RM's mention of the trampoline got me thinking. My cousins had a trampoline that their kids are now using. It's been well loved and well used. Many (if not most) toys in the US get played with briefly and then discarded before eventually winding up in a garage sale or garbage.

But for all the toys I had growing up I think my two favorites were a toy winchester (it made noise but didn't shoot anything) and top shooter.

I've never seen a topshooter like it since. The bottoms of the tops had a gear and the shooter had a long straight toothed rack that meshed with the gear. So you loaded up the tops, then shoved the handle forward, this made the gear (and so the top) spin until it was ejected. The action was a quick back and forth to shoot all 4 and watch them spin. That was great. I loved it.

How about you, what were your favorite toys?

   Back in ancient times when I was a child there were no such things as politically incorrect toys. Consequently one Christmas morning little Rat Man got a missile base.  It had all of the missiles of the day on spring loaded launching platforms.  Little Rat Man was ready to conduct thermo nuclear war.  That Christmas my sister Susan, rest her soul, got a very elaborate doll house, a triple decker, loaded with all of the furniture and trappings a  girl could ever want.  You can probably figure out what I declared war on. 
     Another toy I had was a Remco's Bazooka.  It was a big plastic spring loaded bazooka which shot these fairly substantial  plastic fake rocket  projectiles.  Their fronts were rounded but they still had enough weight, velocity, and range to bring a tear to your little sisters eye if you caught her in the forehead. 
    You can't buy toys like these today.

I wasnt allowed to have a trampoline,  or use one too much, as when i was around 10, i broke my wrist on a friend's trampoline. But i had a ton of legos, creppy crawlers, and over stretched strech Armstrong a few to many times. But around 10 i got my first paintball gun, played that for 20 years,  ended up beimg a referee up at a huge paintball place in PA. Loved it.wish i didnt have to give it up, 

Probably my meccano set.
I used to make fighting 'robots'. Very basic but functional.
And they and actuion man would have fights.
Guess that says a lot more about me than the toys :-)

I more or less switched from toys to books around 11 or so.

Mine was a bb gun and hunting knife against my dad's wishes my mom got if for me and I loved them both my mom was hard core.

NES and rollerblades. Good times!

I got one of my favorite toys BECAUSE it was politically incorrect :D The local kindergarten (I've translated for the Americans, it was called PlayGroup) had an amazing, hand-made wooden castle. I had already grown up and gone to school but my sisters were still going to the group and my mum was very friendly with the people that ran it because she's friends with everyone. They were clearing out all their "violent" toys and somehow I ended up with it. I loved that castle and many a battle was waged. Unfortunately, due to its influence, I am now a raging psychopath with a long history of violence...

My parents were always against me having anything too... for want of a better word... weapon-like. Very 90s parenting style. For some reason I loved anything weapon-like, even if I was always a very peaceable kid (still do, and still am  :D)

Luckily they left me alone with my granddad for a morning and I returned from an army surplus store with a knife and a slingshot (yes- actually a slingshot, not a misnamed sling). Still got them, and I used the knife to craft javelins and other things.

my toy winchester was definitely procured against my mother's wishes  ;D

had use of the family air pistol from a very early age :-)
Well as soon as I was old enough to hold and cock it.
A 1960s german made 'original' .22
I had the spring changed about 20 years ago and it's still around factory spec.
Lets put it this way, wood pigeons at the end of the garden, in the ash tree (about 40 metres) don't hang around. With a 22 pellet it won't penetrate at that range, but it will give them a bruise to remember :-)

That thing is only a few years younger than I am. Knowing my dad he'd have bought it new.

I did have my spud gun confiscated when I tried to take my sister's eye out with it :whistle:

That was a great bit of kit. Rather than air pressure it actually used those red plastic caps to shoot the potato pellet. Basically an actual Firearm.

