Toys and Games

[Rob Houghton]

I remember those record-players, though I never had one. I also used to be quite jealous of the 'televisions' where the picture moved as the music played. I never had one of those either!

One thing I do remember really wanting when I was a child was the Evel Knievel stunt bike. You fitted the bike onto the wind-up platform, revved it up and he would go speeding off. A few of my friends had one, but I never did. It seemed to me to be the most exciting toy ever invented!

[Fiona1986]

I never had one of the Fisher-Price record players but I've certainly played with one somewhere before. I think anything that isn't yours is always more exciting. The grass is always greener on the other side or the toys are always more fun in someone else's house!

[Courtenay]

I remember those record-players, though I never had one. I also used to be quite jealous of the 'televisions' where the picture moved as the music played. I never had one of those either!

Oh yeah, I remember wishing I had one of those too! But I always preferred books to TV (real or pretend), and we could always expect at least one book each for birthdays and Christmas — usually Roald Dahl — so that was good. (Our Enid Blyton books, of which we easily had more than we had of any other author, were almost never bought new, but picked up second hand at various op shops (that's Australian for charity shops) or school fetes or garage sales, usually for 50 cents or less. Those were the days... )

[Anita Bensoussane]

One thing I do remember really wanting when I was a child was the Evel Knievel stunt bike. You fitted the bike onto the wind-up platform, revved it up and he would go speeding off. A few of my friends had one, but I never did. It seemed to me to be the most exciting toy ever invented!

I remember seeing adverts for that, though I don't think I ever saw one in reality. There were also adverts for exciting-looking toy planes which did stunts or flew quite a distance, but the only toy planes I ever had (other than ones I made out of paper!) were a small balsa wood one and a small metal one.

[Rob Houghton]

Another toy I always wanted (and never had until I bought myself one aged about 30!!) was a 'Slinky.' They were 'THE' toy to have in the 1970's and I was very jealous of the boy next door who had one before most other people!

One toy I did have that was the envy of many a small boy was a Bionic Man doll - Steve Austin, in red tracksuit, with 'bionic' arm worked by a lever in his back, and a 'bionic eye' - which made everything smaller rather than larger when you looked through the hole in the back of his head. He had rubber skin which could be rolled back to reveal the circuit-boards that supposedly made him bionic - and he could lift up a car engine, lol!

[Boatbuilder]

I was very jealous of the boy next door who had one before most other people!

Was his name Kit by any chance, Rob?

[Anita Bensoussane]

That reminds me of the Action Man with "eagle eyes" (again, I didn't have one but I recall seeing it advertised on TV).

Does anyone else remember "French elastics" (also called "French skipping" and perhaps other names too)? Players would do various jumps involving a long loop of elastic, sometimes while saying rhymes. There was a craze for it in the playground when I was about eight or nine:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79aSr4BNFf0" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Rob Houghton]

Yes - my sister was always doing 'French Skipping' with her friends! It always looked more complicated than 'normal' skipping to me!

Hula-hoops were also very fashionable around that time - seeing how long you could keep them spinning round your waist. My sister was brilliant at it!

[Courtenay]

Oh yes, "elastics" were the fashion at one stage when I was in primary school too, though they never caught on as much as traditional skipping. At which I was terrible — I could manage a skipping rope by myself, but jumping in time with the rope when others were turning it was not my thing!

[Rob Houghton]

As a kid I often joined in with my sister and her friends doing skipping games. She used to tie one end of the rope to our front gate, and then someone would hold the other end. It was quite a long rope and so several could be in there skipping at once - sometimes there were about ten of us all across the pavement - boys and girls of various ages - all running in and out of the rope as it turned, and forming a queue to do it again. I was quite good at running in and out, but not as good as my sister and friends - who were all around 6 years older than me.

We used to play 'colours' where you had to jump in and out of the turning rope and guess the colour the rope turner was thinking of, there was one called 'Bluebells cockleshells' and a few others.

One was 'Not last night but the night before, 22 robbers came knocking at the door...' or words to that effect - I'm sure sometimes it was 'two tom cats came knocking at the door'!

Another one was 'Oh, you, I'm telling your mother, for kissing (add name of prospective BF or GF) down by the river...how many kisses did you give her / him? And then turning the rope until you got caught out - 10, 20, 30, 40, 10, 20, 30, 40 etc etc. This went on for ages - what sort of engagement rng did you have - gold, silver, platinum etc...and what colour wedding dress - red, yellow, white, black, etc, and how many children did you have 2, 4, 6 or 8 etc.

[Stephen]

Aww, that's so cute! We had something similar when I was little, a Tomy toy train with colourful plastic records that slotted into the top of it and played nursery rhymes as the train ran along the floor (it was battery powered). I've just found a video of it, but the sound quality is awful (either it's distorted somehow or the "Alouette" record is horribly out of tune ). It's definitely the same sort of train as the one we had (I'm sure the box for ours was different, though), but I can assure you the music sounded much nicer than that in real life!

My little brother had that for Christmas one year, and eventually drove us all mad with it!

I had the Fisher Price wind up music box that played Pop Goes the Weasel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMMMOzyVA04" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

And, although I had forgotten all about it, I was looking through the related videos and found THIS! The Fisher Price Pull Along Turtle. I had one of these as well!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0g0XHy ... u8&index=2" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Stephen]

One thing I do remember really wanting when I was a child was the Evel Knievel stunt bike. You fitted the bike onto the wind-up platform, revved it up and he would go speeding off. A few of my friends had one, but I never did. It seemed to me to be the most exciting toy ever invented!

Mr Knievel would have been 80 today! (17th October 2018)

[Anita Bensoussane]

I like the look of the old Fisher-Price toys. A friend of mine used to have this 'Little Snoopy' pull-along dog:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORvj3EIxVXo" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I had a hula-hoop, Rob, but I wasn't very good at hula-hooping. I loved skipping though, whether by myself or with others, and enjoyed all the skipping rhymes. Ball games like 'Queenie' ("Who's got the ball-i-o?") were also popular in the playground.

[Courtenay]

Another one was 'Oh, you, I'm telling your mother, for kissing (add name of prospective BF or GF) down by the river...how many kisses did you give her / him? And then turning the rope until you got caught out - 10, 20, 30, 40, 10, 20, 30, 40 etc etc. This went on for ages - what sort of engagement rng did you have - gold, silver, platinum etc...and what colour wedding dress - red, yellow, white, black, etc, and how many children did you have 2, 4, 6 or 8 etc.

Our version in primary school was slightly more Australian in the way it started...

"Last night I saw you in the pub
Kissing your boyfriend!
All right, [skipper's name],
I'll tell your mother —
How many kisses did you give..." [usually the name of someone we couldn't stand! ]

There was also "Down the Mississippi", in which you had to skip to the chant of "Down the Mississippi, if you miss a loop you're out!" — jumping out on "out", at which point the next person in line had to jump in without missing a beat and do the same; anyone who missed was, as the chant says, out of the game. Actually, I've seen it in a book of Aussie playground games as "Down the Murrumbidgee", which has exactly the same rhythm and would have been rather closer to home, but it was always the Mississippi for us. Maybe because the Murrumbidgee River is in New South Wales and we were in Victoria.

[Fiona1986]

We played elastics and skipping too. Also popular was a ball on a rope that went round one ankle and you swung it in circles and had to jump over it with your other foot (I have NO idea what it's called!). I also played with a tennis ball in half a pair of tights, swinging it and bouncing it off the wall on either side. Was that called granny something?

I had a plastic rainbow slinky in the 90s, Rob. I think I spent more time detangling it than playing with it!