Toys you played with as a kid

Slinky
Spirograph
My brothers hot wheels
Roller skates
Paint by number pictures
Polishing rocks to make jewelry
Making paper flowers
Making a doll house with furniture, curtains, rugs for my miniature dolls
Biking
Chalkboard
Bubble maker
Marbles
Ice skates
Tobogganing
 
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We didn't get many toys as children, but of course we played with all our friends toys....1960's..

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my sister below me and I both got scooters one year from our Granny..

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Then I was given a second hand Tressy doll.. from my friend. The thing about Tressy which was different to Barbie was that her Hair Grew... well my friend gave me the doll because the mechanism had stopped working and the hair no longer grew... but I loved that doll.. I made so many clothes for her.. she was really the only toy I owned... for years
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When I was maybe 10-12 my father brought home a used 8 ft redwood railroad tie, handed me a coffee can full of nails (various sizes & a hammer). I spent the next few days driving nails into that tie. It must have weighed 10 lbs more when I emptied the can, but I could drive a nail straight with 3 hits.
 
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birdy said:
@hollydolly I had grey skates like yours, not as colorful but they used a skate key and I'd skate over the slate sidewalk. I can still hear the way they sounded going over slate.

I remember a doll you pulled the hair on from a hole in the top of the head. Maybe it was Tressy. I never had that one.
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yes that was Tressy... you had to push her belly button, and pull her hair gently out the top of her head... . The one I was given had all the hair already pulled out but wouldn't go back, so that was fine by me I could make all sorts of Hairstyles with that...

I even took her to school for History projects and my teacher would dress her up in the fashions of the Eras we were discussing.. So, she was Marie Antoinette.. Cleopatra, Mary Queen of Scots, and so on... :D
 
hollydolly said:
5 stones.. the cheapest game in the world...which we played a lot.. and Hopscotch..and skipping with as many people as we could get in the rope..

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Had 3 sisters, never played 5-stone but hopscotch, jacks, jump rope, marbles, taste testing many Easy Bake cakes & I remember being dressed up with 'Shrinky-Dink' bracelets - all sibling challenges. Hate to say it, I was pretty good at them all, or at least in my mind.
 
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Bike riding would be my favorite but I also went swimming and sledding and ice skating. I had snow ball fights and rock fights but didn't like the rock fights. We played games and did dances too especially with hula hoops when that was popular. I played spy with my best friend in any building with an elevator in it. I played sports with the local boys like baseball, and listened to records with the girls while we sang along. Alone, I played with dolls a lot and danced to records.:)
 
When I was around 10 my parents bought me this game and I became obsessed with it for the next several years. The Stratomatic company had been around for years. They had a license with MLB and each year released game cards for each player and with the use of three dice I could recreate the previous MLB season. My friends and I formed leagues and during the summer we would recreate the previous season. Think of it as D&D for baseball nerds. We kept stats also so since there were no hand held calculators at the time , my math skills did improve by figuring out batting averages, pitchers ERA's and other stats by long hand. Lot's of fun times when it was too hot to play outside.

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I didn't have many toys when I was a kid, but I grew up on a dairy, so I had a lot of chores. Certain chores before school and certain chores after school.

But some of the chores were really fun. I loved feeding the baby goats and helping to round up the mother cows so they could feed their calves and check the piglets for parasites and various piglet illnesses. Getting milk from the milk-barn vat was my favorite early morning job when I was in kindergarten.

We played in the evenings. Me and my brothers had a lot of Tonka trucks and I had Lincoln logs and a scooter (motorless). We each had our own kites and BB guns and boxing gloves, and we went fishing almost every Saturday.


I just realized how Opie Taylor that sounds. :oops:
 
birdy said:
@PeppermintPatty I was always looking at those rock tumblers in the Sears catalog. Funny, I have a friend who polishes rocks currently. I asked her about it just the other day. I find it fascinating. I think she said she uses them to make jewelry.
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My parents had friends who were really into rocks. They would go rock hunting up at Thunder bay’s mines and would bring back a lot of amethyst and quartz. They had a store they used to sell stuff at. Thats how my parents got into it. It was also fun polishing up coloured glass from the beach.

I was really into polished rocks but not really into jewelry. Not long ago I was making hair jewelry and selling it on Etsy. I sold over 175 items. It was fun making stuff
 
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birdy said:
What type of toys do you remember playing with as a kid.
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We grew up in a poor neighborhood

Two broomsticks tied together with a board on the end made a shotgun

Rolling an old tire around

We made igloos with a mop squeezer thing (and snow)

One kid did have some silly putty


Rag Ball

Before baseball, there was rag ball

Just take a rag
Tie it in knots
You've got a 'ball'

Grab a stick....a broom stick is best
You've got a 'bat'

Put most anything flat out for 'bases'
You've got a 'ball diamond'

Most any back yard will do (rag balls don't go all that far)

Grab some neighborhood kids, you've got teams

Not enough kids?
The game of 'workup' comes into play
To first and back

No kids?
Got a dog?
Hit the rag ball, yer dog will bring it back
......or run off with it

Then the game of chase comes into play

Yeah, back in the day
before plastic balls and bats

There was rag ball

Let a kid use his mind, he'll come up with his own toys

Boredom never existed.....ever

'Play' was something you got to do

...after chores


Other stuff at hand, we considered our 'toy's
We never lacked

We might have been poor, but we were rich in spirit

A child's imagination is their greatest of toys

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Murrmurr said:
I didn't have many toys when I was a kid, but I grew up on a dairy, so I had a lot of chores. Certain chores before school and certain chores after school.

But some of the chores were really fun. I loved feeding the baby goats and helping to round up the mother cows so they could feed their calves and check the piglets for parasites and various piglet illnesses. Getting milk from the milk-barn vat was my favorite early morning job when I was in kindergarten.

We played in the evenings. Me and my brothers had a lot of Tonka trucks and I had Lincoln logs and a scooter (motorless). We each had our own kites and BB guns and boxing gloves, and we went fishing almost every Saturday.


I just realized how Opie Taylor that sounds. :oops:
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It sounds great!
 
Gary O' said:
We grew up in a poor neighborhood

Two broomsticks tied together with a board on the end made a shotgun

Rolling an old tire around

We made igloos with a mop squeezer thing (and snow)

One kid did have some silly putty


Rag Ball

Before baseball, there was rag ball

Just take a rag
Tie it in knots
You've got a 'ball'

Grab a stick....a broom stick is best
You've got a 'bat'

Put most anything flat out for 'bases'
You've got a 'ball diamond'

Most any back yard will do (rag balls don't go all that far)

Grab some neighborhood kids, you've got teams

Not enough kids?
The game of 'workup' comes into play
To first and back

No kids?
Got a dog?
Hit the rag ball, yer dog will bring it back
......or run off with it

Then the game of chase comes into play

Yeah, back in the day
before plastic balls and bats

There was rag ball

Let a kid use his mind, he'll come up with his own toys

Boredom never existed.....ever

'Play' was something you got to do

...after chores


Other stuff at hand, we considered our 'toy's
We never lacked

We might have been poor, but we were rich in spirit

A child's imagination is their greatest of toys

View attachment 343110
Click to expand...
Your post reminded me of this simple toy. It brought me hours of enjoyment and the neighborhood kids made up new "sports" using this simple ball.

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