Toys from your childhood that you now think are rubbish

nabby

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I had a conversation with the father of my daughter's best friend the other week and he was telling me how he'd been in Toys-R-Us in Croydon a few days beforehand with his two kids. He'd wandered past the aisle with the Scalextric sets (other racing car track sets available) and fancied getting one "for the kids" although of course he'd had one as child and loved it. He hoped to install similar passion for slot car racing in his children.

So about £100 was thrown at the cashier and they came home with the set they'd chosen.

It took him (of course, it was just him :)) 2 hours to unpack and set up ,then the kids played it for 15 minutes, one of the two cars in the set stopped working, the tracks kept coming apart or twisting, cars kept racing off the track at corners, the controllers seemed to either do 0% speed or 100% speed with nothing in between and very quickly it all felt like a huge waste of money and a massive disappointment.

Naturally, his choice for the list was Scalextric.

It got me thinking and I remember back in the dim and distant 1980's the craze for domino rallies, where you'd set up lines of dominoes standing vertically and knock the first one down to create a chain of these things falling over. Every time they showed the latest world record attempt on Record Breakers or on Blue Peter or Newsround, me and my brother would be glued to the telly, watching in amazement as these set-ups took 10+ minutes to fall over, with all sorts of fantastic effects going off left, right and centre.

So one Christmas we begged our parents for Domino Rally - Action Alley and got it. It was fun for 20 minutes then it was crap and we never touched it again. Our illusions were shattered, the scales fell from our eyes and we realised that 100 or so rubbish, cheaply made lightweight plastic dominoes were never going to create the brilliant set-ups we'd seen on TV. Then we went back to playing football or cricket in the back garden or playing chess, cards or Top Trumps.

Hence my choice is Domino Rally - Action Alley.

What's yours? :)
 
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Tank Command

The TV advert was awesome.
Reality was a heap of plastic that didn't work.


I'm sitting here staring at my kids playroom. The cupboards are full of the big games over the last few christmases, they're all crap. Hungry Hippos doesn't even fit in it's box, you need a brave adult with no care for their own fingers to build it every time they want to play it
 
MrFrosty. Biggest let down ever.

I remember those! I always wanted one (especially as I loved Slush Puppies when I was younger) but never got one and never had a friend who got one either. What made it so rubbish?
 
Well, compare it with the slush you get out of the proper machines.

You spent ages trying to smash ice cubes with a plunger, if I remember, which just didnt work. You ended up with water everywhere. It was just a mess.
 
Action Man deep sea diving outfit. Great and you had to fill the bath really full to even cover the helmet. And then what?
 
Tank Command

The TV advert was awesome.
Reality was a heap of plastic that didn't work.


I'm sitting here staring at my kids playroom. The cupboards are full of the big games over the last few christmases, they're all crap. Hungry Hippos doesn't even fit in it's box, you need a brave adult with no care for their own fingers to build it every time they want to play it

I don't remember Tank Command. Was it one of those toys that was designed to look like a mini arcade machine? Or was it more like Battleships or similar to Risk?
 
Well, compare it with the slush you get out of the proper machines.

You spent ages trying to smash ice cubes with a plunger, if I remember, which just didnt work. You ended up with water everywhere. It was just a mess.

On that note, the soda syphon's that made 'cola'. No, just no.
 
Action Man deep sea diving outfit. Great and you had to fill the bath really full to even cover the helmet. And then what?

Indeed :)

Again, I never got an Action Man although my brother once got a market stall quality rip-off with a plastic tank. He broke the turret gun off the tank, binned the doll and just played with the tank like a large push-around Matchbox car :)
 
On that note, the soda syphon's that made 'cola'. No, just no.

If you mean like a Soda Stream then we had one of those - it wasn't a toy but we made it into one by trying to make the water as fizzy as possibly for each drink. Of course, that just meant that when my dad went to use it when we had guests round for dinner, the gas had run out and he'd complain that he'd only got a new cylinder the previous weekend!
 
Anyone get a sledge for Christmas? Only one problem which I imagine you can guess.

No hills ;)

I remember only one year during my childhood (possibly 1985/6) where we had enough snow locally to go sledging. I didn't have a sledge (my parents were too sensible/tight to waste money on something that would hardly get used) but friends of mine did and we all went to Farthing Downs near Croydon to sled down the slopes.
 
