h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

My pogo stick was the one thing I loved when I was younger and guess what.......my new partner bought one for my son for Christmas and on dry days he'd rather be hopping about on it outside than on his playstation.

Now that says something to me....the good old toys are still as popular now as they were then, they just need re-introducing to todays kids, I think the scooter epidemic has proved that too and aren't roller blades just upgraded rollerskates? Lego is still as big a hit with todays kids as it was with us many moons ago

I grew up in the USA before the digital revolution, and favored toys like Erector Sets, Lincoln Logs and Tinker Toys. I don't know if these brand names are international, they are resp.: a set of flat metal "beams" that are screwed together with nuts and bolts, a set of interlocking wood logs for building models of log cabins and similar, and a set of wooden dowls and hubs that could be assembled into modles of ferris wheels, etc. (As you might guess, I ended up an engineer). But I have to admit things got more interesting when computers arrived. I still build things, but now it can be entire (virtual) cities with people, vehicles, oceans, skies, aliens ... all animated with dialogue and music.

Hiya Steve

I think your erector sets sound the same as mechano over here in the UK, my brother had loads of it and we used to build for hours, he ended up building helicopter and jet engines and he now uses computers, but he says it's not as fun as mechano as the PC does alot of the hard work for you...It introduced me to spanners etc, which was a good thing as it comes in handy at times around the house

Hmmm ... sounds like your brother and I have a different outlook on building "models" on the PC. I'm not very good at it, but I can acquire very detailed models that serve well for animations, etc. I've got a 3D computer model of the HMS Victory that I could never do myself - I might as well just build the real ship.