Favourite constructional toys

Good Q...
I'm supposed to say Meccano right?... but Nah...it was Plasticine for me!
It didn't effect my career choice but helped my artistic bent, manual dexterity, spatial awareness et. Hey you can make dinosaurs, knights in armour, cars, submarines little people with genitalia .

What more can you ask of a toy?

Del

I don't know if you would consider it a toy. It was a old lawn mower my big brother had dragged home. He was unable to get it started. Boy was he PO when he found I had it it tore apart.

What was it about that toy that had a profound influence upon readers' career choices?

The sense on accomplishment when the engine pop and sputtered then ran at a purr.

The smile on my fathers face as he yell for me to come to lunch. As I did not know he was there was not sure the smile was because scared the crap out of me or his pride in my accomplishment. I have away thought the later. I was 8

The favorite that I had was Lincoln Logs. The one I always wanted but never got was an Erector Set.

And when I got older I went through all the various electronics kits.

There was a kit-of-the-month club that had a wide variety of incredibly cheaply made science kits. I had a really good time with them.

Lincoln logs! YESSSS!! My sibs and I always tried to build the biggest possible house, which was always a few logs short - so we'd get a new kit for Christmas, and build a BIGGER house, which was again a few logs short...

The science kits you mentioned, were they from "Things of Science"? I still have a stack of those little blue boxes in the basement! Truly excellent stuff.

The other construction toy I loved was Tinker Toys.

And then there was Colorforms - you could only "build" in 2D, but they encouraged flexible thinking and creativity.

So what you're saying is that you were always a few logs short of a load?

I always loved building toys as a kid. My first favourite was Tinker Toys, those wooden hubs and rods. As I grew, I moved on to Erector Sets, metal beams and basses that you connected with real nut and bolts. My Grandparents bought me the master set, weighted about 40 lbs, and had an electric motor that had enough torque to snap off a finger. In the summer we played with our Tonka trucks, and built roads and bridges and houses for many hours each day. Another fovorate was Gurders and Panels, you could design and build buildings, almost like they where reallr constructed. Thanks for asking this question, I've not thought of this stuff in years. Buy the way, this is all late 50's and early 60's stuff.

Oh yeah - I had totally forgotten Tinker Toys. I had them as a kid, and again when my nephew was a toddler. Unfortunately my only child was a daughter, and not much good for fun toys.

Sheesh..... "and not much good for fun toys" What girls don't have fun toys? I don't know. Barbie and Ken are great fun. Especially Barbie Mmmmmmmm....Baaaarrbbbiieeee

Sir, bite your tongue!

SOME daughters are indeed good for fun toys!

I was nuts for Tinker Toys. I'm still nuts for Legos.

-- a lady lurker

I don't have a problem about daughters being fun toys

As you get older, the line "Can I play with Sally your daughter" some how brings in a new meaning

My dad says he keeps his erection set in this little bottle of blue pills. I don't get it!

This is what it means...

I see the blue ones, but where did you get all the other colors from?

Out of the construction toys.... I reckon the early ones were Lego then Meccano, but my favourite was Philips Electronic Engineer kit with the then new transistors in it (OC71)...

It had a bread board style and you fitted the template showing the circuit diagram to it using binding posts, so that every component had to be fitted over the circuit diagram...

It really was an amazingly instructional kit, making intercoms, radios, rain alarms etc...

You've brought back memories now....

John.

Oh I forgot and now reading Vermin's posts remembered...

Another construction (destruction?) set was a chemistry set I used to have... it had loads of chemicals in it and was great for making explosives and stuff

I suppose these days you wouldn't be allowed to handle, let alone buy a kit with all those 'nasty' chemicals in?

John.

hammer, nails and saw

No wood?

oops! yes and wood

Tonka trucks. I was very young when bitten by the construction bug, and now work in heavy construction as a civil engineer. I still love it, even though it's a brutal and sometimes ugly game.

I learn a lot from playing with pumpkin ranks (not sure if this is the right word). We had a flood irrigation scheme (±8ha) going and I often had to water the crops. these hollow ranks could be joined together and transport water over some distance.

