large. Playset. But here. Is the twist. When a little movie. Called. Star Wars. Came along. In 1977. Meego. Reportedly. Passed. On the toy. License. Kenner. Took it. Instead. That decision. Is often called. One of the biggest. Mistakes. In toy history. Meego. Went bankrupt. In the early 1980s. But. Planet of the Apes. And. Star Trek. Inside. Their. Favorite. Movies. Number. 27. Micronauts. In 1976. Meego. Released. A line. Called. Micronauts. And. It.
[02:21:03] Speaker ?: Was.
[02:21:03] Speaker 1: Unlike. Anything. American. Kids. Had seen. Based. On. A Japanese. Line. Called. Micronauts. Made. By. The. Biotron. Microtron. Acroyer. Baron. Karza.
[02:21:22] Speaker ?: The.
[02:21:22] Speaker 1: Evil. Villain. With. Magnetic. Parts. They. Came. With. Vehicles. Spaceships.
[02:21:32] Speaker ?: And.
[02:21:32] Speaker 1: Bases.
[02:21:33] Speaker ?: But.
[02:21:33] Speaker 1: The. Real. Genius.
[02:21:36] Speaker ?: Of.
[02:21:36] Speaker 1: Micronauts. figure and attach them to a spaceship. You could take apart a vehicle and turn it into a robot. You could build anything you could imagine. Micronauts were part action figure, part building set, and part science fiction epic. They looked like nothing else on the shelves. Clear plastic bodies showing their inner workings, shiny chrome, strange alien shapes. Kids who had Micronauts remember them as the most futuristic toys they ever owned. And there were magnets. Baron Karza and Force Commander had magnetic limbs that could snap on and off. Marvel Comics even published a Micronauts comic book series, which became a cult hit of its own. The line lasted only a few years before Mego's financial troubles killed it. But kids who grew up with them never forgot them. Many of them grew up to be engineers, designers, and artists. And some credit Micronauts with teaching them to see that every machine is just parts waiting to be rearranged. 26. Shogun Warriors In 1979, Mattel brought giant Japanese robots to America. Shogun Warriors were huge. The biggest version stood about two feet tall, towering over every other toy in the room. They were based on robots from Japanese animated shows. Robots like Raideen, Gai King, Dragon, Great Mazinga, Kumbatra, and Deimos. Kids had never seen anything like them. Big, chunky, colorful, with fierce faces and armored bodies. And they fired things. The fists launched off their arms. Missiles shot out of their bodies. Swords and axes could be swung. Press a button and a fist rocketed across the room. Hitting your little brother right in the forehead. That was the dream. Kids lined up their Shogun Warriors and launched entire armies of spring-loaded fists across the living room. Safety concerns about small projectiles were rising at that time. Spring-loaded missiles and fists were exactly the kind of thing that worried regulators. Later toys from this era had their firing features changed or removed because of safety worries about children choking or getting hurt. Mattel's line did not last long. But for a brief moment in 1979 and 1980, Shogun Warriors were the coolest toys in America. They also introduced a lot of American kids to the giant robots of Japanese animation years before Transformers and Voltron made those robots famous. Original two-foot Shogun Warriors in good condition with all their fists and missiles are now treasured collector's items. Most of those fists were lost under couches across America by 1981. Number 25. The Six Million Dollar Man. Steve Austin. Astronaut. A man barely alive. Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology. In 1974, The Six Million Dollar Man premiered on ABC, starring Lee Majors as a test pilot rebuilt with bionic parts. He could run 60 miles per hour, lift cars, and see great distances with his bionic eye. And in 1975, Kenner put Steve Austin in every boy's hands. The figure was about 13 inches tall and he was packed with features. Look through the back of his head and you could see through his bionic eye, which magnified things. Roll up the rubber skin on his right arm and you saw bionic circuitry underneath. Pump his arm and he could lift a plastic engine block over his head. Kenner sold the engine block with the figure and kids lifted it over and over again. The figure even came in a red tracksuit, just like the TV show. Kenner built an entire world around him. There was Oscar Goldman, his boss, with an exploding briefcase. There was Maskatron, a villain robot with interchangeable faces. There was Bigfoot, a giant creature Steve Austin fought on the show. There was a bionic transport, a bionic mission vehicle, and a critical assignment arms set. And in 1976, Kenner released Jamie Summers, the bionic woman, so girls could join the bionic adventures too. Kids made the bionic sound effect, that famous na-na-na-na-na noise, every time Steve Austin used his powers. If you were a kid in the 1970s, you made that sound on the playground every single day. The $6 million man was the ultimate superhero of the decade, and he cost a whole lot less than $6 million. Number 24, the Johnny 7 OMA. In 1964, the Deluxe Reading Company, which also used the Topper brand, released what may be the most famous toy gun in American history, the Johnny 7, which stood for One Man Army. It was a massive plastic weapon, about three feet long, and it was seven guns in one. A grenade launcher, an anti-tank rocket, an armor-piercing shell, an anti-bunker missile, a repeating rifle, a machine gun with a clicking sound, and a detachable pistol that shot caps. Seven weapons, one toy. Boys went absolutely crazy. Johnny 7 was reportedly one of the best-selling toys of 1964. It cost around $12, which was a lot of money in 1964, but parents bought it anyway. Christmas mornings across America saw boys unwrapping the box and immediately launching plastic grenades at their sisters. The projectiles went missing within hours. The grenades flew into the neighbor's yard. The rockets shot onto the roof. The pistol vanished into the woods. By Valentine's Day, most Johnny 7s were down to about three working weapons, but it did not matter. Even half-functional, Johnny 7 was the ultimate symbol of playground warfare. It came at a time when war toys were enormously popular, before the Vietnam War turned many parents against them. By the late 1960s, as the war became controversial, toy guns like Johnny 7s started to feel different to many families. But for a few years, Johnny 7 was the king. Boys who had one remember exactly what it felt like: carrying it across the yard like a soldier. A one-man army in a backyard battlefield. 