What were your favourite toys as a child ?

[Bugsy]

Rummaging around in the loft yesterday (we still have un-opened boxes from eight years ago) and I found my old Meccano set, I'd had as a boy.

I loved that stuff and it probably got me into engineering.

What were your favourite toys from childhood?

[woolybanana]

We were too poor to have toys!

[Gluestick]

Poor?

Poor??

We were far too destitute to even consider ourselves as poor!

You were lucky!

[just john]

Well if my bike had been gold plated, it couldn't have more valuable to me, I loved it; I still love riding along on my pushbike even now, but unfortunately don't get to enough and came off and scared myself toooo making times riding my motorcyle

[Dog]

My father still has boxes and boxes of meccano he wouldn't let us play with his prewar meccano as we used to bend it. He did make us things like differential gearboxes to show us how they worked.

I used to like playing with a massive set of wooden building blocks with grooves for marbles so you could build enormous gravity tracks,

Later we started collecting scaletrix and my parents live in an old school so we had a massive assembly room and a ginormous track.

Also had a very old big box kite that used to get us into loads of trouble.

Rope while not strictly a toy gave many hours of enjoyment making slides between trees and we once put the rope up the top of the water tower sadly it wasn't long enough and it was a very steep drop we attached an ammo box and my brother very kindly let me sit at the front - we basically dropped near vertically forty feet and the box dug into the ground. My brother crushed me and I was severly winded.

 

[Quillan]

My toys were not so different to Dog's. My mates and I used to join all our scaletrix track together in the garden and make a massive circuit, great fun.

If you want to reminisce and are visiting London I can highly recommend a visit to the Museum of Childhood at Bethnal Green (a 3 minute walk from the tube station). They have just about every toy you can imagine there, great fun.

[Théière]

Working in Bethnal Green the other day I saw that Quillan, Next time I'm there I will pop in, thanks.

Almost forgot to add my answer, favorite toys...........................little girls [:D]

[Mr Coeur de Lion]

Used to love the old matchbox cars. Had hundreds of them.

May have been worth something now, but I have only one thing from my childhood now.

[just john]

OK I'll fall for it . . . it is what exactly . . .?

This thread does remind me of Dusty's Going Back brilliant lyrics - trouble is . . . .
''There is no going back in life. There is no return. No second chance."
— Daphne du Maurier

I think Im goin back
To the things
I learned so well
In my youth

I think Im returning to
Those days
When I was young enough
To know the truth

Now there are no games
To only pass the time
No more colouring books
No christmas bells to chime

But thinking young
And growing older
Is no sin
And I can play
The game of life to win

I can recall the time
When I wasnt ashamed
To reach out to a friend
And now I think Ive got
A lot more than
A skipping rope to lend

Now theres more to do
Than watch my sailboat glide
And everyday can be
My magic carpet ride
And I can play hide and seek with my fears
And live my days instead of counting my years

Let everyone debate the true reality
Id rather see the world the way it used to be
A little bit of freedoms
All we lack
So catch me if you can
Im goin back

[TWINKLE]

INDOORS

Battling Tops
Operation
Buckaroo
Spirograph
Fuzzy Felts

OUTDOORS

Rounders
Hop Scotch
Charlys Angels [:$] (I was Kelly)
Hide 'n' Seek
Riding my Chipper while fantasising about a Chopper!

[ViVienne]

indoors,

books, and drawing/colouring I also had a bontempi organ and a stylophone....

 

outdoors....(too poor for a bike)

skipping rope, chalk for hopscotch, tennis balls (used to play 2ball)

roller skates and a football. All the kids in the street used to get together and build go karts

[Chancer]

[quote user="TWINKLE"]

Riding my Chipper while fantasising about a Chopper!

[/quote]

Ooh la la!

[Gemonimo]

Just John Going Back is one of my all time favourite songs.  However, it should not be listened to when depressed (even lightly) and with sharp knives in the house[:-))]

When I was little I remember visiting my grandmother and was allowed to play with  a very old miniature green grocers shop with miniature vegetable, miniature baskets, miniature everything.  I think it ended up in the Bethnal Green Museum.  It was a very girlie toy and my brother wasn't the slightest bit interested in it.  He much preferred playing with his white mice that he bought for thruppence and kept in a birdcage.

[Frederick]

Cant remember toys much somebody was trying to bomb me at that time ..I had a sparking pistol I used to play cowboys and indians with ..It was years later I learned it was a gas lighter .

[cooperlola]

Dinky cars; Lego; Sindy's car -much more fun than the doll herself; a lovely wooden farm (which I still have) and the scale model Britains farm animals which went with it; and my bike.

What a great subject for a thread, Bugs!

[Russethouse]

 I had a Pedigree 'beauty skin' doll called Molly which I really loved and a Pedigree twin dolls pram in maroon. My uncle made me a dolls house too, with electric light and curtains my aunt had made...

[Russethouse]

 I had a Pedigree 'beauty skin' doll called Molly which I really loved and a Pedigree twin dolls pram in maroon.

My uncle made me a dolls house  with electric light and  my aunt had made curtains for it - many happy hours

[Bugsy]

Does anyone else remember the scarcity of 'pram' wheels that were SO desperately needed in the making of a good soap-box buggy for tearing down the hills.

They we're build without brakes [:-))] but mom always had a big box of plasters [:)]

.

[Gardengirl]

John, I love that too, such a message!