This playing taught me about friction, flow rates, drip irrigation, syphons, water reticulation, pipe classes, more efficient irrigation methods and water conservation. (and the need to focus on the task you are supposed to do).

I was young in the period before the technological explosion.

The town dump. In the days before landfills, we kids found all kinds of only slightly broken or wore out motors, chains, pieces of iron and so on that we could use to make go-karts, clubhouses, telegraphs, etc. Since none of us could afford new stuff, we had to make do with "junk" and in the process learned how to make stuff work. And I got to be a pretty good shot with the air rifle, driving away the rats!

Minibrix was the first one. Tiny little red rubber bricks which went together to form buildings and all kinds of other things, even animals. Who ever heard of a dog or a dragon made of bricks? Each brick had a couple of prongs on the bottom and holes on the top so that the bricks aligned properly and didn't easily fall apart.

Meccano was a lot of fun too and I regret now that I did not keep my Meccano set. I'm not sure whether anyone still sells it, but I think it would be very useful in developing ideas even now.

Probably the longest lasting hobby I had in childhood was model airplane building and flying. Started out with the rubber powered models, later moved into gasoline power and a couple of gliders.

I'm not sure that those toys had any effect on my career choice. More likely the interest was present all along. But it sure was a lot of fun.

There was also another brick set, lo, those many years ago...

It was actually little (synthetic?) adobe bricklettes, maybe 3/4" by 1-1/2" by 1/4", roughly, that I really liked. The problem was that you attached them to each other with some kind of paste that was permanent. Thus, once you used up all your bricks that way, they were not re-usable. If you wanted more, you needed to buy more, which we did not do. That company quickly disappeared. (another marketing success story?...)

I understand that the money in the early monopoly games was intentionally under- provided, as a result of the same kind of (thinking?...) It was supposed to be that, if you wanted more money, you were supposed to order more from the company. When we needed to, we just made-up substitute money, and played on...

Also, later on, there was a set of little plastic girders, with which to build plastic skyscrapers. The pieces were, roughly speaking, little 3" long beams that fit into the ends of little 2" wide-flange columns, but the floor and wall sections weren't numerous enough to build a very tall building. So, that company did not last long either. (hmmm, is there a pattern emerging here?...)

In any case, wood, masonry, and steel, etc., were each represented to varing extents in toys (of yore?...). I actually feel sorry for kids today that grow up with so few encouragements to personally build even the simplest (non-electronic) structures...

Ain't (progress) grand?...

I gave my nephews, magnitiks for christmas.

A really cool variation of tinker toys. Steel balls & sticks with magnets on the ends. I fear the steel balls will end up being sling shot ammo! hand to eye coordination is good too.

Magnetiks (whatever..) is also a excellent educational tool, that you get a rare earth magnet on the top of a glass table (or several) and build your design under the table, then you begin to get the idea of whats needed in construction to counter the weight hanging under to build bigger ;o)

After your finished, you have a nice model under glass :D

Limpet mines stick to ferrous metals very well!!! Let's clear that harbor!!!

Wasn't it Moonbeam's turn to watch you?

Ya, every sat. I went with with my father to the town dump. I think we took home more than than we brought. I remember finding an old Evenrude 5 hp outboard motor that we, (he) tinkered with till we got it running. Used that thing on the old runabout for many years. My Father could get anything to work. I remember when I got my first car, and had carburator problems, and was very frustrated, he calmly said "Well, son, you just have to be a little bit smarter than that carburator". He went through it one step at a time, and I was soon back on the road.

Not long ago, my grandkids were playing with my laptop and asked if I had a laptop or video game when I was a kid. I explained that I had one, except that the logo did not say Apple or Gateway.... it was Etch-a-Sketch. That, along with Lincoln Logs, Tinker Toys, and Tonka toys were always staples at our house. As with some of the rest of you, the interesting stuff was finding something that had been discarded as broken and repairing it or finding a new use for it. While trying to not sound like an old codger longing for the good old days, I just can't see where the creativity comes from in todays toys and video games, but I'm sure my grandparents felt the same way sometimes.

Here's an online etch a sketch http://www.etchy.org/

My favorites were an erector set in conjunction with lincoln logs & some sort of lego precursor, making mish mash constructions, since none were complete, after my older brothers were through with em. The goal always seemed to be making the tallest possible nearly stable structure.