23. Clackers In the late 1960s and early 1970s, a toy swept across American playgrounds that sounded like machine gun fire. Clackers were two hard balls attached to the ends of a string with a handle in the middle. You held the handle and moved your hand up and down. The balls swung up and slammed into each other above your hand, then swung down and slammed together below it. Clack, clack, clack, clack. Kids who got good could keep them going for minutes, the balls flying faster and faster in a blur. Every school playground sounded like a war zone. Clack, clack, clack. Teachers hated it. Parents hated it. And the toy had a darker problem. The balls were originally made of hard-tempered glass or acrylic, and they hit each other with tremendous force. Sometimes, they shattered. When they did, pieces flew everywhere, and kids got cut, bruised, and even injured in the eyes. And when a kid lost control, the balls whipped around and smacked them in the face, the wrist, or the head. Federal safety officials stepped in. The government began pushing for safety standards, and the old hard balls were taken off the market. New versions used plastic that would not shatter. But by then, the craze was dying anyway. Here is the strange part. In 2017, a small town in Italy called Calamera held a competition for the toy, and it went viral online. A whole new generation discovered clackers. But for American kids of the early 1970s, they were a symbol of something wilder. A toy that hurt you, that annoyed every adult in the building, and that you could not stop playing with. The bruises on your wrists were a badge of honor. Number 22. Lawn darts. They were sold as a fun backyard game for the whole family. Lawn darts, sometimes sold under the brand name, jarts, were big, heavy darts about a foot long, with weighted metal tips and plastic fins. You set up two plastic rings on the grass, stood back, and threw the darts underhand in a high arc. They flew up into the air and came down point first, sinking into the lawn. Whoever landed closest to the ring scored. Here is what the box did not emphasize enough. These were heavy metal spikes falling from the sky. Kids did not throw them underhand. Kids threw them overhand. Kids threw them straight up and ran. Kids threw them at each other. Kids threw them over the house. Every neighborhood had a story about a near miss. And then, in 1987, a seven-year-old girl named Michelle Snow was playing in her backyard in Riverside, California. A lawn dart thrown by another child hit her in the head. She died. Her father, David Snow, began a campaign to have the darts banned. He discovered that thousands of people had been injured by lawn darts over the years, many of them children. He fought, lobbied, and pushed. And in December 1988, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission banned the sale of lawn darts in the United States. Many adults who grew up with lawn darts remember them fondly. But they were also, very literally, deadly. The ban remains in effect today. It is one of the clearest examples of a toy that every kid wanted, that every parent bought, and that should never have been sold in the first place. Number 21: The Water Wiggle In the early 1960s, Wham-O released a summer toy that looked like pure fun. The Water Wiggle was a long hose with a plastic head on the end, shaped like a goofy face. You attached it to the garden hose and turned on the water. The force of the water made the head whip and dance around wildly on the lawn, spraying water everywhere. Kids would run, jump, scream, and dodge it as it flopped and thrashed across the yard like a crazy water snake. On a hot summer day in 1965, this was paradise. No pool needed, just a hose, a lawn, and a wildly spinning water toy. Kids spent hours chasing it, getting soaked, laughing hysterically. Parents liked it because it kept kids busy and cool on hot afternoons. But the Water Wiggle had a hidden danger. The head was heavy, and it moved unpredictably. If a child leaned over it or fell onto it, it could strike them hard. And there were concerns about the head getting into a child's mouth. Tragically, two children reportedly died in incidents connected to the toy. In 1978, the Consumer Product Safety Commission announced a recall. The Water Wiggle that had been a beloved summer staple for years, was pulled from shelves. Wham-O later made safer, redesigned versions. But the original is now remembered in two ways: as one of the most fun summer toys of the 1960s, and as a reminder that some toys were more dangerous than anyone realized at the time. Here is where everything changed. In 1969, Congress passed the Child Protection and Toy Safety Act. Then, in 1972, it created the Consumer Product Safety Commission, a new federal agency with the power to regulate and ban dangerous products. Before that, there was very little oversight of what toy companies could sell to children. Hot plates, sharp spikes, heavy metal darts, shattering glass balls, chemicals, tiny parts. If a company thought kids