# What were your favorite childhood toys?



## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

A recent post elsewhere sent me strolling down memory lane and tripping over all of my childhood toys. There were sooooo many I loved and wish I still had today. Here are just a few of mine.

Creepy Crawlers Thingmaker - It was sort of a bubble oven where you cooked this goop into molds and made critters. I loved the smell!

G.I. Joe - I loved to rub his fuzzy head and give him scuba adventures in the pool.

My pillow - For some reason, I grew very attached to a pillow. Just a regular old pillow, but I loved it. I called it Frank and took him on all sorts of adventures.

Cool Joe Snoopy - He was awesome!

I could go on and on, but I want to hear about your favorites. Anyone want to share?


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## Daniel Arenson (Apr 11, 2010)

Legos -- especially Castle, Pirates, and Space.

And of course, Transformers.


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## Jane917 (Dec 29, 2009)

My Saucey Walker doll and my Ginny doll. I still have them!


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## loonlover (Jul 4, 2009)

We had this set of building pieces that had the word links in the name.  They were flexible and you could put them together to form shapes, even shape them into a sphere.  I never knew anyone else that had them, but they entertained my brother and I for hours at a time.  However, it was not fun if one of the links somehow ended up on the floor furnace grate.  That tended to end that play session pretty fast.


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## JCPhelps (Jul 1, 2010)

I had an inch worm that I could ride.  All you had to do was bounce up and down on the thing and it moved forward.  Think some cousins ended up with it - yeah, it's a sore subject!  I WANT MY INCH WORM!  

JC


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## NogDog (May 1, 2009)

Some that stand out in my memories for various reasons:

- Lincoln Logs and Tinker Toys
- Hot Wheels cars and track
- A die cast metal F4F Wildcat fighter plane with folding wings (it was a WWII carrier plane) and landing gear
- My first bicycle (with training wheels), styled to sort of look like a police motorbike with wind screen, cap gun on one handlebar and horn on the other, and streamers on the handlebar ends, of course


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

@ Daniel - I never did get into Legos. I know a few people that were obsessed with them and Transformers!

@ Jane - I wish I had some of my old stuffed animals. I was never a doll person. They scared me. LOL

@ loon - That sounds cool. Have you tried to find out what it was?

@ JC - I remember those:










@ Nog - We had Lincoln Logs too. Gosh, that was sooooo long ago. My brother used to "whip" me with Match Box track pieces!


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## terryr (Apr 24, 2010)

Surprisingly enough, my favorite toys were leftover bathroom and kitchen tiles, pretty rocks, acorn caps, and pieces of wood. When I was a kid, there was the most marvelous "dump" where the construction workers ditched surplus stuff after building houses. Finding those tiles, all shapes and sizes and colors, hexagons, round, small squares, rectangles... shiny, granitelike... was like finding buried treasure. We called it "Tile Hill" and would ride there on our Schwinns, with streamers fluttering from the handlebars and and playing cards snapping in the spokes, for a day of digging for our treasures.

Then we'd take them home, and build houses, forts, furniture, stuff, from what we found, and play for hours.

When we left that place for more rural environs, there were no Tile Hills, but there were old glass insulators along the railroad tracks, the type of moss called "British Soldiers", and all kinds of little wild places for hidey holes where we'd make fairy houses and little things with what we found. I can't ever remember having as much fun with a store-bought toy or game...


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## Ashley Lynn Willis (Jan 27, 2011)

My Little Pony was by far my favorite toy.  I had about twenty of them, plus the castle.  My four year old has started playing with them, and it's really cute to see her enjoy something that brought me so much joy as a child.  I also loved Care Bears and Cabbage Patch Kids.  Can you tell I’m a child of the eighties?


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## Ruby296 (Nov 1, 2008)

One of my favorite things as a kid was Shrinky Dinks! Also had this kit where you made flowers out of long thin strips of metal (pipecleaners w/out the fuzz), then dipped them into various colors of "paint". It would dry and they looked like stained glass flowers.


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## Tatiana (Aug 20, 2010)

My books and my dolls (my mother made all the clothes for both my Barbie dolls and my 'newborn baby' doll).