No hills ;)

I remember only one year during my childhood (possibly 1985/6) where we had enough snow locally to go sledging. I didn't have a sledge (my parents were too sensible/tight to waste money on something that would hardly get used) but friends of mine did and we all went to Farthing Downs near Croydon to sled down the slopes.

My father made one out of wood and it collapsed under our weight. But necessity is the mother of invention and these days a 'for sale' sign makes an excellent disposable sledge :D
 
Evil Kinevil - one of those ones that would wind up on the stand then once you released it it was supposed to go at all speeds doing wheelies, ramps etc! Most of the time it just crashed !! The TV ads were so much better !!
 
I used to have these little green plastic army men with parachutes on their backs. I'd run up to the top landing and throw them off the banister in the hope that they would 'float' down. Each one fell like a lead balloon and it took me more time running downstairs to pick them up, untangle their parachutes and run back up again than it took for them to fall down. Kept me amused for zero minutes before I gave up on them.
 
I also had a Lion-o Thundercats sword that, once you pressed a button on the handle, the Thundercats logo would light up red. Well in reality it was the faintest, dimmest red light you can imagine which was only visible in complete darkness wearing sunglasses! I used to shut myself in our little cupboard under the stairs (whilst trying to avoid getting impaled or stabbed by anything sharp in there) and used to yell THUNDERCATS...HOOOOO at the top of my voice and press the button to see a crappy projection on the wall..........Then my mum would open the door and yank me out, grazing me along said sharp objects I struggled to avoid to get in there in the first place. Ahh memories!
 
I used to have these little green plastic army men with parachutes on their backs. I'd run up to the top landing and throw them off the banister in the hope that they would 'float' down. Each one fell like a lead balloon and it took me more time running downstairs to pick them up, untangle their parachutes and run back up again than it took for them to fall down. Kept me amused for zero minutes before I gave up on them.

The fabric parachute ones work best. A few years ago I was sitting by Durham Cathedral with my kids and we spotted some kids up the tower throw a couple of parachutes off. We sat and watched them glide down, they were pretty amazing. After a while my two got very animated, I looked and laughed "Go on then..." they jumped up ran over and caught them... then scarpered with them :D
 
Evil Kinevil - one of those ones that would wind up on the stand then once you released it it was supposed to go at all speeds doing wheelies, ramps etc! Most of the time it just crashed !! The TV ads were so much better !!

I had one of those and had completely forgotten about it until you posted this :laugh: Mine had a red stand and I think the motorbike was white. I think the Evel Kenevel doll had a red, white and blue costume (possibly a cape too?).
 
Subbuteo - I liked all the detail that went into the team sets and other bits you could get but playing the game itself was always just so boring!
 
Subbuteo - I liked all the detail that went into the team sets and other bits you could get but playing the game itself was always just so boring!

Interesting - we had a tonne of Subbuteo stuff we bought second hand at a Scout auction. it included a fabric pitch that had been tacked to a piece of plywood. This meant we had it easy in terms of getting a nice smooth surface to play on that was always level. Me and my brother played for hours and days. I think we still have it all boxed up somewhere, with teams from the 60s and 70s.
 
I had one of those and had completely forgotten about it until you posted this :laugh: Mine had a red stand and I think the motorbike was white. I think the Evel Kenevel doll had a red, white and blue costume (possibly a cape too?).
No cape?

evelknieveltoy2.jpg
 
I played out an entire season home & away for all 20/22 teams at Subbuteo with a mate. Christ I used to play it on my owe for hours too. Loved it. Bit shit now mind.
 
Well I can't call it rubbish, after all it's still sort of working even after 65 years. You see when I was a kid we were poor and to give me something to play with my mother cut holes in the pockets of my trousers.:smashin:
 
Super Striker.. the subbuteo alternative. Easy to mash down on the players heads and snap them off.
Any Evel Kneivel stuff. I had the chopper and bent the plastic forks in minutes.
Super Flight Deck...the exciting game landing your plane on an aircraft harrier. Plane suspend on string you tied to a door handle. Invariably ended up as a knotted ball.
Crossfire. Ball bearing based game that had a sheet of very thin wood as the play area. Used to bend in the middle so everything ended up stuck in the dip.
Clackers... need no further explanation of the damage that could be caused either above or below waistband level.
How did we get through the 70s... luckily with all the power cuts we couldnt see how crap our toys were most of the time.
 

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