What toys from the 70s were totally rubbish?

Here's one... the infamous "Slinky".



It was supposed to "slink" the down the stairs but the one I had managed two steps then would fall pathetically over the edge.

I think I ended up pulling it to bits.

No. 2: The spacehopper



Did anyone ever actually manage to stay on one?

No. 3 Mousetrap (interesting concept, terrible execution)

If the trap ever managed to work we'd be cracking open the champagne... oh all right, lemonade then!



What rubbish toys did you have?

Oh just to add to balance this.... my favourite board game EVER from the 70s???

"Miss World!!!"

The game consisted of 4 little toy dolls which you waddled around the board trying to win the beauty contest. Me and my sister would try to get my grumpy old grandad to play. He subscribed to the "Alf Garnett" school of bigotry and would protest when he had to play the "darkie" (as he called it).

Yes I am ashamed to say my grandfather was a complete racist.

Anyway, I found a pic of those cute lil dolls... awww!

I actually had one from the 60s that worked quite well. As far as pointless toys, Stretch Armstrong would be at least in the top 5. The basic premise was a vinyl action figure filled with corn syrup.

What did he do? Well, nothing that a rubber band couldn't do a hundred times better. He stretched if you pulled his arms or legs, then slowly oozed back to his original shape.

I think this toy would have been twice as entetaining if they had included a Medieval torture rack in the package.

Oh hello Kneon_Knight, thanks for joining my little group - bit quiet in here, but hey let's get the party started! Us oldies know how to have a good time eh?!!

Can't say I remember Stretch Armstrong... let's see what I can google...

Aha!!! Here is old Stretch! Looking rather dapper I might add, although perhaps maybe had one too many sessions on the sunbed.

And yes, I think he's a definite candidate for the torture rack!

Miserable piece of trash that it was. He had an "enemy" introduced a couple of years into his run, called (very originally, I thought) "Stretch Monster" Now, see, you absolutely had to have him because he had a face that looked like it would rot the moon and he was green! He also had the amazing ability to ....stretch, in contrast to our orange-skinned wrestler, who...um, was there ever a point to these toys?

OMG - I googled "Stretch monster" and found these pics:

I think I'm more scared of the little boy than the monster! haha I bet he grew up to be a psycho!

And those "bear hugs" between Stretch Monster and Armstrong have definite homo-erotic undertones! LOL

Hahaha...yeah, that kid always kind of bothered me, too. I also have to wonder about his parents-did you get a load of the Mr. Spock haircut?

I remembered one other little tidbit about old Stretch and his green nemesis-the corn syrup inside them was died a deep red colour, so if either one got punctured, which they invariably did, they would ooze red gore for weeks. Big hit with the moms, I would imagine.

Ooh yes, he does have a touch of the Leonard Nimoy (sp?) about him.

Poor kid - he probably ended up acting in B-rated horror films. That or totally having to "live down" being the boy who advertised Stretch monster. A bit like the Milky Bar kid.

I don't know if you ever had a chance to see a television progarm called "The Munsters", but I just realized that poor kid's haircut looks an awful lot like Eddie Munster's.

I think it is very possible that haircut was directly responsible for the upsurge in Child Protection laws.

Another rather silly toy I remember was called "Super Elastic Bubble Plastic". It consisted of multicolored goo in the kind of metal tube toothpaste used to be packaged in and a short length of plastic tube (essentially a drinking straw)-the idea was to affix a wad of the goo to the end of the straw and blow a bubble. You then twisted it off the tube, leaving a rather nauseatingly swirled globe...that you could...that is you would...actually, they were utterly useless. If you left them lying about, they would slowly deflate, resulting in a thin, flat disk of vaguely sticky residue that would remove the varnish from the furniture. Another big hit with parents, I'm sure.