In jr high school shop we had a wonderful project. Everyone was issued a fixed number of 1/8"x3/8" plywood strips & elmers glue The assignment was to construct the strongest possible 12" span. Increasing amounts of weight were added until the maximum load was reached. Lots of good lessons about design & execution.

All of them, although I spent more time with model trains and Erector sets. Others were Constructioneer, Tinker Toys (with additional lengths of sticks we made (up to a #8), little wood bricks with dimples and holes (the predecessor to Lego's, came in two colors red and gold), American Flyer trains, kites, giant yo-yo, picture puzzles, many spelling games (Skip Across, Anagrams, and of course--Scrabble), and many others.

--JMM

About when I was eight years old in 1942 I ran across kids electric project books in the NY Public library.

From then on it was dry cells, bell wire, nails and iron bolts, strips of copper, glass tubing for motor bearings, etc.

This was greatly enhanced by the then existing Museum of Science and Industry where there were displays of all the basic function experiments. Press the button and watch it go through its paces.

Those folks also had a huge Tesla Coil, about ten feet high, which they would demonstrate about once an hour. Sit on the metal ball and watch your hair stand up.

Pity! That museum has been gone for many a year now.

Next obvious step was Brooklyn Tech H.S. and machine shops, chem labs, pattern making and a three furnace (coupala, resistence and arc) foundry.

Spoke to some guys recently working with the school. They had pulled all the hard industrial stuff almost as if it is not used somewhere to manufacture the goods we need. Nor, for that matter used in this country still in some operations.

I have worked in the printing industry and got my brother recently, who also worked in printing, to arrange a tour of a paper mill here in Georgia. There was all the stuff just as we had been taught in Industrial Processes all those years ago at Tech.

j.

I was the oldest of five so I had my mecanno set and an erector set as well as the linclon logs and tinker toys of my younger siblings. Then as a father I became hooked on Lego.

Explosives.

Go to bed, Vermin!

Only if I can take my explosives with me!

Fisher Technik

Had the motors, electronics modules, gears, tank treads, winch drums, lights sensors, switches, all that you needed for anything you wanted to dream up ;o)

But they didn't have the explosives!!!

A note from your mama,

Now Vermin! Stop this "explosives" thing. Haven't we (your mommy and daddy) always tried to tell you to be a good boy, abide by the rules and stop trying make a big deal out of everything. You always did have a wild imagination! I can't imagine where you got it. It certainly wasn't from me! Must have been that no good scoundrel...but that's in the long gone past, so forget it! Now smarten up, boy!

But all major construction projects begin with explosives.

Do you mean Addams family? Why haven't you gone to bed? I'm going to bed right now. So please don't say anything clever for about ten hours or so. In other words, just be natural. Tomorrow is another day. Don't get on the wrong side of Itt! Or Thing!

But explosives are so fun!!

got myself kicked out of H.S. science by demonstrating some, in the classroom.

Lots of fun!

explosives?

More than the experiment with 2 bolts and a nut?

wind 1 bolt almost 1/2 way into nut, place some match heads inside nut, carefully wind 2nd bolt in on top, tighten carefully until seated...

throw in air with the assembly rotating, and it goes BANG when it strikes the ground...

3 starting pistol caps are not recommended, I lost both bolts and the nut.

We used to saw the ends off of empty CO₂ cartridges, then stuff them full of paper match heads. We'd place them in a pipe, which served the purpose of a launcher. When we touched off the end of the cartridge, they'd go WOOSH into the sky and take a couple of minutes to fall back to Earth. Also, they were very good at punching holes in brick work!

Crikey. You blokes have got to get out more.

Oh good God NO! They'll bring their explosives with them, man...think about what you're saying! Keep 'em IN where they can be looked in on occasionally...

For me, it was tinker toys, Lincoln logs, Tonka truck earthmovers, and play-doh up to the age of 11. Then it was a butterfly net, insect pins, killing jar, pinning boards, and I became a wannabe lepidopterist. Fair quality Tower microscope from Sears followed, and the rest was history.