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## Alice Y. Yeh (Jul 14, 2010)

Um...I liked 'guy' toys like Legos, Transformers, GI Joe, and He-man. 

Maybe I just liked to take my big brother's things  There was a little stuffed goose and a white Popple, though...


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## Brenda Carroll (May 21, 2009)

Stick horse, cap guns, chaps, gloves and Roy Rogers cowboy hat... did I mention red cowboy boots?


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## Valmore Daniels (Jul 12, 2010)

The toys I remember with the greatest fondness are the ones I built with my dad - tree forts, go-carts, stilts. One year we built a skating rink in the back yard.


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## Susan in VA (Apr 3, 2009)

Daniel Arenson said:


> Legos -- especially Castle, Pirates, and Space.


Legos, but back in the Dark Ages before they had any of those kits. 

And jigsaw puzzles, then and now, 'cept I like them with more pieces now.


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## J.M Pierce (May 13, 2010)

1. Transformers
2. Star Wars
3. He-man
4. GI JOE
5. Voltron
6. Marvel figurines (I bought those when I was older but had to sell them to pay bills; the stupid college kid that I was. I'm sure I had enough money to buy my beer though!)
7. "Muscle" men - stupid pink plastic people that served no purpose but I had hundreds of them!
8. Go Bots
9. Hot Wheels
10. Those cap guns that had came with the 5 shot rings. Those were awesome!


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

I had a cap gun that came with a paper roll of caps. So neat. I went through a serious cowgirl phase and even wore my boots with shorts. 

Classy.


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## Jane917 (Dec 29, 2009)

Monique said:


> I had a cap gun that came with a paper roll of caps. So neat. I went through a serious cowgirl phase and even wore my boots with shorts.
> 
> Classy.


I went through a serious cowBOY phase when I was 5. I was very specific that I wanted a cowBOY outfit for Christmas. My grandmother gave me a precious cowGIRL outfit and I remember my disappointment to this day. However, I wore my boots with just about everything. I wish I knew how to copy a photo.


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## NapCat (retired) (Jan 17, 2011)

I was into serious HO model railroading (through High School)

Now am doing N-gauge in retirement !!


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## Sean Sweeney (Apr 17, 2010)

J.M. Pierce said:


> 1. Transformers
> 2. Star Wars
> 3. He-man
> 4. GI JOE
> ...


Ditto.


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## ◄ Jess ► (Apr 21, 2010)

My sister and I had one of those helicopter kind of toys, where it's a round disc that sits on a screw-like thing, then you push it off very quickly and it spins away. That's the best I can describe it...hopefully someone knows what I'm talking about. Anyway, we lost many of those onto the roof, into neighbors' yards, and they were banned from the house after my mom discovered we were spinning them into the ceiling and scraping off all that bumpy white stuff they spray on there. 

Oh and of course Legos were AWESOME. I still play with those sometimes!


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## Susan in VA (Apr 3, 2009)

NapCat said:


> I was into serious HO model railroading (through High School)


Siiiiiigh. So was I, as a little kid, until we moved to the U.S. and the entire collection stayed with my grandparents... and then my


Spoiler



louse of a


 cousin _sold _it all behind my back, and I was furious when I found out... then I found out what that collection (from the early sixties) would have been worth, and I was _really_ furious.


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

*sigh*

Books.


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## Meredith Sinclair (May 21, 2009)

Barbie stuff, "Chinese" jumprope, jumprope, marbles, "Skip-ta-Whirl" bicycle, skateboard... oh yes my Fisher Price cash register! Loved It!


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## Scheherazade (Apr 11, 2009)

I loved anything Smurfs and anything that had to do with balancing things.  I was standing dimes on edge when I was 5, so I adored those plain, square wooden letter blocks and would just try to build towers of them as high as I could and pyramids that I'd knock blocks out of to make holes without making it fall.  I really liked this game called Don't Spill the Beans (more balancing things) and there was one with the same balancing concept but it was a pirate ship with Smurfs.  I adored Weebles because I could throw them across the room and they'd always land on their "feet" and I had one of those wooden dogs with leather feet glued to its wheels on a string that I really liked.  Oh, and a big plastic red apple that jingled when you shook it.


