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

:Blocks:
A square building block?? Cubical, perhaps.

:Marbles:
They're NOT boy toys! I had marbles! I also -won- at marbles, so I had more than when I started. ~~

Which brings me to point two: Yes, they changed hands on victory.

First, you find the dirtiest, dustiest place you can (because good dirt is the best playing field, of course) and you all sit in a big circle. In the center, in the dirt with a nice sharp pointed stick (you know, the one you just finished using to chase off that other boy's little sister because she acts like a *gasp* girl! <Did I mention I was a tomboy? &gt you draw a small circle (about maybe 18 inches in diameter). Then you take put all your little marbles in (oh yeah, that's what they're called iirc, "little marbles" -- technical term, you see) in the center (actually just the ones you don't mind trading ) of the circle in such a manner so that they scatter to various points within the circle (or down the sewage drain, whichever they get to first).

At this point, you hope your mother doesn't call you until the game's over, because if you do, you have to run the gauntlet, fighting over which marbles in the circle belong to which player).

Then, using your favourite shooter, you flip it tiddly-wink style (oh yeah, you forgot tiddly-winks, didn't ya!) at one of the marbles within the circle. If you successfully knock the target out of the circle, you win that marble and get to pick up your shooter. If you don't succeed, you cry, because chances are you've just traded your favourite shooter to the next little brat to play.

Both 'little marbles' and shooters come in many flavours... Catseyes are always a favourite.

:Yo-yos:
This has become a huge, worldwide sport. The newest world champion is from Japan and I probably couldn't pronounce his name if I could remember it.

:What about:
Colouring books and those neat little paint-with-water things?

Before Etch-O-Sketch... the little cardboard and plastic things that had the black pad and the film over it and that little plastic stick you could draw with that always broke? You know... the one the neighbours always ruined before you really had a chance to play with it?

Silly Putty! How many hours did -you- spend on Sunday afternoons making the colour cartoons show up on a smooshed glob of window glazing? (Oh, wait... Dad used to get mad at me for treating his last can of DAP glazing as Silly Putty. )

That thing they now call something like the "Reflector Sketchor" or somesuch... The thing you could stand up between any picture and a blank piece of paper so you could draw (trace) the image?

Marbles - small red ones were called blood alley's. Greenish ones with a swirl were cats eyes. What were the others all called, anyone remember?

The greenish swirly ones weren't catseyes. (If you're talking about the ones I think you are, anyway. )

Catseyes were any colour, but what made them catseyes was this: They were clear except for a thin, swirling (any) colour that kinda squiggled through a roughly diametrical center.

Okay, as I mentioned in another forum, I just woke up so gimme a break.

Ooohhhh...dear mousie, what wondrous stuff you have included.
Tiddly-winks!
Silly Putty!
Those wadda-ya-callems with the liftup film...I KNOW! MAGIC SLATES!!!!
Coloring books!
Paint-with-water books!

And thank you for the rules for marbles, [and the technical term for the little marbles] Re 'boy toys' and 'girl toys' see my comment in the 'Jacks' article on the abolishment of sexual stereotyping in children's toys. I know whatcha mean, I always wanted trucks and got dolls--bleah! And I never did get an Erector set.

I had one of those reflector thingies [Art-o-sketch???] but didn't like it much.

Oh and the square block? I corrected that in the 'Blocks, Alphabet' section. Will edit the 'Blocks, Building' section, too. Two-dimensional blocks? I guess not...

Please continue adding stuff, the toys that are listed at the end all need descriptive entries...hint, hint

Peta!

I can't remember any of those marble names, but how about that one that had the American Flag right inside???? did any of those make it over the ocean? Or did you have some with the Union Jack inside?????

*blush* ... I'll see what I can do to accomodate on some of them when I get to a point where I'm not exhausted.

Yes you are right any colour. The big red and white marbled ones were called Bloodshots...

Catseyes were my favourite. I would get whole sets of them (not to mention the 'sets' I got the hard way )

Oh.. then there were those big green ones with the little bubbles inside that looked rather like someone had frozen champagne and used a mellon-baller on it. Oh wait. Those were the little bits of glass used to make 7-up bottles!

But they made terrific shooters anyway, as the were heavier than a regular marble (don't ask me why but they were).

We always used to seek out ball bearings. The Marbles Rule Book may have excluded them, but we'd never seen that in the 50's (yes, I'm an Old Git), so we didn't care. There appeared to be no size limit, so if you turned up in the playground with a cannon ball that could crush all in its path, that was your good fortune. Unless you lost it to another player. We used to call them "steelies". They were much prized, and I can't work out why they never used to rust. During the marble season, which could be at any time of year depending on the current playground craze, it was imperative to stuff your pockets with as many marbles as possible, which did nothing for the line of your shorts. My mother got fed up sewing the holes in my pockets and made me a little bag with a drawstring. This didn't hold as many marbles as the other boys' pockets and I was considered a wimp because of it. Many of my deep-seated insecurities stem from that marble bag. In fact "SORRY, TIME'S UP FOR TODAY MR. NORMAN. PERHAPS WE COULD CONTINUE THIS NEXT WEEK."

Oh. Okay then.