I was a toy designer for MATTEL Toy Inc. for 12 years and we had many great learning toys, but none could ever surpass anything brought to market by the man who saved Christmas, Mr. Gilbert. His Erector Set was the best!

My Father was a machinist, and had a lathe in the cellar. There was some brass rod, about 4" round laying around. One day I got the bright idea to make a cannon. It was about 15" long with a 1" bore. After I drilled a touch hole, I stole some shotgun shells from my uncle. My best friend's father was a carpenter, and he made a cradle. We loaded the powder, packed with wadding and added some BB's. After a few trys we got the mix just right. It went off so loud that my ears rang for days. Scared the crap out of us. Never did that again. I still have it.

Bricktop - are you related to Vermin, by any chance?

Vermin is my kinda guy. Watch out, he'll be awake soon...

Legos, Construx, Tinker Toys, scotch tape and paper. When I got older I was into building Estes model rockets and model cars. I guess the rockets explain my physics degree.

Avery Montembeault

Erector sets and American bricks (like legos) Build many a things with them. Also used my grandads woodworking tools. Ah the good old days!

Yes, American Bricks .. like Lego's but more brittle. Also loads of popsicle sticks, tape and glue. And the creek in the woods provided ample water power for all sorts of water wheels, plenty of shale and clay to construct dams, aqueducts, pools, etc.

Learned alot from the original master engineers who predated even the Egyptians and Aztec's. These engineers and building crews had wide flat tails, and could make wood chips like you wouldn't believe!

Tinker toys and erector set kept me for several years, but my father had his own constrution company. I grew up playing with 60' bucket trucks, and bobcats and backhoes. Now build transmission lines and substations. go figure.

Tinker Toys, Erector Set, Lincoln Logs, and Instant Insanity blocks were what my Father gave me to keep me the Hell out of his workshop. It didn't work. That place was like Heaven to me! I could not honestly tell you how old I was when I discovered it. I just remember sitting on one step (workshop was in the basement), and sliding off onto the next step to get to all that neat stuff!

It worked out for him in the long run. First I just took stuff apart to see what made it tick. When I finally got to the point where springs didn't go sproing and disappear, I started putting them back together; no better, but no worse for the wear. Eventually I actually started making things better. But I still probably owe the man a small fortune.

salt-peter and powdered sugar.

packed into a paper cylinder made from postal tape. use a sewing machine needle to punch a hole in one end. insert jet-fuse. attach the hole thing to a paper straw. add fins to the bottom.

find a straight piece of wire as a guide. Viola -bottle rocket

If you want a better bottle rocket, mix the potassium nitrate with ground up charcoal, and a little sulphur. Soak it in water, wait for it to dry out , then grind all the mass into powder. Makes wonderful black-powder, and has the real VOOM coefficient you're looking for!!!

Better still vermin, nitrate some glycerine, purify and use that

John.

And while we're at it, Electroman, don't try to tell me that you're REAL construction toy of choice wasn't high voltage! That's almost as cool as explosives!!!

.

Once built a mouse trap that was 120v to ground. Shockingly effective

That's odd..Ive heard tales of mice eating bait from a brass plat at 240v ac, while standing on a grounded plate...much to the amazement of the guys who built the trap....
They figured maybe their furry paws didn't conduct???

Dunno who is right...

I always found it hard to get the right mix of sulfur.

The powedered sugar made it easy to blend straight with the salt-peter. Although the sugar slowed the burn, I think.

I once tested a batch too close to my mixing bowl (frisbee) and a burning glob of sugar arced through the air, almost in slow motion and touch off about 500gr of my mixture. I had to pick up to flaming mass and toss it out the window so we wouldnt burn my firends house down.

Once the mixture was airborn, we had quite a sight. Ahh, to be young and dumb again. I have no idea why we thought it was a good idea to do this kind of stuff in a second story window.........

ROFLMAO I bet nobody dared to catch that frisbie

"...I have no idea why we thought it was a good idea to do this kind of stuff in a second story window..."

You already gave the answer in the previous sentence...

"...young and dumb..."

Thought you would have mentioned Oxy/Acet gas down rabbit holes by now...

