ATTENTION...NEW PICS OF OLD TOYS!

Taking pictures of my toys and games was not something my parents would probably allow me to do. In fact, I did not get my first camera until I was 11 years old and it was a Kodak Instamatic. I have mostly memories of the wonderful plethora of games and toys I once had. But I was fortunate to have a few of photos of some of them. The photo below is a riding car that was a jalopy like contraption. It had four wheels with the front ones being smaller than the back ones. The body was red and metallic. To make the thing move, you had a vertical hand crank which operated similar to the hand cranked rigs which used to run on railroad tracks. I had many many wonderful memories of street races with this thing. I remember one race where I challenged another kid in his street rig that sounded like something from Our Gang's "HI NEIGHBOR" short where home built and store built fire engines were raced. At the time of the race, my jalopy was about 5 years old. The other kid had a brand new rig. My jalopy was faster than his, however, one of the back wheels had a tendency to come off leaving the back end dragging with sparks flying. I was about to reach the finish line when the wheel decided to part. I was only about 6 feet from the finish line. I got off the jalopy and dragged it the rest of the way. I managed to win, but it was almost a dead heat. Year of Photo: 1964

Here I am holding up a game that I got as a birthday gift during my birthday party. The only thing I remember about Pirates and Travelers game is that I never learned how to play it. Instead, I would just use the gameboard as backdrop for plastic army men. Year of Photo: 1968

In 1969-70, my father absolutely loved motorcycles. He had one of the most popular motorcycles of the time: A 350 Honda. My mother rode a 90 Honda. And I had a Honda minibike. My mother went to Taco Bell on Laurel Canyon Blvd. one day and entered our names for a drawing on a minibike. The minibike was actually called a Taco Minibike manufactured by a company called Taco. It was the only thing of value that I have ever won in my life. My father ended up selling it (since I already had a minibike) to generate some cash to buy us some new helmets. That's my father (NOT ROY ORBISON!!!) and me.

Another birthday game: Parcheesi...I HATED Parcheesi.

The following photo is the aftermath of Christmas day in 1964. The floor is full of Tonka toys and an Etch a Sketch. The only thing that stands out in my mind about Etch a Sketch was the pain it caused my toe when I dropped it one day. The real cherished toy was the plastic green rideable jeep in the white box in the background. Now that was a fun rig.

Here is a photo that I took of plastic sea fish that you got as cereal premiums in every box of Rice Honeys and Wheat Honeys back in 1969. Casey Mosier and I started a competition as to who would get the whole set. My mother told me that Casey's mother (Claudia) purchased a whole cupboard full of the cereal just so that he could have the whole collection. If that's the case, he may still be eating the cereal today. I never got the whole set myself but I am checking out Ebay regularly and working my way to getting the whole set. Do you remember these?

I remembered them coming in three different colors: orange, blue, and purple. However, for some reason, I found one in green. I believe the reason why there are several of different color is that the facility that manufactured cereal premiums also manufactured them to be sold as a complete bagged unit as the next picture reveals.

Thus, that's why there's so many floating around of different color as the bag reveals silver, white, and dark blue. They would also have the name of the fish inscribed on the fish and it's typical length. As I recall, the Needlefish seem to be the one I constantly would get after opening up a box of Rice Honeys and the Sperm Whale was the hardest to get. I hated the Needlefish. In fact, I hated Rice and Wheat Honeys. And I'll bet a 35 year old box of Rice or Wheat Honeys still stays crunchy...even in milk. One of these days I will finally get the whole set so that I can feel vindicated. Here is a pic on the back of the bag.

Here was a great toy...of course, Mattel could make them because Mattel was swell. The Strange Change Machine a.k.a Time Machine was so cool. You heated up the colored squares in the oven and they would expand to creatures...yellow mummies, yellow robots, yellow skeleton, yellow astronaut, green octopus, green brontosaurus, pink fly (of David Hedison/Vincent Price The Fly fame), red Ghoul, red bone fish, etc. Here is a pic of the toy.

Here is a pic of the creatures in their easily torn plastic landscape.

You had to be careful with this toy because you burn the heinie of many of the critters. The mummy always seemed to get a burnt heinie. Once the creature expanded to it's fullest extent, you would play with it for a while, then heat it back up and crush it back to a cube, but as afficiandos of this toy can vouch, you could never crunch them back up to the perfect cube that they originally came in. Here are some of the other features of the toy.

The blue tongs were used to remove the creature from the oven. Also included was a map of the landscape to make it seem more real in our imaginations. Also included is the banner that went around the dome of the strange change machine which is a rare item to find these days since most kids toss that away.

When crushing the creatures back to cubes, I think why they never attained their original shape is because they would ooze too much when too warm and ooze not enough when they weren't heated up enough (you had to heat them back before crushing them) and, of course, I had no patience as a kid.

Crushing them back up to cubes kinda was sadistic now that I think about it. Later on, when I got rid of this toy, I was surprised to find out that Mattel release some later cubes and called them something or other "pods". You had to buy them separate I believe.

I will feature more toys on a separate page. Coming soon are CREEPY CRAWLERS, CREEPLE PEOPLE, PICADOOS, DRAGON MAKER, WHAMO TOYS, and many, many more.