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ArishMell · 70-79, M
Many boys in the early-1960s liked to play with toy guns or "bombs" that fired paper percussion-caps. Or more peacefully, they played marbles (aka "alleys" - which might have been regional dialect). Serious stuff too - very often the game was played against a stake, the marbles themselves. (Hence the expression, "losing your marbles"?)
The girls plumped for things called "Jacks", which were small metal shapes tossed a foot or so above the hand, the idea apparently being to catch as many as possible of about 6 of them, while timed by the bouncing of a small rubber ball. That, skipping-ropes and hula-hoops.
Cereal manufacturers often used small puzzles as promotion-tools. These were packed in with the cereal, and generally either interlocked metal-puzzles working on the key-ring principle, or plastic "kits" that assembled a small model ship or vehicle from half a dozen parts. One variant was a tiny plastic submarine that would gently submerge and rise in a bowl of water, by the action of baking-soda loaded into a cavity below the conning-tower.
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My personal favourite was the "Ten-In-One-Scope". It consisted of 2 pairs of lenses on an ingenious folding frame that acted as handle and also held a mirror and compass. You could configure the instrument as simple and compound magnifying-glass, plain or magnifying mirror, binoculars or telescope, or simple compass. I'm not sure what the remaining three contrived functions were. The box proclaimed, "Not a toy but a real scientific instrument!" - rather let down by the low power and rough-and-ready optical qualities of the moulded plastic lenses!
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In my teens (late 1960s - early 1970s) there were a number of crazes, one per Summer it seemed. I recall:
- The "Gonk", a type of doll that like the golly on the Robertsons Jams labels, would be seen as [i]very[/i] "non-PC" now;
- "Klackers", which were two golf-sized hard plastic balls on a cord with a central handle, and said to be responsible for many wrist injuries sustained in trying to keep them bouncing rapidly off each other by flicking the wrist;
- Bull-roarers (I forget their sales name) that were simply lengths of coloured, corrugated polythene tube that produced a whooping sound when energetically whirled.
The "Slinky" appeared around this time, and though intended as a toy soon found itself among the school physics-lab equipment for demonstrating wave motion.
The girls plumped for things called "Jacks", which were small metal shapes tossed a foot or so above the hand, the idea apparently being to catch as many as possible of about 6 of them, while timed by the bouncing of a small rubber ball. That, skipping-ropes and hula-hoops.
Cereal manufacturers often used small puzzles as promotion-tools. These were packed in with the cereal, and generally either interlocked metal-puzzles working on the key-ring principle, or plastic "kits" that assembled a small model ship or vehicle from half a dozen parts. One variant was a tiny plastic submarine that would gently submerge and rise in a bowl of water, by the action of baking-soda loaded into a cavity below the conning-tower.
'
My personal favourite was the "Ten-In-One-Scope". It consisted of 2 pairs of lenses on an ingenious folding frame that acted as handle and also held a mirror and compass. You could configure the instrument as simple and compound magnifying-glass, plain or magnifying mirror, binoculars or telescope, or simple compass. I'm not sure what the remaining three contrived functions were. The box proclaimed, "Not a toy but a real scientific instrument!" - rather let down by the low power and rough-and-ready optical qualities of the moulded plastic lenses!
===
In my teens (late 1960s - early 1970s) there were a number of crazes, one per Summer it seemed. I recall:
- The "Gonk", a type of doll that like the golly on the Robertsons Jams labels, would be seen as [i]very[/i] "non-PC" now;
- "Klackers", which were two golf-sized hard plastic balls on a cord with a central handle, and said to be responsible for many wrist injuries sustained in trying to keep them bouncing rapidly off each other by flicking the wrist;
- Bull-roarers (I forget their sales name) that were simply lengths of coloured, corrugated polythene tube that produced a whooping sound when energetically whirled.
The "Slinky" appeared around this time, and though intended as a toy soon found itself among the school physics-lab equipment for demonstrating wave motion.