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## M.S. Verish (Feb 26, 2010)

Matt loved:
Transformers
Transformers
And...
Transformers  
And sometimes Legos, which I built into...drum roll please
TRANSFORMERS!


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## Steve Silkin (Sep 15, 2010)

early elementary school:

- slinky & etch-a-sketch. i kept them for years.

later elementary school:

- matchbox, hot wheels

extremely obscure:

there were these battery-operated big plastic insects, the line was named after one of them, "horrible hamilton." they were really cool, but the batteries leaked and i had to throw them away.


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## caseyf6 (Mar 28, 2010)

My Friend Mandy was probably my best friend.

I had a "Smaller Homes and Gardens" doll house that I loved.

Tree Family Tree House ( I think that's what it was called-- the people lived in the big plastic tree and you'd press a button to make the tree open.)

My toy kitchen...I had the one that was in the Sears Wish Book for YEARS with the red and white, plus the apple clock that was just a picture.


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## Alice Y. Yeh (Jul 14, 2010)

Matthew + Stefanie Verish said:


> Matt loved:
> Transformers
> Transformers
> And...
> ...


Mildly obsessed?


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## kdawna (Feb 16, 2009)

a stuffed skunk I got when I had the measles.


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## JoeMitchell (Jun 6, 2010)

I had a huge collection of Micronauts. You could take them apart and put them together in different ways, and combine different parts from the different toys to make new creations. Also, Star Wars. I had nearly all the action figures. 
I also enjoyed putting together plastic models of everything; cars, planes, colonial vipers, robots, dinosaurs, superheroes, giant insects, etc. I'd paint them too.


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## caracara (May 23, 2010)

Barbies, to an extinct, I had like every room, not so much into dressing them, more liked playing on their pinball machine.

Legos. My brothers legos. Everything he built was color coordinated, mine was not. 

Jigsaw puzzles. According to my mom I would not look at the picture, and not start with the border. Not sure how I did that, I'm impressed with myself.

Books. Enough said.


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## jonfmerz (Mar 30, 2009)

I had a huge collection of Micronauts that I loved dearly.  I wish they were still around so my sons could enjoy 'em.  

Also did a lot of model building...Revell battleships mostly.


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## twhvalentine (Feb 1, 2011)

K'Nex and Legos. I especially loved those giant K'Nex sets where you build the huge 5' tall factory/machines.


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

twhvalentine said:


> K'Nex and Legos. I especially loved those giant K'Nex sets where you build the huge 5' tall factory/machines.


5 feet tall? Now, that's cool!


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## drenfrow (Jan 27, 2010)

My brother and I had a Spirograph which we *loved*. It was plastic gear shaped things, and you used a colored pen to trace around, one gear inside the other and it made cool designs. Wow, that's hard to explain! Does anyone else remember those? It also came with a 4-color click-y pen that seemed totally cool to us all by itself.


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## Cliff Ball (Apr 10, 2010)

Legos, Transformers, GI Joes.... until my parents bought me an Atari, and then that's all I played.


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## Steve Silkin (Sep 15, 2010)

drenfrow said:


> My brother and I had a Spirograph which we *loved*. Does anyone else remember those?


oh yeah. spirograph rocked. spirograph rocked _hard._


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## Alice Y. Yeh (Jul 14, 2010)

Steve Silkin said:


> oh yeah. spirograph rocked. spirograph rocked _hard._


Is that the one where the paper is spinning and you squirt paint into it and get this splatter effect?

..or am I completely thinking of the wrong thing here?


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## Steve Silkin (Sep 15, 2010)

Alice Y. Yeh said:


> ..or am I completely thinking of the wrong thing here?


you put the tip of the pen in a gear-toothed wheel. the wheel guides the pen in a circular motion as it spins inside (or outside) a gear-toothed pattern.

http://www.eddaardvark.co.uk/python_patterns/spirograph.html


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## bce (Nov 17, 2009)

First favorite toy that I can remember was a pedal car.  It was a gift from my uncle and I remember riding in it in the back of the station wagon from the eastern shore of Va. back to home in the DC metro area.  Obviously this was before we knew how dangerous it was for kids in a car. 