Yeah catapults we used to make, crappy bows, spears etc.
Mind you, even as a sprog I always preferred a club :-)

Or chinese firecrackers, I've never been subtle - explosives and clubs, all day long:-)

My little brother and I had lots of lego, plastic animals, and fantasy, there was no limit to how we coul combine this.  And, my father was 50 when I was born, he had 4 remaining sisters, my stange and strong willed aunts, of which 1 had a boyfriend.  These people had a lot of old knowledge, of climbing in trees and cliffs, making and using (crappy, as Curious Aardwark would say) bows and arrows, javelins, simple crossbows, and whatnot.   We whittled stuff all the time, I would say whittling knives was my favorite childhood toys. 
Also, the aunts made sure books was always available, I guess they scourged flee markets to keep them flowing in. 
Also, there was some air rifles around.  

Morphy wrote on Oct 8^th, 2019 at 9:36am:

NES and rollerblades. Good times!

NES?

Rat Man wrote on Oct 9^th, 2019 at 8:08pm:

Morphy wrote on Oct 8th, 2019 at 9:36am: NES and rollerblades. Good times! NES?

Nintendo Entertainment System  :D

I saw legos mentioned.  That was a big one for me too.  Nintendo as well, but not right when they came out.  My family wasn't the best off financially when I was young, so Nintendo was out for a few years before we got one.  I liked action figures a lot.  Had A-Team, He-Man, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles mostly.

The original Nintendo. All 8 bits of glorious gaming. I also didn't have one till later. My older brother got one and I would watch him play it. Eventually I got my own and loved it.

   Nintendo and Atari... I was already an adult when these came out.  Blips was the first video game I remember. You batted a little white light  projectile back and forth across the screen. You were either playing tennis or ping pong.  In that there were no other video games at the time we found this adequate, believe it or not... hard to imagine now.

Lego would have to be up there for me. And once I was a little older maybe 9-10 I kinda moved on to things that arnt really toys like skateboards and surfing , archery, knives etc

I remember my family had an old defunct brick firepit in the backyard. While it was theoretically off limits (naturally) that brick construction was a pirate ship, a roman fortress, colonial fortress, zoo....you name it. Destroyed many pairs of jeans clambering all over it.

I grew up with a bb gun in my hand, and I started collecting knives around 11 years old.  I’ve always been a city kid, but we found our own wilderness like drainage plots, undeveloped woods, and isolated culverts where we could explore... always well armed of course :)
These days a kid would be labeled a domestic terrorist for carrying a knife or a bb gun in public.

Morphy wrote on Oct 8^th, 2019 at 9:36am:

NES and rollerblades. Good times!

Oh... I remember those days. Roller hockey in the church parking lot... no pads or helmets... red streaks running up my brothers arm because of the staph infection when he wiped out and turned his arm into hamburger (but he scored!). Good times!

And I was maybe in second grade when the original NES came out. When my neighbor friend got a Nintendo, we would stay up all night playing Super Mario or Duck Hunt... because those were the only two games he had.

I was lucky enough to be at the age of skating with rollerblades back when it was still considered somewhat cool lol. I loved them. I made so many jumps I should have crashed and burned on. Then one day I realized...you know I could actually die doing this and I just stopped. It was a blast.

    As I have mentioned many times, when I was a child there were no video games, VCRs, cell phones, computers, internet, etc., etc.  Consequently our imaginations were the only way to amuse ourselves.  One of the things we played with the most was modeling clay.  Not the kind you bake into some permanent shape, but the kind you use over and over again.  On a rainy day we'd spend hours playing with clay.  Sometimes we had Play Doh, which was non toxic and didn't taste all that bad... salty. But mostly we had regular gray clay. 

My brother and I were part of the very first generation to grow up with personal computers around the house.   My dad bought a TRS-80 that lived in the bedroom I shared with my brother, and our version of modeling clay was the BASIC programming language. There weren’t that many programs to entertain a 7 year old, so we had to learn to write our own code. It was a really big deal when we upgraded to an 8088 with a 16-color monitor! 

Paintball, was my sport for 20 years. I retired from it due go my car accident. But as i said before. Creepy crawlers was my main one with legos. Used to burn myself playing with it all the time, sitting on a carpeted floor. Now i think how bad it is for kids now.