would buy it, it went on the shelf. The new rules began changing the toy industry fast. Small parts that could choke toddlers got bigger. Sharp edges got rounded. Lead paint was restricted. Projectile toys got softer tips. Heating elements got safety covers. Toys with dangerous features started coming off the shelves, one by one. Many adults today joke that they survived toys that would never be sold now. Creepy crawlers with hot plates at 390 degrees. Lawn darts with metal spikes. Clackers made of shattering glass. But behind the jokes are real stories. Children were burned, cut, and blinded. Some died. The safety rules came about because parents like David Snow fought for them, often after losing their own kids. The toys on this list were wonderful, but some of them were also genuinely dangerous. Today, people sometimes complain that modern toys are too safe, too boring, too padded. But the truth is, a lot of grown-ups are alive and healthy today because somebody decided that a seven-year-old should not be playing with a toy that could kill them. The golden age of toys was golden, but it was also a little bit reckless. In 1961, Wham-O released a toy that turned every backyard into a water park. The slip and slide was a long strip of slick plastic that you laid out on the lawn and hooked up to the garden hose. Water sprayed out of little holes along the edge, coating the plastic. Then, you took a running start, threw yourself down on your belly, and slid. Fast. Really fast. Sliding all the way down the plastic, spraying water, and usually overshooting the end into the grass. On a hot summer day, nothing beat it. Kids lined up and took turns, getting faster and braver. They went on their bellies, their backs, their knees. They went two at a time. They added dish soap to make it slipperier, which made it much slipperier and much more dangerous. The neighbor kids came over. The whole block came over. The slip and slide became the summer event of the 1960s and 1970s. Of course, there were problems. Rocks and sticks under the plastic. Kids sliding off the end and into the fence. And when teenagers and adults started using it, injuries got worse. Grown-ups were heavier, and when they dove onto it, they could hit the ground hard enough to hurt their necks and backs. Years later, the Consumer Product Safety Commission warned that adults and teenagers should not use it. But for kids, it remained a summer staple. Whammo still sells it today. And the smell of a wet plastic slip and slide on hot grass mixed with sunscreen and summer is a memory millions of people share. Number 19, the Super Ball. In 1965, a chemist named Norman Stingley was experimenting with a synthetic rubber compound. He pressed it under high pressure and made a ball. When he dropped it, it bounced almost all the way back to where it started. And then it kept bouncing. He took it to Whammo, the company behind the frisbee and the hula hoop, and they released it as the Super Ball. The material had a special name: Zektron. The Super Ball bounced like nothing kids had ever seen. Drop it from your hand and it came back up almost to your hand. Throw it hard at the ground and it shot over the house. Bounce it in a hallway and it ricocheted off every wall, floor and ceiling like a bullet. Whammo sold millions of them. Kids bounced them in school gyms, on driveways, in their bedrooms. Some kids threw them so hard they broke windows. Some broke lamps. Some broke their own noses when the ball came back faster than expected. Here is the wildest part. In the late 1960s, a football team owner named Lamar Hunt watched his kids playing with a Super Ball. When the new championship game between the NFL and the AFL was being planned, Hunt jokingly suggested calling it the Super Ball, inspired by the toy. The name stuck. The biggest sporting event in America got its name from a little rubber ball that bounced too high. Super Balls are still sold today, but in 1965, there was nothing like that first throw, watching it bounce over your roof and disappear into the neighbor's yard forever. 18. The Nerf Ball In 1969, an inventor named Rain Geyer, one of the men behind Twister, was working on a game that used foam rocks. Testing it, he and his team started throwing the foam pieces at each other. They realized the foam itself was the real fun. They bought the idea to Parker Brothers, and in 1970, the world met the Nerf Ball. It was a four-inch ball made of soft polyurethane foam. You could throw it as hard as you wanted inside the house, and it would not break anything. The box made a famous promise. You could throw it indoors. It would not damage lamps or break windows. It could not hurt babies or old people. For kids who had been yelled at for playing ball in the house, this was liberation. Suddenly, you could play catch in the living room. You could throw at your brother's head. You could have a full basketball game in your bedroom. Parker Brothers reportedly sold around 4 million Nerf Balls in the first year. It became a massive hit, and the Nerf brand grew into footballs, basketball hoops, and eventually, the foam dart blasters that took over toy aisles decades later. The Nerf football, released soon after, was a particular favorite. It flew in a perfect spiral, and anybody could catch it without hurting their hands. For a generation of kids, the Nerf Ball was the first toy that adults actually wanted them to throw inside. Mom still yelled, of course, but at least now, nothing broke. Number 17. The Hippity Hop. It was a giant rubber ball with a handle on top, usually orange, sometimes red or blue. Some had a goofy face printed on them. In America, it was called the Hippity Hop. In Britain, it was the Space Hopper. The idea was simple. You sat on top, grabbed the handle or the horns, and bounced, bounce, bounce, bounce, across the yard, down the driveway, around the block. The toy was invented in Italy in the late 1960s, and swept across the world in the 1970s. Kids loved it, because it was ridiculous. You looked completely silly bouncing on a big orange ball, and you did not care. Races broke out in driveways. Kids tried to bounce over obstacles. They tried to bounce down stairs, which went badly. They bounced into each other, sending riders flying off into the grass. The Hippity Hop also had a habit of getting away from you. Bounce too high, and you shot off the side. Bounce on a slope, and you rolled down the hill. Bounce too hard, and you could fall off the back and land on your behind. Bruises were common. Laughter was more common. And eventually, every Hippity Hop got a puncture and slowly went flat. But the toy has become a symbol of the 1970s, especially in Britain, where people still talk about their space hoppers with deep nostalgia. In America, the Hippity Hop was a backyard legend. A toy that made every kid feel like a kangaroo. Number 16. Sit and Spin. In the mid-1970s, Kenner introduced a toy that gave toddlers a way to make themselves dizzy. On purpose. The Sit and Spin was a round, flat, plastic base with a smaller turntable on top, and a steering wheel in the middle. A toddler sat on the turntable, grabbed the wheel, and pulled it around hand over hand. The more they pulled, the faster they spun. Around and around. Faster and faster. Until the room was a blur, and they toppled off laughing. Little kids loved it. They spun until they could not stand up. They got off and staggered around the living room like tiny drunk sailors. Then got right back on and did it again. Parents loved it because it burned off energy. It was a perfect rainy day toy, keeping preschoolers busy for hours. Older siblings found other uses for it. They spun the little kids as fast as they could, much faster than the toddler could ever spin themselves. Some older kids tried to ride it themselves, which did not work well since the toy was built for small bodies. And sometimes, a spinning toddler flew off the side and crashed into the coffee table. But Sit and Spin remained a classic. It sold for years and has been reissued many times. If you grew up in the 1970s, you probably remember the specific feeling of spinning on one. The plastic wheel in your hands, the world whirling around you, and that delicious dizziness when you finally stopped. Number 15. The Green Machine. In 1975, a company called Empire released a ride-on toy that made the big wheel look tame. The Green Machine was a low, sleek, three-wheeled vehicle with a big green frame and two levers instead of handlebars. You sat low, almost lying back, with your legs out in front of you on the pedals. To steer, you pulled the levers, which turned the back wheels. And that meant one thing: spin-outs. Pull one lever hard, and the back of the Green Machine whipped around, sending you into a skidding spin. Kids did it over and over, spinning in circles on the driveway, peeling out, and racing. It felt like driving a real race car, low to the ground, steering with sticks. Compared to the Big Wheel, the Green Machine was faster, cooler, and a whole lot more dangerous-looking. The Green Machine was for slightly older kids. It was bigger and more expensive than a Big Wheel, and having one put you at the top of the neighborhood social order. Kids would line up and beg for a turn. The commercials showed kids spinning and drifting like stunt drivers, and real life was pretty much the same. Of course, the hard plastic wheels wore down fast on concrete, and many Green Machines ended up with lopsided, bald wheels that wobbled. But nothing could take away from how cool it felt. The Green Machine has been reissued in later years, but for kids in the mid-70s, it was the ultimate driveway machine. The sports car of childhood. Number 14, the Schwinn Stingray. In the early 1960s, kids in Southern California started customizing their bikes. They put on high-rise handlebars and long banana seats, making them look like the custom motorcycles of the era. An executive at Schwinn named Al Fritz heard about it, and saw an opportunity. In 1963, Schwinn released the Stingray. It had small 20-inch wheels, a long banana seat, high-rise ape hanger handlebars, and a sleek look that kids immediately loved. The Stingray sold for about $50, and it became a sensation. Within a few years, every bike company was copying the design. Kids rode them everywhere. To school, to the pool, to the corner store for candy. The banana seat was long enough for two kids, so you could give your friend a ride. The high handlebars made it easy to pop wheelies. The short wheelbase made it perfect for tricks and jumps. In 1968, Schwinn released the Crate series, Stingrays with even more style. The orange crate, the apple crate, the lemon peeler. They had springer front forks like motorcycles, five-speed stick shifters mounted on the top tube, and wild colors. The stick shifter was famously dangerous, and later safety concerns pushed it out. But in 1968, a kid on an orange crate was the king of the neighborhood. Today, original Stingrays and crates are prized by collectors and can sell for serious money. But for the kids who rode them, the Stingray was freedom. It was summer days with no adults, riding with your friends until the streetlights came on. Number 13. The Big Wheel. In 1969, Louis Marks & Company introduced a tricycle that changed childhood forever. The Big Wheel was a low-riding plastic trike with an enormous front wheel and two small back wheels. Kids sat low, almost on the ground, with their feet on pedals attached directly to the big front wheel. You pedaled hard, and you flew down the sidewalk with a loud, rumbling plastic roar. The Big Wheel was louder, faster, and cooler than any old metal tricycle. And it was built for little kids, usually ages three to eight. It was also much safer in one way. Because you sat so low, you were much less likely to tip over than on a tall metal tricycle. Marks sold millions. By the 1970s, every neighborhood in America had a fleet of Big Wheels racing up and down driveways, sidewalks, sidewalks, and cul-de-sacs. The sound was unforgettable. That grinding, rumbling roar of plastic wheels on concrete. You could hear a pack of Big Wheels coming from three houses away. Kids discovered that if you pedaled fast and hit the handbrake, you could do a spin-out, whipping the back end around. Every neighborhood had a hill, and every kid tried to ride a Big Wheel down it at full speed, which ended in glorious crashes. Eventually, the front wheel wore down to a bald, lopsided disc from all the skidding. Marks went out of business in the late 1970s, and the Big Wheel brand passed to other companies. But the original Big Wheel remains a symbol of 1970s childhood. Riding it felt like driving a motorcycle when you were four years old. 12. Tudor Electric Football Before video games, there was electric football, and it was the closest thing a kid could get to running his own NFL team. Tudor Games, led by a man named Norman Sasse, had been making electric football since the late 1940s. But in 1967, Tudor got a license from the NFL, and suddenly, kids could own teams painted in the colors of their favorite pro teams. The game exploded in popularity, selling millions of copies through the 1960s and 1970s, often featured prominently in the Sears Wish Book. The game was a big metal field painted like a football field, with little plastic players on bases. When you turned it on, the whole field vibrated. The players buzzed forward, propelled by the vibration and the little prongs on their bases. You set up your offense and defense, turned on the switch, and watched them go. The ball carrier was the guy with a little felt football tucked under his arm. Here is what really happened. The players did not go where you wanted them to. They spun in circles. They ran sideways. They ran the wrong way. Your quarterback ran into your own end zone. Your best running back buzzed in a slow circle at midfield while the defense shuffled past. Kids spent hours bending the prongs on the bases, trying to make players run straight. It almost never worked. And the buzzing. The loud, metallic, non-stop buzzing filled the house. But electric football was beloved. It let kids live their football dreams long before Madden. And anyone who played it remembers the frustration, the buzzing, and the joy of the rare play that actually worked. Here is where the countdown gets serious. In 1998, the Strong Museum in Rochester, New York, launched the National Toy Hall of Fame. Every year, it inducts toys that have shaped American childhood. Toys that lasted, that sparked creativity, that changed how kids played. Look at the list of inductees, and you will see a lot of names from this video. Etch-a-Sketch, Easy Bake Oven, G.I. Joe, Hot Wheels, Mr. Potato Head, Twister, The Big Wheel, Operation, Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots, The Fisher Price Chatter Telephone, The Nerf Ball, Spirograph, View Master. What do they all have in common? They were simple ideas done brilliantly. Most of them did not need batteries, screens, or complicated instructions. A knob that draws a line. A light bulb that bakes a cake. A ball that will not break a lamp. A mat with colored circles. They were tools for imagination. A kid could take a G.I. Joe and invent a hundred different stories. A kid could take a spirograph and make a thousand different patterns. The toys of the 1960s and 1970s came from a unique moment in American history. Post-war prosperity, the baby boom, television, plastics, and a country full of kids who had more free time than any generation before them. Toy companies were inventing new categories almost every year. Action figures, electronic games, ride-on toys, science kits. It was an explosion of creativity that has never quite been matched. And now we reach the top eleven. This is the top eleven toys that defined a generation. Number eleven. Kenner's SSP Racers. In 1970, Kenner released a toy car that screamed. SSP stood for supersonic power, and these little cars had a big metal flywheel inside. You stuck a long notched plastic strip called a T-stick into the car "and ripped it out as fast as you could." The teeth on the T-stick spun the flywheel at incredibly high speed, making a loud, high-pitched whine. Then you set the car down, and it shot across the floor like a rocket. The whine was the best part. Reeeeee! Kids would rip the T-stick over and over just to hear it scream. Then they would let it go, and the car would race across the kitchen, under the table, down the hallway, and slam into the wall. Some kids raced them on driveways and sidewalks. Kenner made all kinds of styles: drag racers, dune buggies, funny cars, and stock cars. Some versions had wild designs with big rear wheels and flames. Then, in the early 1970s, Kenner released Smash Up Derby. These were SSP cars designed to crash. You revved them up and sent them racing toward each other. And when they collided, their body panels flew off in all directions. Doors, hoods, trunks, all exploding off like a real demolition derby crash. Then you snapped them back on and did it again. Boys loved it. The T-sticks broke, the cars wore out, and the parts got lost. But the sound of an SSP flywheel spinning up remains one of the most iconic sounds of a 1970s childhood. If you grew up with them, you can hear it right now. Number 10. Aurora Slot Cars. In the 1960s, America went crazy for slot car racing. Adults built huge tracks in hobby shops and raceways across the country. And Aurora Plastics, the same company that made the monster models, brought the craze home with HO scale slot cars. In 1963, Aurora released the Thunderjet 500, and later, in 1971, the AFX line. These were tiny electric cars, small enough to fit in your palm, that raced around a plastic track with a slot in the middle. Each car had a little pin that fit into the slot, and metal pickups that drew power from the rails in the track. You held a trigger controller in your hand, squeeze it, and your car zipped forward. Squeeze harder, and it flew. The trick was knowing when to ease off. Go into a curve too fast, and your car flew off the track and across the room. The kids spent hours racing their friends, their brothers, their dads. Aurora sold huge figure 8 sets, banked curves, lap counters, and bridges. Christmas morning often met a dad on his hands and knees, snapping together track pieces while the kids watched impatiently. The cars came in amazing designs: Ferraris, Corvettes, Mustangs, Porsches, police cars, dump trucks, and the smell. Slot cars had a distinctive smell of hot electric motors that nobody ever forgets. The tracks gathered dust and got stored in the basement. The tiny pickup shoes wore out and needed replacing. Aurora eventually faded, and its line passed to other companies. But in the 1960s and 1970s, slot cars were where kids learned the thrill of speed, the agony of a crash, and the pure joy of beating their dad on a figure 8 track at 10 at night on Christmas. 9. Hot Wheels Redlines In 1968, Mattel launched a line of die-cast cars that changed the toy car forever. Matchbox cars from Britain had dominated the market for years. They were realistic and well-made, but they were slow. Mattel co-founder Elliot Handler wanted cars that were fast, really fast. So Mattel designed cars with low-friction wheels and thin axles that could fly down a track. They painted them in bright, shimmering, candy-colored paint, and they gave them a little red stripe on the tires. Collectors call them red lines today. The first set was called the Sweet 16. Sixteen cars, including the Custom Camaro, the Custom Corvette, and the Beatnik Bandit. They cost under a dollar each, and kids went wild. Mattel sold orange plastic track that you could build into loops, jumps, and drops. You could clamp the track to the kitchen table and send cars flying off the edge. Within a year, Hot Wheels were everywhere. Matchbox scrambled to catch up and released its own faster line called Superfast in 1969. Other companies jumped in too. Topper released Johnny Lightning in 1969, which were also fast and flashy. Johnny Lightning Cars even sponsored a real race car that won the Indianapolis 500 in 1970. Mattel also released Sizzlers in 1970, rechargeable cars that raced around the track on their own power. But Hot Wheels won the war. Today, rare red lines can sell for thousands of dollars. A pink prototype version of one rare car, the rear-loading Beach Bomb, has been valued at well over $100,000. But for kids in 1968, Hot Wheels were not investments. They were rockets. And every kid had a shoebox full of them. Number 8. Mattel Electronics Football In 1977, Mattel released a handheld game that looked like a calculator. It was a small plastic case with buttons and a little screen. On that screen were red dots of light, called LEDs. One dot was you, the other dots were defenders. You pressed buttons to move your dot up, down, and forward, dodging the defenders, trying to run the length of the field. If a defender touched you, you were tackled. The game beeped. Your score showed up on the screen. That was it. Red blips on a tiny screen. And kids absolutely lost their minds. Mattel Electronics Football became a massive hit, reportedly selling enormous numbers in its first couple of years. It was one of the very first handheld electronic games. And for many kids, it was their first taste of a video game they could hold in their hands. You could play it in the car, in your bedroom, under the covers with a flashlight after bedtime, and in the back of the classroom when the teacher was not looking. The beeping drove parents crazy. Beep, beep, beep, beep! Touchdown! Teachers confiscated them. Moms threatened to throw them away. But kids played them until the batteries died. Mattel followed with other handheld games like basketball, baseball, and others. And competitors like Coleco jumped in with games like Electronic Quarterback. The handheld game revolution had begun. It led directly to the Game Boy, which led directly to the smartphones in every pocket today. But it all started with a little red blip running down a tiny field. And kids who had one still remember exactly how to juke past the last defender. Number 7: Tonka Trucks. In 1946, a small company in Mound, Minnesota, called Mound Metalcraft, began making toy trucks out of steel. They named their toys after Lake Minnetonka, and the brand became Tonka. By the 1960s and 1970s, Tonka trucks were in nearly every American boy's sandbox. Dump trucks. Dump trucks. Bulldozers. Cranes. Fire trucks. Cement mixers. Jeeps. All made of thick pressed steel and painted in bright yellow, red, and green. In the mid-1960s, Tonka introduced the mighty Tonka line, led by the mighty dump truck. It was huge, rugged, and practically indestructible. Kids could sit on it. Kids could stand on it. Kids could drive it off the porch, bury it in the sandbox, leave it out in the rain, run it over with a bicycle, and it would keep going. The commercials showed Tonka trucks being stomped on and abused, still working perfectly. That toughness became the brand's legend. Kids spent entire summers in the sandbox with their Tonka trucks, building roads, digging holes, hauling dirt, and moving rocks. The trucks