Next one was a set of Flintstones building blocks.  Think large (6 to 8 inch) styrofoam Legos.  They were great to build castles and forts that you could crawl around in.

Final one was my HO slot car set.  That kept me going for years.


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## drenfrow (Jan 27, 2010)

I found these spirograph images on Wikipedia:










and here's what the spirograph looked like:









Check out the insane mathematical formulas that explain what goes on:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirograph


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## Jane917 (Dec 29, 2009)

I need to add Tinker Toys to my list of favorites.


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## JMelzer (Mar 21, 2010)

I was partial to those old WWF wrestling figures. You know, the ones that didn't move.


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## planet_janet (Feb 23, 2010)

My favorite things were my Strawberry Shortcake dolls, Cabbage Patch dolls, Fashion Plates, Barbie Dream Pool (even though my older brother used to "drown" my Barbies in it), and my Holly Hobby Easy Bake oven (mm-mm--nothing like highly processed, chemical-infused baked goods!).


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## ◄ Jess ► (Apr 21, 2010)

drenfrow said:


> My brother and I had a Spirograph which we *loved*. It was plastic gear shaped things, and you used a colored pen to trace around, one gear inside the other and it made cool designs. Wow, that's hard to explain! Does anyone else remember those? It also came with a 4-color click-y pen that seemed totally cool to us all by itself.


YESSS, I had one of those! I had totally forgotten about it. I always found the football shaped gear very hard to use, but it looked so cool when I managed it. I used to make sooo many designs with that thing. So simple, yet so much fun.


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## TheRiddler (Nov 11, 2010)

I'm amazed no-one mentioned Star Wars toys on here - I had the 'battle-scar X-Wing' fighter, and the Falcon 

So my list:

1) Star Wars
2) Lego (had a police speedboat that I kept building, and a strange fascination with houses!)
3) Transformers
4) He-Man
5) Commodore 64 (does that count?)
6) Various soccer / cricket balls

Then I had these action figures that I can't remember what they were called. The vehicles transformed a tiny bit, and the men had magnets so they would 'stick' to the vehicles. I think the vehicles used to have missiles they could fire too. Had so many of them, but now can't remember the name - they were very Sci-Fi.....

And of course, MASK!


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

Wow, Spirograph! Haven't thought about that in ages.


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## billie hinton (Jan 30, 2011)

When I was young my most favorite TV show was Daktari. And a small group of neighborhood girls and I played endless hours of "Daktari" - we were vets helping all the animals. Someone had a stuffed animal monkey who was used as Judy, and various neighborhood dogs played the part of Clarence the Cross-Eyed lion. My favorite toy: the box of "stuff" we accumulated for this play. We had various "medicines" and old syringes sans needles, bandages, all kind of "supplies" - mostly stuff we could use as props that involved a lot of pretending in the process. I remember pecans in the shell being used for big pills. Etc. I was the one who took care of "the box" - and I remember guarding it from my little brothers, who loved getting into my stuff. We ranged all over the neighborhood, on safari, with the home base being a tent my dad set up for us in the backyard.


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

I love it, Billie! Daktari!

We used to play "Star Trek" during recess and after school. Gosh, that was fun. I was always McCoy.


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## Talia Jager (Sep 22, 2010)

My dad built me a dollhouse and that was probably my favorite. But, I also loved legos, board games, and dolls (Cabbage Patch, Strawberry Shortcake). I can't forget the books though, I loved to read


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## billie hinton (Jan 30, 2011)

Monique, it dates me, but couldn't resist - this thread brought it back - hadn't thought of it in years!


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## Vegas_Asian (Nov 2, 2008)

Nerf guns. This is where I learned how to aim.


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## Susan in VA (Apr 3, 2009)

Spirograph!  I had forgotten about that.  (Strange because I still have mine.)  Mine looks a bit different from the picture though, so maybe they had several versions over the years.  Those were great, but sometimes so frustrating when you'd attempt one of the really complex figures and get 90% done and then slip and mess it up!


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## TheRiddler (Nov 11, 2010)

Forgot to add:

Etch-a-sketch
Scalextric


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## 908tracy (Dec 15, 2009)

I loved my Lite-Brite and it's still around, but boy has it ever changed!!! A few years ago I bought my girls one and it was cube shaped. 