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vetryan15 wrote on Oct 17^th, 2019 at 6:53am:

Paintball, was my sport for 20 years.

You guys just keep bringing up all sorts of childhood memories!
Remember when Walmart sold paintballs?  I was too poor to go to the paintball fields, but we used to go out in the woods with slingshots, painters goggles, and 100 paintballs per person, and we could battle for hours. The tactics were quite different with slingshots too. There was a lot more maneuvering than with paintball guns, because it takes time to reload after every shot. If you missed, you had to run or risk being rushed and shot point-blank.

and while using an incandescent bulb to melt plastic is indeed considered too dangerous now time was....
https://www.wisconsinhistory.org/Records/Article/CS2658

Go back and further and I remember my wife's grandfather telling me about casting fishing weights using a potato as his mold...

NooneOfConsequence wrote on Oct 17^th, 2019 at 7:59am:

vetryan15 wrote on Oct 17th, 2019 at 6:53am: Paintball, was my sport for 20 years. You guys just keep bringing up all sorts of childhood memories! Remember when Walmart sold paintballs?  I was too poor to go to the paintball fields, but we used to go out in the woods with slingshots, painters goggles, and 100 paintballs per person, and we could battle for hours. The tactics were quite different with slingshots too. There was a lot more maneuvering than with paintball guns, because it takes time to reload after every shot. If you missed, you had to run or risk being rushed and shot point-blank.

Oh yeh, we did that. I still occasionally come across some paintball gear in Walmart.  Depends on the region. But we played with slingshots, when i got into slinging, i was a referee at a huge field in NE PA, I would teach people how to sling with paintballs, can fit like 4 or more in a pouch, almost like a shotgun.  We would play a variation of that called 'musket ball' take as much ammo as you can carry, and remove the hoppers from the guns. Then do single shots.  I grew  up playing in woods, in my backyard.  Never played on a field until i had that job.
Joe_meadmaker wouuld probably know whivh field i worked at. It was called skirmish usa, 750 acres with about 20 fields, and they were always evolving and changing em up.

I didn’t really like the fields after playing in the woods. Everyone just sat behind cover and pulled the trigger every time they saw motion. It cost a lot and was pretty boring compared to the poor man’s version.

I agree, i didnt step onto a field untill i was 27. Then while while working there, i played for free.but it was a huge tourist spot in the area. Surprisingly it was busy durinng every month except winter. I would run some games, and it was a nature hike for the group since it was such a big property.  They did have some fields i loved, due to the way they made them. One was a close combat. 32 buildings on an acre. Most were 2 story. Seen some crazy tactics there.  But i only ever played in the woods, or one time we used a. Abandoned golf course by my house. At midnight. Probably wasnt alloweed but itwas fun

  I never had the Creepy Crawlers set though I was interested in it.  I did have a Formex 7.  It was a kit that allowed you to make your own plastic soldiers and weapons with molds. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KROWZ_aDoBw
    I also had a Spirograph, which was a fascinating toy.

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    Secret Sam is one toy that I never had.  I was extremely envious of kids that did.  Remember, there were no politically incorrect toys when I was a kid. Check this out....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJyoRrWvwV8

Rat Man wrote on Oct 22^nd, 2019 at 8:39pm:

Secret Sam is one toy that I never had.  I was extremely envious of kids that did.  Remember, there were no politically incorrect toys when I was a kid. Check this out.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJyoRrWvwV8

8 year old me would be freaking out about now.

     Here's one I never had but the commercials intrigued me.  Mr. Machine.  This was high tech in 1960.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgIm1mJCyRU

    Everyone had a Slinky.  I believe they still make them. I doubt they'd amuse kids today like they did us though. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Pj8gaPXyRM

   Here's another one that I never had but was curious about; the Tick Toy Clock.  Apparently the Tick Toy Clock is so obscure that Google and YouTube never heard of it.  It was a working clock that you took apart and put back together.
    
This was a good toy for poor kids.  Mr Potato Head.  Let the kids play with potatoes. It worked back then.  I believe these are still produced also. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICGrjmJouWA