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

A really good toy made out of plastic....

What about Space Hoppers? Couldn't have done those without plastic. I'll admit, they were probably just a more comfortable version of a pogo stick, but they were FAB. I remember when I was about 5 (in the seventies, so not that old) my brother and I had one, I do not recall when it was bought or by whom, but when we moved house that year we inherited another one, so I assumed they lived in gardens, feeding on small children. Made of inch-thick orange plastic, sporting a frankly terrifying set of stary eyes, a toothy grin, and inflated to lord knows what pressure they were the de rigeur mode of transport around our way. They could resist anything, and swung around the head they also doubled as a pretty effective weapon with which to knock your friends/siblings into the rose bushes. The only similar things I have seen these days are much smaller (although I am now six foot four, which might account for it) and made of flimsier plastic - although possibly containing a lot less dangerous plasticisers and other additives (twitch, twitch).

CS

Space Hoppers were after my time, though they, like bouncy castles, look the best fun adults can't have. A wise woman in my office says that all that bouncing up and down probably made many young girls into lesbians, or at least put then off balls for the rest of their lives....
An older mode of transport not involving plastic (to satisfy bludragon) was stilts. If you could persuade your dad to nail two blocks to long poles, you were set. My dad was so crap at woodwork he never managed that (though curiously, he always seemed to have some hand-crafted loudspeaker cabinets around for the hi-fi). I probably resorted to the poor kids' stilts substitute: two tin cans and two loops of string.

Remember that? The cogs and rings with holes for as coloured ballpoint, to make geometric patterns?

Oh, and I had a thing which used to spin a bit of paper very fast, and you dribbled paint on the paper with special squeezy paint pots, so it made spiral patterns with drips running out through lack of centripetal force.

Can I join in? Well I will anyway.

Modern toys have to be "safe" no nasty metal, lead paint, chemicals, small parts that can get stuck up bodily parts etc that made my (our?) childhood fun and exciting, and promoted natuaral selection for inteligence.

I remember "Bubble Stuff" that was made from some foul polymer type stuff and the bubbles lasted ages and you could, by "kissing" a bubble make smaller bubbles on the side. You made them almost like glass blowing. I only remember this from Singapore, so it may have been deemed too dangerous even in the 70s for UK import.

On the subject of Etch-o-Sketch, we recently had a major PC "upgrade" at work resulting in a downgraded service. Someone suggested replacing PC with etch-o-sketches would be faster, prompting;

Q. "my machine has crashed, what do I do?"
A. -"Turn it upside down and shake"

Q. "I have finished one document, how do I do another"
A. "-"Turn it upside down and shake"

Q. "How do i save a document"
a.-"Don't turn it upside down and shake"

etc.

CH

That's a Dilbert thing. The PHB comes in and complains that his laptop has crashed again. They prompt him" what did we say to do when it crashes?" "Oh yeah, turn it upside down and shake" "Right!" He wanders off and Dilbert asks Wally if he thinks the PHB will ever work out that they've given him an Etch-A-Sketch.

One of my top-ten favourite Dilberts of all time.

Ah, so that's where it came from, once again there is much truth in Dilbert. Our current favourite is one on my calender from a week ago where D is adding more pathos to a report which finally reads "How to cope with the loss of loved data", as our organization is losing data all over the place (hint - a UK govermental department introducing new, untested, espensive software) it is particulary apt.

Gone of toys a bit there but can anyone out there, especiall UK researcher remember Major Matt Mason? A moon astronaut about 6 inches high with bendy arms. I know he was popular in the USA (do a search on Alter Vista if you don't believe me) but no UK friends can remember him.

CH

So what WAS that thing that whirled and spun the paint all over???

Buggered if I can remember

Hang on, I'll ring my mum...

Oooh, THAT bubble stuff. That WAS dangerous stuff. Available in the US, of course.

You could get high sniffing it. There was a little tube of plastic 'goop'. You squeezed some of the goop out onto the end of a hollow tube, carefully formed it into a ball and then blew it up into a bubble. That's the glassblowing part. The resultant 'bubbles' were transparent colored filmy kinda things. Unless you didn't shape the blob right, or didnt blow it up carefully. Then you were left with a useless blob. [I suppose you could still sniff it]

I got into REAL TROUBLE when I made a whole bunch of them and set them on the living room coffee table to 'dry'. They dried alright--right onto the table. The rings stayed on the table long after the plastic bubble stuff was thrown away, and the child punished.

I think it was called Plastic Bubbles, and it came in different colors; at least red, blue, and maybe, clear. That was back when plastic was a wondrous new invention and we didnt know about biodegradable, or carcenogenic.

Marbles doesn't have to be played in a dirty, dusty place. You can have just as much fun on the kitchen floor when your Mum's trying to cook dinner, preferably when she's carrying pans of boiling water around and you can stand on her long skirts (oviously she also has to be wearing long skirts for this to be possible). And yes, girls can also play marbles, because my sister used to regularly beat me. I lost some of my tiniest marbles to her.

In the UK, this stuff was called "Magic Plastic". I remember first seeing it on a family holiday in Rhyl (North Wales)at the beginning of the eighties. You can still buy it (or a safer equivalent of it- the fumes were pretty intoxicating as I recall!) in branches of Beatties' at £1.99 - a snip!

One of the main games I remember from my childhood was a game called Kerplunk - plastic tube, perforated in the middle section, where plastic sticks were inserted. Marbles were put on top of the sticks, and the aim of the game was to remove the sticks without any of the marbles falling through. Not really a board game, so I don't know how you'd classify it.

All of the game manufacturers seem to be re-issuing games from my childhood (I'm 30, so not that long ago...) - any trip round a toy store usually results in my wife & I walking round, reminiscing about how toys were much better in the good old days, and how the updated versions can't be as good as the originals (we're old gits in training!)


As far as Lego goes, does anybody remember Stickle Bricks?


I have loads of memories of toys we used to play with as children - we had a great advantage in that my mum used to run a playgroup, so we always got to test the toys out first!!!


Any got to go - got to reminisce some more!!

AndyF

Stickle bricks, yeah! My primary recollection of those is that because they were meant to stick to each other, they always ended up getting a lot of disgusting gook stuck in them. Well, hair and such like. Ugh.

Another one, brought back to me by "Never Mind the Buzzcocks" the other week, was Shrinky-Dinks. Were these the most disappointing "toy" ever? All that time spent on colouring them in etc, only to end up with a nasty little malformed lump of plastic with no obvious use. (I think I have some Shrinky-Dink bitterness issues I need to deal with...)

Mmm, don't remember anything about Shrinky Dinks - must've been after my time. But I like the idea of voting for the most boring toy ever. My vote goes to a thing with iron filings under a plastic film and a magnetic pen. There was a hairless face printed on to a board beneath the plastic film, and the object was to lift and drop the iron filings to give the face "hair" - moustache, eyebrows, beard, and so on. You could only really make three faces with...no, it's no good : I'm bored already. I would also vote for Subutteo. *sits back, waits for flood of abuse...*

Surely nothing can compare for sheer tedium with the "Games Compendium" supplied at every birthday by some well-meaning aunt, which always contained chess, draughts and snakes & ladders?

God yes! It always had TiddleyWinks and Blow Football. I never met anybody that could make Tiddley Winks work, let alone enjoy playing it. As for Blow Football, if you didn't get fed up with the "ball" which was usually anything but spherical, you ended up collapsing with light-headedness from blowing out all the time.

Yes, I remember Major Matt Mason. Just. Not as good as Action Man.

Weebles wobble but they don't fall down

I must buy some tomorrow.

My chinese checker set belonged originally to my grandmother (or did she inherit it from her dad? hmmm...) so it was definitely -not- metal -or- pressboard.. it was and still is WOOD *gasp!*

The marbles were passed to me in an abandoned cheques box.