Then there was Slime. The Truth in Advertising people could not, as hard as they tried, find fault with this product. You got exactly what you paid for with this gem. Even the packaging was a big middle finger to the consumer; being a green plastic garbage can. Inside you would find a quantity of thick, toxic-green liquid that would flow and ooze slowly over any surface you poured it on until it finally dripped into the carpet or your younger sibling's hair, where it became as immovable as the Rock of Gibralter. The manufacturer recommended using vinegar to remove it from fabrics, but said nothing about hair or pet fur. Over time, Slime would gradually evaporate, leaving behing a thick, rubbery, foul-smelling mass the color of old pea-soup.

The back story on this "toy" is rather interesting, if only to demonstrate the cynicism of toymakers in this country. Apparently, a vice president of marketing was accosted in his office by one of the companies chemists, who poured a bucketful of what was to become known as Slime all over his desk. and then launched into a spiel about how kids loved disgusting, "gross" things. He even highlighted how the substance resembled snot.
And the rest, as they say, is history.
Did I mention that this junk was originally intended to be a modeling comounnd similar to plasticine clay and "Silly Putty"?
Or that it was not supposed to run and flow and stick to fibrous surfaces?
Do you see what they did there? They took an accident, what was nothing more than industrial waste, and sold it to children!

Brilliant! Now, we need to start making costume jewelry from depleted uranium...there's undoubtedly a huge market just waiting to be discovered.

LOL!!

Oh yes, Slime, I quite liked it. Except when you had played it for too long and it started to pick up all the grub around your house and rather lost it's wonderful green hue and ultimately solidified, rendering unplayable.

I think the thing I liked most about it was the farting sound you could get if you squashed it the right way!

Could be useful for grouting the bathroom tiles though.

No boy I knew of didn't have at least a dozen or so little plastic soldiers. "Army men" as they were affectionately known were made by numerous manufacturers, perhaps the most famous being the Louis Marx brand (later known as simply Marx Toys) whose sculpting and attention to detail has yet to be surpassed by any toymaker.

Then there were the weird ones....the odd, cheap soldiers that were little more than anthropomorhic lumps of greenish plastic, and my personal favorite, those manufactured by Processed Plastics L.L.C/Tim-Mee Toys. The detail was fairly good, but there were some oddities....the figures sold as "Soldiers" were, in fact, Marines. How do I know this? Because their helmets were lacking the distinctive camouflage band (a loop of elastic used to secure foliage to the headgear) that was issued to all U.S. Army personnel. A simple detail, yet not lost on this old soldier. Another oddity was the light machine gunner...his pose would have strained even a professional contortionist, and he was armed with what appeared to be a Bren gun ( a very fine weapon, to be sure) rather than the M-60 one would expect.

Now, all that could be forgiven, and probably largely forgotten had not the manufacturer shosen to do something very, very strange. Around 1970, when I was hunting for some more infantry to fill out the ranks depleted by chewing dogs and younger siblings, not to mention the inevitable losses to fireworks, I saw something in the local toy shop that stopped me cold. There, amidst the usual olive drab and tan offerings was a bag filled with "soldiers" molded in shocking pink, electric blue and lemon yellow. Yes, there were all the familiar poses, even the double jointed machine-gunner, but the shocking riot of colour clearly set these apart. I had to have them.

I do not know why Processed Plastics decided to use these colors. Was it an attempt to lure hippy parents into buying war toys for their children? Could they have been that clueless? Or was it an attempt to cash in on G.I. Joe's makeover into an adventurer with all sorts of colorfulvehicles and accessories? I really have no answer. I recall that these soldiers became "enemies"-at least the pink and yellow ones. The blue ones were conscripted as Air Force Security or Naval Construction Battalion "SeaBees". And you couldn't hide them in the grass to win a bet. They were just too vivid. For that reason, I was considering adding them to my "useless toys" list.

But then it dawned on me. I never had any trouble collecting them after a hard fought battle, whereas their OD counterparts seemed to disappear with alarming frequency. So, while certainly strange, those weirdly colored "Army Men" may not have been quite so useless after all.

OH, and anyone who can locate a photo of these soldiers gets a cookie. :D

Die pink soldier, DIE!!!



