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What games and toys do you remember from your youth? What did you love, what crazes were there?


Remember Tamagotchi? Everyone had to have one of those little virtual pets, and suffer the consequences if you slept in late and awoke to find your beloved dog turned into a ghost.

Remember Tazos?
We got them in bags of Walkers crisps (chips).
People would collect them and swap them in the playground. Have you got number 12? I'll swap you for number 37.

Remember Mousetrap?
Set the ball on the wiggly thing, position the diver, delicately attach the cage, wait for your opponent to land on the cheese.......DAMN YOU DIVER! Why didn't you land in the damn tub???!!! Yes, a mix of patience, suspense, jubilation and frustration. Mousetrap had it all.

Remember Hungry Hippos?
I have no idea what decade this is from, but we had it in our house.
There was basically no skill involved; you just hit the begubbins out of your hippo's lever, and hoped that the balls would roll in its direction. If there were only two players, you could go all extreme and operate not one, but two hippos at once!

Remember Cluedo/Clue?
Your chance to be a sleuth and discover whodunnit! Mrs Peacock in the library with the spanner? Professor Plum in the conservatory with the revolver? Use your wits and catch that criminal.
My woe with this game was that my sisters didn't like it much and so they wouldn't play it with me. Fine, go off and play Monopoly all day, you fiends!

So many more toys and games. What's on your list?

Aarah wrote:Remember Tamagotchi? Everyone had to have one of those little virtual pets, and suffer the consequences if you slept in late and awoke to find your beloved dog turned into a ghost.

The middle button fell off mine and I had to watch my Tamagotchi slowly evolve and then starve to death over the course of like 2 days. Grim memories.

^That's horrible.
I was upset when mine died. I never played with it after that.
I would not have another death on my watch.

In the third grade I got into Tamagotchis for a while. There was one guy who had one as well (maybe more, but only one I remember specifically) and we would always 'connect' ours (I now have no recollection of what this meant but I guess it let your characters interact in some capacity). At one point we got into a fight for some reason and the teacher had to take them away and they spent the rest of the day in one of those big manila envelopes. Not what I'd call one of the higher times in my life.

A couple I'll add: Mighty Beans (Beanz?), these magnetic bean things with designs on them that could roll across certain magnetic surfaces. My friends would race them down the blacktop hill at school, but by the time I finally got some of my own, the fad was already dying off.

And Tech Decks, those mini skateboards you could play around with on your fingers. I owned a good few of them (including the weird-looking characters they often came with), but I could never get the hang of doing the actual finger tricks with them like some of my friends could. Or like Mr. Starchman can.

I used to be nostalgic to Mr. Bucket until Board James (AVGN) covered it.

I was very big into Hungry Hippos and Mouse Trap as a kid. HH was simple and fun to play. Mouse Trap was just fun to build and see how everything played out!

Jenga was another favorite of mine and Lincoln Logs were fun when I was bored as hell. Another thing I loved where these things where you were given gears, connectors, rods, etc. And you could make ANYTHING out of them. I loved those, I wish I remembered the name of them though.

Fiar wrote:Another thing I loved where these things where you were given gears, connectors, rods, etc. And you could make ANYTHING out of them. I loved those, I wish I remembered the name of them though.

You mean Meccano?

For me, it was Lego. I spent hours making all sorts of different things out of my collection.

Aarah wrote:Fine, go off and play Monopoly all day, you fiends!

You leave Monopoly out of this!

Remember Shark Attack? I forgot about it till I saw it recently on AVGN.

I remember the yo-yo, pogs and that one thing what was it called - bright light or something? Also remember that thing that flashed colors in a pattern and you had to mimic it? Good in theory, shoddy in reality.

Out of pettiness, i like to point out Aarah nicked this topic from me in chat yesterday. I demand compenstation in the form of points.

I remember furbies from my youth. Basic, primitive but useful. I had Robot War toys as a lad and i think, WWF action figures.

I owned the Harry Potter Quidditch Board Game. Tis rather simple if i recall and well, i kinda played it in ways that wasn't meant to be played.

Etech a Sketch is a staple of any 90s kid. Same with furbies and i think, I did have a boglin. No pogs though.