got scratched, dented, and rusted. The paint wore off, and they still worked. Many Tonka trucks were handed down from older brothers to younger brothers, to cousins, to neighbor kids. Some families still have the same Tonka truck from 1965, rusty and battered, sitting in a garage. Tonka eventually switched to more plastic over the years. But the original steel Tonka trucks of the 1960s and 1970s are the ones people remember. Heavy, solid, and nearly unbreakable. They were built like the real trucks your dad drove, and they lasted almost as long. Number 6. Stretch Armstrong. In 1976, Kenner released one of the strangest toys ever made. Stretch Armstrong was a muscular blonde man in swimming trunks, about 13 inches tall. And he stretched. You could grab his arms and pull them out to several times their normal length. You could stretch his legs, his neck, his whole body. And when you let go, he slowly shrank back to normal, like a rubber band in slow motion. How did he do it? Inside his rubbery latex skin was a thick gel made from corn syrup. That gel stretched and slowly returned to shape. Kids pulled him across the room. They tied him in knots. They had their friends grab his arms and legs and play tug of war. They stretched him across the doorway. They wrapped him around the bedpost. And every time, Stretch slowly, magically pulled himself back together. Then kids did what every curious kid does. They tried to find out what was inside. They poked holes in him. They cut him open with scissors. They chewed on him. And when Stretch got punctured, a thick, sticky, syrupy goo slowly leaked out. Some kids tasted it. It tasted sweet. Many Stretch Armstrongs ended their lives as a sticky, shrunken mess. Kenner released a whole family, including Stretch Monster, a green villain, and Stretch X-Ray. The line did not last long, but it became a legend. Original Stretch Armstrongs are now rare, partly because so many were cut open. The toy came back in later decades, and new generations got to stretch him. But for kids in 1976, Stretch Armstrong was pure gooey joy and the stickiest toy in America. Number five, Simon. In 1978, Milton Bradley launched an electronic game at the famous New York nightclub, Studio 54. That alone tells you how big a deal it was. The game was called, Simon. It was a round plastic disc with four big colored buttons, red, blue, green, and yellow. Simon lit up a button and played a tone. You pressed it. Then Simon lit up that button and another one. You pressed both. Then three. Then four. The pattern got longer and longer until you messed up. Then Simon let out an angry buzz. Simon was invented by Ralph Baer, the same engineer who created the first home video game console, and Howard Morrison. It sold for about $25, and it became one of the hottest toys of the late 1970s. Kids played it alone, trying to beat their high score. They played it with friends, passing it around. Parents played it after the kids went to bed, getting frustratingly addicted. The tones were unforgettable. Each color had its own sound, and together they made a musical pattern. Simon was simple, but it was brutally addictive. The longer the pattern got, the harder you concentrated. Your palms would sweat. Your heart would race. You would get to 15 or 20, and then press the wrong color, and Simon would buzz at you in that rude, nasty tone. Kids threw Simon across the room. Kids cried. Kids played again. Simon is still sold today, and it remains one of the best-selling electronic games ever made. But the original, with its big chunky buttons and its glowing colors, was the toy that turned the late 1970s electronic. Number four. The Evel Knievel Stunt Cycle. In the early 1970s, the most famous daredevil in America was Evel Knievel. He jumped his motorcycle over cars, buses, fountains, and canyons. He crashed spectacularly, and broke more bones than most people could name. Kids worshipped him. And in 1973, Ideal released a toy that let them become him. The Evel Knievel Stunt Cycle came with a bendable Evel Knievel figure, a motorcycle, and a launcher called the Gyro-Powered Energizer. You put the motorcycle in the launcher, then you cranked the handle as fast as you could. A wheel inside spun up, faster and faster, making a loud, whirring sound. And when you let go, the motorcycle shot out of the launcher and raced across the floor, with Evel Knievel riding it. You could set up ramps and make it jump. You could jump over toy cars, over the dog, over your little brother lying on the floor. The motorcycle flew through the air and usually crashed, with Evel tumbling off just like the real thing. Ideal sold millions. It was one of the hottest toys of the decade. Kids built elaborate ramps out of books, boards, and cardboard. They jumped the stunt cycle off the porch, down the stairs, and across the driveway. They made Evel crash so many times that his bendable limbs eventually broke. Ideal released a whole line of Evel Knievel toys, including a stunt stadium, a scramble van, and a canyon sky cycle. But the stunt cycle was the king. For kids in 1973, it was the ultimate toy. Not just because it was fun, but because it let them be the bravest, craziest man in America, for the price of a toy. Number 3. Home Pong In 1972, a television manufacturer called Magnavox released something called The Odyssey. It was the first home video game console ever sold, designed by an engineer named Ralph Baer, the same man who would later co-invent Simon. You plugged it into your television, and white squares and lines appeared on the screen. It had no sound and no color, so it came with plastic overlays you stuck on your TV screen to create backgrounds for different games. It was strange, primitive, and revolutionary. Then, in 1975, Atari released a home version of its arcade hit, Pong, sold