I wasn't really into soldiers (although loved reading what you did with yours K_K!) but I was TOTALLY into my miniature farm animals made by a company called...er.. "Britain". I could play for hours with those. In fact I had all of these animals (as well as about 100 others). Apparently they're pretty collectible now:



My grandparents also had a great collection including my favorite animal which was a white carthorse. Whenever we'd pay them a fortnightly visit, out would be dragged the box of animals and I'd sit there playing for ages. Once I decided the carthorse would be much happier in my home collection so smuggled him into my coat pocket. Now my sister and I were always brought up to be honest so when it was time to go home and we were doing the usual "goodbye" ritual (where my grandparents would always give us 10 pence! - lol) I just couldn't look my granddad in the eye! I still took the horse though!

My obsession with horses (why is this always a girly thing?!) then continued with purchasing three plastic horses with moveable limbs measuring about 10 inches in height by 14 inches length. I had a black one, palamino and brown. I had most of the accessories too (saddles, bridles) including a complete jumping course.

Oftentimes my parents would walk into the living room to find the whole carpet taken over by a huge showjumping course with three horses in various contorted positions jumping the fences.

Wow...that looks like a German soldier. I can honestly say that I have never, ever seen one like that before. He looks a bit like some of the Airfix line, but not quite as well detailed. Were all definitely Viet Nam era troops. That pic just blows my mind-I thought Americans were the only people goofy enough to manufacture hot pink soldiers. Well, while it is not exactly what I was talking about, you can definitely claim a cookie or two.

Britain's! Those are quite the collector's item now, especially the older ones with the heavy weapons that launched the tiny and easily lost projectiles. I have a cousin who has an extensive collection, ranging from Trucks and Bren Carriers to Knights, Farmers and a little of everything in between. I had a few, but as they were a bit more costly and harder to find in the U.S., they were reserved for rainy days indoors.

Come to think of it, the same company that produced the neon soldiers also made farmers, livestock, and dinosaurs, but they were molded in yellow, bright green and flourescent orange. Very easy to find in the sandbox, and very well detailed. Pity you can't find them today.

Oh well, I was close!

I just typed in Processed Plastics pink soldier and that's what came up. Maybe they got the model wrong.

Anyway, was googling around for toy soldiers and this came up.. completely unrelated. But I thought I'd post it because he looks like the kind of man I could talk to!
Actually come to think of it - I'm sure I once met this man on a beach in Greece!



Hey, how about this little guy? It looks as if his face was already blown in half, sewn back on again (rather badly) and he's now thinking "can I go home now please?" And is it just me but is he doing a rather nifty Michael Jackson move?

Sometimes life will take you down a curious path, seemingly at random, but ultimately with a greater purpose. This week's was no grand, life altering experience, but an answer to a question that has plagued me for 40+ years.

The toy soldiers I spoke of were made in those garish colors because the company that made them was also a supplier of canteens to the us armed forces; canteens which were molded of olive drab plastic. Due to a clerical oversight, they experienced a shortage of the dye used to make the OD green plastic, and contractual obligations with the government dictated that any on hand be used for canteens, not toys. Rather than shut down an entire section of the factory, the decision was made to continue manufacturing their various military toys, using whatever colors were on hand.

I learned all of this from a former executive of the company, who I met online in a discussion about the Korean War. During the course of the conversation, I mentioned that it was the one war in U.S. history that hadn't generated much interest from hobbyists regarding model kits and miniature figures, which led us to the Viet Nam war...long story short, I made a casual remark about the odd colored toy soldiers, and was given the explanation above. On reflection, I do recall that these "rainbow warriors" were only available for a very short time, and that there were a lot of pink, blue, yellow and orange trucks, aircraft and jeeps on the shelves at the same time. Oddly enough, no tanks.

I guess the world wasn't ready for the "Pink Panzer"

*Ahem* As for the beach bum you found, I think he would make an excellent companion for one of those souvenir "Hula Dolls", or the now hard to find "Dashboard Dolly".
(For the uninitiated, Dashboard Dolly was a vinyl figurine of an extremely curvaceous young woman, in a coy kneeling pose, clad in a very brief, and very transparent negligee.)

Is this the woman you're talking about... what a little strumpet she is!!



And ooh look, Pammie has arrived!