There was a marble based game called Solitaire. It wasn't Solitaire. Just marbles on a round thing.

And like every 90s kid, i did have the misfortune of playing a Tiger "Game." The most primitive form of game. It's not really a game. Just a bunch of flashing images that make no sound.

Thank god i did not encounter the worst portable game of all time. There's 64 bits. 32 bits. 8 bits. 4 bits. 2 bits. 1 bit. A QUARTER BIT! HALF BIT! THE WRIST WATCH! What an awful concept and idea for a primitive.

Also Boopit.

The SheoDovah wrote:Out of pettiness, i like to point out Aarah nicked this topic from me in chat yesterday. I demand compenstation in the form of points.

Lies. All lies! (Although, he did start talking about kids games but there was no copyright issued so you can't sue! )

Boopit - do you mean Bop It, or is that something different?
I do remember Bop It. Twist it, flick it, hit it, pull it. Got it wrong? Pass it on!

Meccano was fun. I recall making a crane that could actually lift small things.

Aarah is a Smeeeeeeeeeeee Heeeee and she nicked it because i made fun of her being a northerner. I will settle for 10 UESP points .

But jokes aside,

Yes. Bop It.

I remember Buckaroo. Such a simple yet amusing game.

I think i used to want Simpsons chess because well, Simpsons were huge back in the day and when i was a wee lad, i was kinda into Action Man. Pretty much most kids were.

Aren't a lot of the games in the OP still in print? I could have sworn I saw Mousetrap just the other day. Full transparency, though. I'm increasingly deranged, so "just the other day" could be at any point over the past 30ish years.

I will say I prefer classic Clue over whatever misinformed thing they're calling Clue these days. I picked up a box of "New Clue" and saw some [censored] from a "Guys who wear suits" Tumblr fan page or something with the name "Col. Mustard" underneath. No, sir. That is not Col. Mustard. Col. Mustard had a big ol' mustache and a pipe. Dude had a sweet safari hat and everything. Don't put a sign that says "steak" on a piece of bologna and expect to fool old Uncle Pilaf.

I'm a very nostalgic person. I've let it be known a few times on this forum that I'm a big fan of pinball, and a major reason for that is because of one particular game, Attack From Mars, and the reason is that I played it in an airport whilst waiting for a flight and I was absolutely hooked. I don't remember how old I was, but I was probably about twelve. The reason it sticks out in my memory, though, is that my parents found, at the same airport, an LCD handheld version of the same pinball table, and because they are awesome they purchased one and gave it to me for no reason. I played that handheld until the display wore out and you could barely see the ball.

I later learned that Attack From Mars was released in 2003, so it's probably not old enough to be considered "nostalgic" by many members of the forum, but it's one of my treasured childhood memories. I miss the days when pinball machines were standard arcade fare.

EDIT: oh, I can't believe I forgot, but while I'm talking about pinball nostalgia I must say I also quite liked the 3D Pinball Space Cadet game that came packaged with Windows XP. I know a lot of you guys liked that one. My brother and I actually feuded over the high scores table for that game. Probably competed for about a year before we both got our own PCs and stopped using the shared family computer.

Action figures like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, He-Man, and troll dolls: the ones with the spiky hair. The figures where you could put a dart or something in them and then push a button to fire it were especially fun. Then there was green vs tan army men, and other military stuff like model Humvees and aircraft. Hot Wheels. Bows with suction cup arrows, and BB guns. Jenga, a block stacking toy set.

Oh and it's not a game or toy, but Goosebumps was the place to be before Harry Potter was even a thing.

"Spirit of Excalibur" On my Dads old DOS computer is still the best PC game I have ever played.

Not that I've played it since about 1994, but still..

Speaking of action figures, I don't think the ones I grew up with exist anymore. I don't mean the exact same ones, I mean the basic design. Action figures these days are all very static with as few posable limbs as possible. Now how the hell am I supposed to pose Batman and Casey Jones (it was a mainly Batman + TMNT household) fighting if I can't move the elbow joint??? Set Leonardo up like he's driving the van if his legs don't move? And the ones these days are much smaller as well. I feel sorrow for these young people with their small, lifeless figures; kinda takes the action out of it