Is Erector the same as the British Meccano? I'm going to do an article on that as soon as I've found out whether somebody's got there first. Which, considering my luck with marbles, they probably have.

PS What about Fuzzy Felt, then?

I suspect some hard research is needed on the Erector set/Meccano issue.


Fuzzy Felt???? Need more info here. And I'm an 'old git' too. At least I'm old. Not sure about the 'git' part. [She turns to the Guide entry on slang for clarification]

What is the country of origin for Fuzzy Felt?

Spears Toys from England made Fuzzy Felt. You had a board to which you could stick these pre-cut bits of felt in various geometric shapes to make your own "tableaux". It was as about exciting as it sounds, if not less so, Later the company got more adventurous and made themed sets, so you had jungles with palm trees, lions and tigers, etc, or there was a farmyard set, which contained ( and to say this sounds about as surrreal as you can get) a felt tractor. And some animals. It was generally regarded as a girls' toy by the stereotyping parents of the 60's (i.e. just about all of them).

Meccano was made in Liverpool by Frank Hornby, who also made the famous clockwork, and later electric, model trains. Meccano consisted of perforated metal parts which you could bolt together along with gear wheels, pulleys, cranks etc., to make engineering models. There can't be a British boy over forty who didn't assemble a crane from Meccano and then immediately wonder what to do with it. I had piles of the stuff including lots of hard-to-get bits, which was really good for my future training as a geek.

That sounds like an erector set to me... so I guess if it's not the same, it's pretty darn close.

Oh.. and just so this is in the right thread *ahem*

Chinese Checkers.

I loved meccano, and it's probably what spured lego into bringing out the 'technics' division, which I also loved, you could build about three different feats of engineering wizardry in one pack! Like a forklift, an crane, and then there was the runner up, which would be something like a windmill! The car ones rocked!
I don't know fuzzy fely, I'm not old and definetly not a git(crosses fingers) but does anyone remember 'Weebles'? They were great if you had, say a castle, and they'd rock back and forward...wait, what are they???? the ones that rocked back and forward, moving slowly?

Sketch-o-Graph, I believe is the name for the toy used to not only trace but to enlargen or shrink the image traced!

By the way would Hot-Wheels (tm) be considered modern or Classic (in the sense of Automobiles I think a classic has to be about 60 years, but for toys and games would 30 be a good approximation?)

Peace

Zonnald

Dunno about definitions for "classic" etc, but I suppose by the time you get around to referring "the present generation", you're by definition of an older generation, and so any stuff you played with that you remember fondly is a classic to you, especially if you can't buy it any more. Er.. yes, I think that makes sense.
Lego is of course a classic and a huge success story, but I'm so old I can remember when it first appeared. I think I got some as a Christmas present, but hardly anyone had even heard of it. Playground chums thought I was telling them to let go. and my primary school teacher wouldn't believe my spelling of it in my "What I did during the holidays" essay. It was really basic then - you couldn't even get wheels in those days - and the sexiest part was an illuminating brick: a clear 8-stud brick with a tiny light bulb and two connections for a battery. Even that had to be bought as an accessory in a little 2/6d box the size of a fag packet. Other than that you had windows and roof tiles, so you really only could build little houses. Because of that, and because P.C. hadn't been invented, it was generally regarded as a girls' toy. I stuck resolutely to my Meccano. It was the classic red-and-green period, I hasten to add.

[sings]

"Weebles wobble, but they DONT fall down!....."


My kids had weebles. -she says, showing her age-

They were sorta like round bottomed fisher-price people. They never quite caught on like fisher-price, tho.

hmmmm....correct thread for Chinese Checkers??

toy, but using marbles. No it's a board game using marbles.

My chinese checkers set had a pressboard 'board' with a wodden frame. It made a pleasant 'thunking' sound as you moved the marbles, not that horrid 'clacking' noise that the newer metal boards make. But then there was no storage compartment underneath, either. Where to put the marbles was always a problem.

BOARD GAMES!!!!!


Yet another catagory!

Since this article sorta wrote itself without much reflection on my part, the standards for 'classic' vs 'modern' were not real clear in my mind. They were/are very subjective.

I suspect that there were two subliminal criteria for 'classic' when I wrote the article:

1.A toy I remember from MY childhood. Which means a REALLY long time ago. So your 60 year time frame is pretty close. [too close for comfort, actually]

2.A toy that isn't plastic. This is a personal preference, and may be ignored if there is a really good toy I have forgotten about that is plastic. But there wasn't very much plastic out there in the 40's and early 50's.

Everything else is what I would term 'modern'. That doesnt mean that they are less valuable, just that there should be an addenda, or maybe a separate article. Or maybe who cares, if you remember the toy fondly from your childhood then it will always be 'classic' to you.

The nice thing is that it is purely subjective; I put in what I liked. It's good to be the king...

That made me laugh! "It's good to be the king". That was Mel Brooks wasn't it?

"Nothing succeeds as planned;
Every change is for the worse;
No want is ever fulfilled;
A bad reputation never hurt anyone;
Everybody's death simplifies life for someone;
Always do unto others what is best for you;
Everybody is capable of everything;
It's good to be the king."

-Mel Brooks