Indoors: reading, playing with my beautiful precious doll Freda, reading, colouring, reading. In fact the public library was my second home (totally silent, with wooden panelling and the smell of polish!), and I borrowed an encyclopedia each week or so, heaved it home somehow - a long walk for a small girl! I also lapped up any homework we were set at primary school! I became a teacher. I also loved watching Dad mend shoes on his lasts (which meant shoes lasted long after we'd grown out of them!); the wonderful smell of leather is still one of my favourites!

Outdoors: helping Dad in the garden, and eating delicious peas straight from the pod each spring (I still love gardening); hopscotch with an old polish tin; chuckstones with pebbles (also called 5-stones?); everyone playing out in the streets, big kids and little kids. Nobody got into real trouble (although there must have been some villains about somewhere), as everyone knew everyone else and would tell you off, and be straight round to tell your parents, when you'd be in trouble a second time!

Nobody had bikes, nobody had the money even for old ones. I did try to ride one once, but fell off - oh the tears and the blood! My brother didn't live at home when I was born; he wrote to say he was pleased to have a baby sister, but he'd rather have a bike - I still pull his leg about that!

I read the first few posts to my OH; he says he loved playing with Meccano too and other technical things, trying to make things out of wood. he became an engineer too.

John, this is such a brilliant thread; I've loved reading all the posts, and you've taken me back in my head all those years - I could almost feel the gritty pavement under my knees as I slid the polish tin and set off hopping!

[just john]

Talk about going back, it's coming back to me now, that there wasn't too much money around though we didn't know it, and the bike Mater and Pater got for me was very second hand from an auction at the local police station of lost and found property, (remember when people used to hand things found to the police station? of course they were manned then[Www]). Wooden blocks had been screwed to the pedals to enable me to reach them, getting on and off was a bit hit and miss! It also had white paint on the front and back metal mudguards which I now understand to be a second world war practice giving away the vintage! [:)]

[Patf]

[quote user="woolybanana"]We were too poor to have toys![/quote]

Same here[:)] But I had a secondhand bike, until it got stolen.

Otherwise , like Gardengirl, the library if it was raining. If it wasn't raining, the beach, or sandunes, or the rocks and cliffs at Seaton Sluice.Or the staithes by the river. Making fires and cooking potatoes.

I do remember good playground games such as string tiggy, what time is it Mr. Wolf? X's (tricks with tennis ball against wall.)

I wonder if children play these games nowadays?

[Gardengirl]

Oh yes, I'd forgotten all the playground games like 'What time is it Mr Wolf?' and skipping games, games with balls against walls, tucking skirt (no trousers for girls then!) into pants and trying to do handstands against the wall -I never did manage that, but got plenty of plasters in the effort! One particular wall takes me back to the vegetable plot at primary school, which was nearby; lunchtimes and after school sessions with some of the teachers, planting and weeding the veg! ;o)

And Seaton Sluice - such memories! My parents and most other parents in two or three streets paid in weekly to take us on a coach trip in the summer holidays for the day - that was the holiday really, apart from going down to Roker and Seaburn beaches on sunny days, but that was just on the bus, not a proper coach with a driver in uniform! ;o)

Other outings were along the river, across the railway lines, out for hours on end with just bread and jam, just a couple of us children and no thought in anyone's mind about us not being safe.

We had very little in money terms, but we seemed to have a lot of fun, and all the days were summer - not possible of course, and ice on the inside of my bedroom window has just popped in to my mind, and I shivered, sitting here on a sunny day!

I didn't know that others lived different lives, which isn't possible for children now - so there was little envy amongst the children. Having got to Grammar school (we were the first from our primary school, and had photos taken in our school uniforms which hung in the school hall for many years!), I met up with others with decent uniforms, lots of 'things' and cars to collect them from school - I think I'd only ridden in one twice up to the age of about 15!

Happy days to look back on, although in today's terms we'd be deprived! ;o)

[Gardian]

• Bayko
• Minibrix

[Frenchie]

Dolls , dolls, and even more dolls... My two favourite ones were called " Jean Noël " ( a red haired boy with freckles ) and Stéphanie .

I cried with happiness when I saw Stéphanie in her pram on Christmas day, waiting for me next to the Christmas tree, she was so beautiful, and looked like a baby , when you threw her up in the air she giggled, and you could give her baby bottles, fortunately she wore nappies !! [:)]

I used to spend hours drawing , still love it, but I have no time for that.

Outside, in the field , making " cabanes" with my neighbour and friend Véronique , also playing with boys, ( brother and his mates) , they were the cowboys, we were the Indians. As I had long black hair, I looked like one they said    LOL LOL

We had the tepee , the costumes....

I often ended up tied to the totem, and they danced around me [blink]... [:)]

I also LOVED juggling with balls against a wall, you know, you can use two, three, four,... ( I know some will answer with irony to this one ...[:)]) 

And rope skipping, LOVED that too!!

Reading, and dreaming ..... Lying in a field on my back, watching the clouds and looking at their shapes, trying to determine " this one looks like a Lion, this one looks like a heart... etc...)

I was so lucky having a big house and a field to explore.

 

 

[Gardengirl]

Gardian, we have some Bayko in the loft, along with Hornby Dublo, which I'm told must be called that, as it's different from Hornby! Don't know why! ;o) We also have some old lead soldiers from just after WW2.