Linda says: We used to join elastic bands together or sometimes get a long piece of elastic which was tied into a circle. Two people stood facing each other with the elastic round their ankles and there were different challenges you had to do before the elastic was raised up to their knees. Then you [...]
Toys
Now I always wanted a Scalextric… that was until I first saw TCR – Total Control Racing. Wow! It was like Scalextric but even better…. you could change lanes and overtake. Could a boy’s toy be more exciting? It got even better because some sets also had a jam car… which went slower than the [...]
This one is from the Fifties initially I think. There was the robot in the middle of a ring of questions… and you turned it around to point it to the question of your choosing. You then moved the robot into a second ring… of answers this time… And miraculously it would then point to [...]
Lots of my friends had Etch-a-sketches when i was a nipper… I had Fuzzy Felt. It was made up of little coloured felt shapes (I`m sure there were farmyard animals… I remember pigs, sheep and chickens) and you used to lay them out on a hard backed material background which they “stuck” to (sort of [...]
One of those toys that I knew of because it was heavily advertised, friends had it… but we never did. It was sort of like plaster of paris and a mould of some Disney character or Bugs Bunny or someone like that. You put the “magix mix” in the shaker mould with some water… shook [...]
It was a bit like lego for smaller people… brightly coloured and covered in little round ended plastic pointy bits which meant you could join the bits together to make things! You used to get little brochures to show you all the things you could create… I used to make a mean robot… a bit [...]
Ewwwwww! It came in a little plastic dustbin and it was green and horrible. We used to hold ours in our hands and squeeze it so it oozed out between our fingers. But miraculously it didn’t make your hands sticky… though woe betide you if you got it on your clothes because that meant they [...]
When I was a nipper it seemed that every brill game was made by one company… Ideal. (or maybe that’s because they advertised so much!) They made Kerplunk, Mousetrap, Operation, Buckaroo… basically everything that looked fun. But sadly like many of the big names then… Esso Blue, Brentford Nylons, Ronco, K-Tel, Double Diamond (I love [...]
Do you remember Clackers? I’m sure they were on the news in the early 1970′s because schools were banning them because they were too dangerous! They were two hard plastic marbles (about 5cm across) – each joined by a string to a ring that you put your finger through. You moved your hand up and [...]
This was right at the cutting edge when it came out around 1980. It was like Space Invaders from memory… but due to the limitations of screens at the time there were only about 5 aliens in each row. And once you’d destroyed the invaders you went onto a bonus screen… where if I remember [...]
It was one of the relatively early electronic games… about the same time as when Pacman burst onto the scene if I remember right. There were 4 coloured push pads which used to flash in sequence (with sounds)… and you had to copy it. I think the name was a play on “Simon says”. And [...]
He was around in the 70′s I think… and the premise was simple. A character that looked like a tanned body builder who you could pull as hard as you could… and he would always return to normal. Apparently you could buy clothes for him too… I wonder if they shredded like the Hulk’s when [...]
My sister had one of these… but everyone who I ask about it thinks I’m barking (unlike the puppy which was silent!) You had a little hand controller to operate Penny and her Dog… no batteries required it worked on air pressure from memory. “Take Penny Puppy Walker for a walk, she walks her dog [...]