Shrinky Dinks were cool too! The "magic" of watching those cool little things you just colored shrink....ah, childhood!


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## ◄ Jess ► (Apr 21, 2010)

I loved doing crafts, so 2 of my favorite toys were this kit where you could weave together stretchy fabric strips into hotpads. Did anyone else have one of those? I recently found one of those hotpads in my boyfriend's house and it turned out he had the same kit when he was a kid.

I also loved this thing where you would pour neon glue into a mold and it once it dried, you could stick it to glass. We covered our sliding glass door with them...probably so I didn't run into it.


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## TheRiddler (Nov 11, 2010)

908tracy said:


> Shrinky Dinks were cool too! The "magic" of watching those cool little things you just colored shrink....ah, childhood!


What was even cooler was when I found out that crisp packets (sorry, potato chips for my US Kindle fans) shrink in the oven too.

So rather then the hassle of colouring stuff in, cutting it out etc, I ate crisps, washed out bad, put it in the oven, and had a ready made key fob!


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## 908tracy (Dec 15, 2009)

TheRiddler said:


> What was even cooler was when I found out that crisp packets (sorry, potato chips for my US Kindle fans) shrink in the oven too.
> 
> So rather then the hassle of colouring stuff in, cutting it out etc, I ate crisps, washed out bad, put it in the oven, and had a ready made key fob!


^^^Really? I had no idea of this. Cool!!!^^^


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## TWErvin2 (Aug 7, 2010)

One of my favorite toys was a stick from one of our lilac bushes that envisioned as a sword and played with for hours and days on end. Of course, when one broke, there was always another to be fashioned.


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## mamiller (Apr 28, 2009)

Matchbox! I had this set called the "Golden Gang", and my brother buried my beloved gold Ferrari in the plot next door where a house was built on top of it. MANY years later as we're both adults, he still felt such remorse that he located all individual pieces of the Golden Gang on ebay and presented me with the complete set.

I wrote a book for him. 










I still love this car!


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## TheRiddler (Nov 11, 2010)

908tracy said:


> ^^^Really? I had no idea of this. Cool!!!^^^


It certainly used to work with packets of Walkers.

If they've changed the material and it now melts all over your oven, I take no responsibility


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## 908tracy (Dec 15, 2009)

TheRiddler said:


> It certainly used to work with packets of Walkers.
> 
> If they've changed the material and it now melts all over your oven, I take no responsibility


LOL! No worries, I won't be trying this. hahaha I've also never heard of Walkers chips? Maybe they're just in the UK?


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## Ciareader (Feb 3, 2011)

Weeble Wobbles...is that how they are spelled?

Also, the game "Operation".  Anyone remember that?


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## drenfrow (Jan 27, 2010)

Ciareader said:


> Weeble Wobbles...is that how they are spelled?


Weebles wobble but they don't fall down!


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## Ciareader (Feb 3, 2011)

You two are so funny.  I wonder how today's kids will answer that question.  Think any of them will say "Kindle"? BTW, check out this book I am reading.  If you like coffee, history, mystery, or strong wit, check it out!


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## Holly A Hook (Sep 19, 2010)

I used to love building stuff with Legos for hours.

Also I had one of those toy barns that made a "moo" noise when you opened the door.  I think they're worth quite a bit of money now.

Apparently when I was two, I had an original Yoda figurine that I tore the head off of.


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## Ciareader (Feb 3, 2011)

Holly.  I like you book cover.  What age group is it for?


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## Susan in VA (Apr 3, 2009)

Jessica Billings said:


> I loved doing crafts, so 2 of my favorite toys were this kit where you could weave together stretchy fabric strips into hotpads. Did anyone else have one of those? I recently found one of those hotpads in my boyfriend's house and it turned out he had the same kit when he was a kid.


I had one of those, and now 40-some years later my DD has one too. The only difference is that the fabric strips that came with mine were cotton, great for hotpads or pot holders, and now the strips are polyester and they melt when they touch a too-hot cookie sheet.  Apparently some corporate genius wasn't thinking too well when they changed that....


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