Denise wrote me and said that she was in the mood for a bit of nostalgia amid the gloom of quarantine and the political climate, so her request was for me to write about some of my favorite toys from my childhood.
Denise mentioned some other childhood things, but we may be doing a second round of Friends and Family due to surprising interest and lack of quarantine topics!
I'm going to try to keep this to the first decade-plus of my childhood and try to stay within the 1970s.
I'm sure there may be a toy that slides into the early 80s, but if that's the case, cut me a break!
When I was really small and living in Ohio, I remember three toys that I played with the most.
The era that I spent my toddler time was really the last one with not a lot of licensed products available, that was on the verge of changing as a few years later would see that age group catered to with tons of items from television shows.
I remember watching a lot of television then and wanting an American Airlines toy airplane.
Their commercials must have influenced me because I distinctly remember wanting an American Airlines plane and I do remember getting one.
However, I cannot be one hundred percent sure that it was an actual AA plane or an airplane that I just used it as or my mom wrote American on the side.
I was reading even then, so if it wasn't an actual plane I can imagine that I "needed" to have it written on it!
I also had the Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots of the time.
The Robots have stayed consistently in production through the years, but "Red Rocker" and "Blue Bomber" were larger in the day than if you purchased a new set today.
I always loved the little buzzer noise that was made when a punch landed that raised the head of the opponent!
The Robots were one of the rare toys that actually played as fun as they looked on the commercials.
Now that I think about it, I am very surprised that I didn't buy Ryan a set of them!
The other toy I remember playing a lot with there was pretty simple and one that I wish I still had.
My dad was never a person that brought me stuff home but at that time he was working at National Latex, a company that made playballs, balloons, etc.
The Hedstrom company that makes those items today is based in Ashland and I believe that Hedstrom swallowed up National Latex in those mergers that never seem to stop happening in business.
One day, he brought me home a small basketball (keep in mind my age) with the Cleveland Cavaliers brand-new logo on a plain brown ball.
Dad then cut the bottom out of a clothes basket and tacked it up on the wall for a hoop for me.
I must have played with that ball to the point of losing the logo.
I'd love to have that ball not only for the classic logo but for the memories.
Living here in the seventies provided a little payback in the toy world as I may have just missed the age of merchandising for toddlers, but I was in the crosshairs for the beginning of the action figure market.
I was in the first generation targeted for action figures just as toy manufacturers realized there was a market for boys to have their various heroes in plastic form and Mego somehow managed to grab a contract with Marvel and DC comics to have both companies allow their heroes under the same umbrella.
Those figures, particularly Batman and Robin fighting various battles against the Joker, Penguin, and Riddler were well-traveled and Mego was smart enough to discover the popularity of Star Trek in syndication to grab the contract to make figures of the series, so I was able to involve the Enterprise crew with Superheroes.
Mego also cranked out a few series of the Planet of the Apes figures, which I wanted at the time to add for adventures, but when you have a budget (what's changed?!) to stay under, the other figures were of higher priority.
I also had the Batmobile, Batcave, and USS Enterprise, but only the Batmobile and the side transporter unit on the Enterprise survives today.
The Batcave and Enterprise were made of softer plastic and hence not as durable as they could have been.
If I had the space to display these currently, I'm sure that I would have replaced both of them for display purposes.
I also had Evel Knievel and his motorcycle, which was nowhere near as cool or as useful as in the commercials and the Six Million Dollar Man, who was cool with "see-through bionic eye", but he was much larger in scale than the Mego collection and it had that Andre the Giant vs the Black Demon vibe whenever you attempted to play with the other figures.
The figures were played with, but not abused and that's why they are still here in pretty decent condition, but they were played inside more than outside, other than weekend trips to my parent's cabin in the mountains.
I never really liked those trips, but between the figures and another game, I managed to kill the time.
I usually spent my time in my area inside, but if heavily prodded I'd take the figures out to a small hill and play a bit before returning inside.
I tended to bring the Star Trek figures more on these trips as they could "land on a new world"!
I've never been much of an outside person and back then, I might have been even less of one!
I was usually playing a game, reading a book, or doing something inside far more than outside.
I had a few friends, but I preferred being by myself more and if I wasn't playing sports, I didn't spend a lot of time outside.
I played a lot of board games with my late Aunt Edna and although we played a lot of stuff like Monopoly, Clue, and Life, she really liked the Pop-O-Matic games, Trouble, and Headache too.
Edna liked all of those games, but she liked the games that had a small physical aspect to them like Don't Spill the Beans, Don't Break the Ice, and Operation.
I can still remember her mixing a cry and a groan when she would knock the little fellow through the ice!
Then as now, collecting sports cards were a big part of my life, but in the 70s the cards had a dual purpose.
I hadn't discovered Strat-O-Matic, but I did have a very simple dice baseball game with certain combinations of two dice ending in a result.
The results weren't tailored to a player's actual results, so the results were lucky and Mario Mendoza had the same chance of smacking a homer as Jim Rice, but it was still fun as I would lay my baseball cards out in a lineup and play the dice game.
I did a similar lineup and played electronic baseball at the beginning of the "Red Blip" sports games.
I didn't have anyone to play football or basketball games with, so I really didn't start playing those games until the mid-80s when I would play Statis Pro football with Ernie and two different basketball games- Strat O Matic's NBA and a game called the Ultimate College Basketball Game, which was very fun and I've recently written about Title Bout.
I didn't complete a lot of card sets in the 70s either as I only finished a 1978 and 79 baseball set and never a set of the other sports as I was the only person in the neighborhood collecting those, but I enjoyed those simple games that I would update the teams with trades and be able to play the "real teams".
And I'll tell you one more thing that I've never told anyone about.
When I lived in our original Maryland house, I buried a few toy soldiers, a few cents, and a small Christmas hat that I wore in the school activity from first grade in the backyard of that house.
Considering that my dad sold that house and it was demolished to create a swimming pool, it was likely swept off to the landfill then, but one never knows if that jar still resides in my old backyard.
I'm sure I missed a toy or two that I can return to on another day and this was scheduled for yesterday, but I lost half of my work during an unasked for Google Chrome update.
I have five others of these to be worked on, so they will be on their way soon!
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