through Sears under the tele-game's name. Pong was simple. Two paddles, one ball, bouncing back and forth across the screen. Beep, boop, beep. You turned a knob to move your paddle up and down. That was it. And families across America lost their minds. For the first time, you were controlling what happened on your television. Not watching, playing. Kids played for hours. Dads played against their kids. Grandparents tried it and got hooked. The whole family gathered around the TV, not for a show, but for a game. Home Pong sold out at Sears that Christmas, and a whole industry was born. In 1977, Atari released the video computer system, later called the 2600, and the video game era exploded. Today, billions of people play video games. It all started with a white dot bouncing between two white lines on a fuzzy television screen in somebody's living room in the 1970s. Beep, boop. The future had arrived. Number two. G.I. Joe. In 1964, Hasbro released a toy that invented an entire category. G.I. Joe was a 12-inch soldier with movable joints: arms, legs, elbows, knees, wrists, and neck. He came dressed as a soldier, sailor, marine, or pilot, with a whole world of uniforms and gear sold separately: rifles, helmets, backpacks, canteens, flamethrowers, parachutes. He cost around $4 and boys across America wanted one desperately. But here is the fascinating part. Hasbro was worried that boys would not play with dolls. Barbie was a huge success with girls, but boys in the 1960s would not be caught dead with a doll. So Hasbro came up with a new term: G.I. Joe was not a doll. He was an action figure. That phrase was born with G.I. Joe, and every toy you have ever called an action figure owes its name to him. G.I. Joe had a little scar on his right cheek, and on his right hand, the thumbnail was on the wrong side, an early mistake that became a way to identify originals. In 1970, as the Vietnam War made soldier toys controversial, Hasbro turned him into the adventure team, exploring jungles, diving for treasure, and fighting mummies. He got fuzzy flocked hair and a beard. In 1974, he got kung fu grip, rubbery hands that could grip things. In 1975, he got eagle eye, eyes that moved side to side when you moved a lever on the back of his head. G.I. Joe was the hero of an entire generation. He fought on every battlefield, in every sandbox, in every backyard in America. When rising plastic costs forced Hasbro to stop making him in 1978, it felt like the end of an era, and it was. But G.I. Joe came back in 1982, smaller, and he has never really left since. Here is the strange truth about number one. It was not really a toy at all. It was an empty box, and it might be the most famous toy story of the entire 1970s. It is the story of a movie nobody expected to succeed. A toy company that took a huge gamble, and millions of kids who were willing to wait for something they could not have yet. In May of 1977, a science fiction movie came out that changed everything. Lines wrapped around theaters. Kids saw it 5, 10, 20 times, and every single one of them wanted the toys. But there were no toys. Not yet. The movie had been a surprise hit, and toy manufacturing takes time. Molds have to be designed, factories have to be prepared, figures have to be produced. Christmas of 1977 was coming fast, and the toys would not be ready. So Kenner did something nobody had ever done before. Number one. The Kenner Star Wars Early Bird Certificate Package. Christmas of 1977, Kenner sold a box with no toys inside. It held a cardboard display stand, some stickers, a Star Wars Club membership card, and a certificate. That certificate was a promise. Mail it in, And sometime in early 1978, Kenner would send you four action figures. Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Chewbacca, and R2-D2. The box cost around $10, depending on the store. And parents bought it. Lots of them. The press laughed at it. Critics called it the Empty Box Campaign. Some stores refused to sell it. But here is what happened. But here is what happened. On Christmas morning, kids across America unwrapped a box with nothing to play with inside. And they were thrilled. Because it meant the toys were coming. It meant they would be among the very first kids on the planet to own Star Wars action figures. They filled out the certificate. Their parents mailed it in. And then they waited. Weeks. Months. Checking the mailbox every afternoon. Just like the kids who had waited for sea monkeys and X-ray specs. And then, in the spring of 1978, a box arrived with four little figures inside. Three and three-quarter inches tall. Luke. Leia. Chewie. R2. Kenner's Star Wars line went on to become one of the most successful toy lines in history, selling hundreds of millions of figures over the following years. Those small figures changed the entire toy industry. Every action figure line that came after, from G.I. Joe's return to Transformers to Marvel heroes, followed the path Kenner opened. But it started with an empty box. A box that taught us the best part of wanting something is sometimes the waiting. The checking of the mailbox. The dreaming. That is what this whole list really was. A hundred things we begged for. And a whole lot of waiting at the window. Here is my challenge. Go to your parents' attic, your basement, or the back of your own closet this week. Find one toy from this list. Just one. A Hot Wheels car. A light bright peg. A single plastic monkey. Then come back and tell me what you found. Tell me which toy you begged for and never got. And which one your mom threw away. I want to know if Stretch Armstrong gets more love than G.I. Joe. Because these were not just toys. They were the whole world. For a little while. And we were lucky to live in it.
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