our toys were the best

Toys I  Remember.

Our generation was the best for toys and games.   Interactive, lost pieces, toys that didn't work as well as the commercial depicted. We loved it all.

These are some of the toys I got and still remember.

Baby Alive VS Baby Tender Love

I wanted a "Baby Alive" so bad because it was the only doll who ate real baby food.  We didn't know if the food that came with this doll was real, toxic, or whatever.  I was "not allowed" to order her.  My friend did get to have her and over a weeks time....dolls do not properly digest whatever that goop was and they would begin to really stink. Not to mention the battery power needed when she had to mechanically move her mouth up and down, loud like a vacuum machine.  But I "was allowed" to order Baby Tender Love, the one piece molded doll with "real baby soft" skin. 

 "Baby Tender Love"....seduced by the commercial claimed she had "real baby soft skin"  I ordered her for Christmas.   She came with a fake but non messy plastic baby bottle with some type of white chemical liquid in it.  You had to "fake" feeding her with her mouth molded shut. She wasn't that cute when I received her, her arms and legs didn't move, she was one "real baby soft" molded piece, much like the squeezable texture of those candy circus peanuts.  Her hair began to split in the back after a couple of baths, she was supposedly waterproof, she had a comb over hairdo anyways. Tough to dress, her appendages didn't move and she was too fat to wear any of my other doll's dresses. Her eyes were painted on and over time, she looked scary.  Why, why me?  She looked so good in all the commercials! A classic story of a toy I wanted so badly and within a few weeks would probably work better as a football. 












                               Baby Alive

Baby Tender Love

Hoppity Hop

Hoppity Hop kids on the commercial moved like horses across the grassy knoll.  I wanted one and got one for my birthday.  I loved it once I figured out how not to fall off.  I loved it better than Hoppity Horse which a neighborhood kid had and with the Hoppity Horse, you couldn't get a grip. The air would come out of it make it harder to hop around.



Steel Roller Skates

These were worth it especially of you had a friend who also had some.  They were affixed to the sides of your shoe by pressure  and a leather ankle strap.  You adjusted the tightness of them by a metal key you wore around your neck tied to an odd by now useful shoelace. You would swing your arms to and fro to gain some momentum but with the metal wheels and cheap tar job on our street, it wasn't long before the vibration wasn't worth the effort.  Lots of fun and popular. Not fun if you lost your key because now you couldn't tighten and adjust the skate so you just had to squeeze your shoe inside the skate.

 



Tip It

I wanted this game because it came in the largest box and it was blue.  Heavily advertised to be so much fun, you were lucky to corral any other person for "one" game of it.  More gimmick than strategy.  But it looked so great and half the fun of theses games were all the colorful plastic pieces they can with to build the set up three dimensionally.  You spun the spinner and it told you what color chip you had to get with this 2 pronged fork like thing.  See the picture below on the blue box?  It was never THAT much fun. BTW your dad never played with you, like the box depicted...certainly not dressed up like that.  But everyone had one.

 

 

 

 

Slinky

I always received from a relative the classic slinky.  This was a great deal.  It would magically step down thew stairs showing us Catholic kids the phenomenon of physics missing from our prayer laden education and memorization. We loved the classic one as it was cheaper.  It made a sound equivalent to a pocketful of money.  We would play with it endlessly until...well over time they would just stretch out.  They would no longer be the tight little condensed ring that would fit in the little box.  No this was the time you would challenge yourself.  The challenge was to "loosely" tie the slinky in a knot and then see of you could undo it.  Maybe once rarely twice, now it was super stretched out... time to throw it out.

 

 

 

 

Colorforms

 

These colorforms were scenes and bright piece of cut vinyl would be punched out so you could place them where you wanted to one the scene already painted for you.  It was colorful to look at, smelled like a raincoat, and it was different.  Over time they would get dirty and lint would build up on them of worse, you lost only one boot and therefore couldn't dress the character and then the vinyl pieces wouldn't stick anymore.  Lots of chewable/chokable little pieces here but none of us were stupid enough to put them in our mouth. Colorforms were done at a kitchen table and were less stressful than trying to color "WITHIN THE LINES" of a coloring book.  You could not really make a mistake, comforting little game. Cheery to look at, done within (2) weeks as the pieces would soon adhere to you more than the scenery.

 

 

 

Suzy Homemaker Oven

 

Who cares the cakes were the size of a pancake.  It was the only way to own a working appliance.  Powered by a GE electric bulb, you could cook a cake with the power and heat of a light bulb.  It came with little packages of just add water cake mix, you mixed with a spoon and put in a tiny little cake pan. Mine was this yellow version with the stove top part was only a sticker.  Who cares? We would watch the cake bake with the attention of a good mystery movie.  These little ovens always mystified us and a chance to sneak a snack.  We never did buy the extra packages of miniature cake mixes, too impractical and expensive, so when the mixes were gone it was no fun  anymore. But as a second life...not a bad Barbie stove even though the proportions were off.

 

 

Keep coming back...more 70s toys to come

 

 

Chrissy and Velvet

 

These were large version of prepubescent Barbies.  The law of attraction here was the hair could be short or long.  The length of hair was wound up inside the doll and to make it shorter you would turn the crank in her back.  To make it long again you would press her belly button and grab hold of her hair and pull.  Chrissy was the first one, taller with brown hair.  Velvet was her hussy, blond cousin, somewhat shorter.  These dolls were hard to dress because their appendages could only move from the torso. The hair would fluff out and look like a bad hair weave if you pulled in long and short too often.  My friend had so many clothes fot them that her sister sewed so it was fun to dress and undress them.  The hairdo was OK because I had always wanted long hair but after about an hour or two you were all done playing with Chrissy and Velvet.