You use the toilet paper as a fuse... or wrapped around a long stick, light the paper and throw towards the hole, and wait for the WHOMPA :D

1/2 fill a easy-goer (those plastic drink bottles) with petrol, make a trail, and push down a rabbit hole, neck first, so it leaves a trail and a pool at the bottom, light the trail at the top (difficulty points added to light at the bottom) and you get more than 1 WHOMPA, but you also get this nice sucking gurgling sound as the flame burns down the hole.

"...Oxy/Acet gas down rabbit holes..."

Heard tell of a guy who had moles tunnelling all under his yard. He stuck the gas hoses down in a tunnel and opened the regulator, went off to do something else. Some 30-45 minutes later, he remembered the tunnel, removed the hoses, and sparked the tunnel off. The whole neighborhood went WHOMPA, and jolted an inch or two, kinda like an earthquake. Several wooden privacy fences fell over. The dust eventually settled. When asked if he thought those moles were only in his yard, he said he didn't realize they were all over the place. He guessed he'd probably have to replace the neighbors' fences...

if you pump just gas down the holes (not mixed with oxygen) you light the end, and it burns like a candle until the air is sucked down the hole enough to allow ignition in the tunnel..

loved that old Science experiment where you filled a can with flammable gas, 2 holes in the bottom, you lit the top hole, and it burnt until there was little gas coming from the top, then it sucked inside, instantly lighting the remainder, and blowing the lid off...

best done at night in the dark ;o)

That's how you get a BLVE - the fuel to air mixture is just right!!!

I had the Tinker Toys, Kenner Girder & Panel Building set, Erector set, the Mattel Vac-u-form was good for making body's for HO cars. When I was 6 or 7, my mom asked what I wanted for my birthday, I said a washing machine, "what ever for" she asked, I told her I needed it to mix concrete for my block fort, I didn't get the machine. Some of the best times were when my father took me up every year to watch Glen Canyon Dam being built, I doubt we'll ever see that kind of project again. Maybe Ma Nature will fire off the volcano in The Grand Canyon and make a "Really Big Lake" again. The pyro phase (as a kid), ended with the pool chlorine & brake fluid mishap, blew me back about 20 feet minus eyebrows and arm hair.

"...the pool chlorine & brake fluid mishap..."

Ah, what a lovely phrase...!!! Did you know battery acid will start powdered sugar on fire? Before it's diluted to typical 30%-35% electrolyte strength, it will burn wood. As in combustion... I don't recommend trying this at home, though. Just take my word...nah, like THAT would ever satisfy THIS lot! But have an extinguishing method available, OK?

Quite right Environman, I've half a gallon of conc. sulphuric acid together with 3 pints of 80% conc. nitric acid and hydrochloric acid sat outside my backdoor...

I have occasionally spilt some and its quite remarkable at cleaning the concrete and for ant nests etc...

John

"...quite remarkable at cleaning the concrete..."

ROFLMSAO!!! Only if by 'cleaning' you mean 'removing to bare earth'!

Ants, you know, produce formic acid, similar to acetic acid, but more pungent and less edible...

<.....formic acid, similar to acetic acid, but more pungent and less edible...>

...and rather more toxic.

The word 'formic' is closely related to the French word for ant, 'la fourmi'.

Indeed it is - and rightly so, because both come from the Latin:

For over 600 years naturalists knew that ant hills gave off an acidic vapor. In 1671, the English naturalist John Ray described the isolation of the active ingredient. To do this he collected and distilled a large number of dead ants, and the acid he discovered later became known as formic acid from the Latin word for ant, formica. Its proper IUPAC name is now methanoic acid.

Not if you're an ant eater... Yum, yum!

Or a woodpecker/flicker, two related birds for whom ants are a primary food source. Also, interestingly enough, the gopher tortoise. I have inspected tortoise scat that consisted of nothing but dried ant exoskeletons - thousands of them... For some, just a spicy snack. And for a vermin as well?

OK, but I prefer jalapeno poppers.

Me too...

Gents (and Ladies) -

Thank you for a fun read, and a fabulous little trip in the Way-Back Machine.

After a boring & frustrating day, this thread has put the bounce back in place.

Again, my gratitude to all!