You Are What You Were. Celebrate Retro Pop Culture At Retroland.
For four decades, the little known toy company started by Herman Fisher, Irving Price, and Helen Schelle made whimsical wooden toys in relative obscurity. Shortly after their beginnings in 1930, Fisher-Price (as they called themselves) released the Woodsey Cart, a small animal-drawn wagon with a small wooden driver. The driver had a round head and cylindrical body and was fastened to his seat.
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For those who wanted a taste of the strategic side of football before they were old enough to actually manage a team of players on the field, came an ingenious way to learn the skills necessary to carry your very own clipboard someday as an offensive/defensive coordinator or head coach. Foto-Electric Football provided all the training you needed - *Bucket of Gatorade not included. Today, we take a look back at this memorable game from yesteryear.
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Grab some popcorn and dim the lights – it’s show time! And best of all, no movie theater required. Thanks to the Kenner Give-A-Show Projector, you could be the envy of your friends and be the proprietor of your very own movie theater. Well, sort of...
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Humans sure have a fascination with flinging projectiles through the air at one another. From the historical catapults to the modern-era spitball, it just seems to be in our genes. It’s no wonder that a board game that allowed such behavior would find its way into the hearts of people everywhere. Now, granted, you really weren’t supposed to fling the game pieces at each other. But for most that played Kohner’s Hat’s Off board game (introduced in the late 60s) - once you looked across the dining room table and saw the potential target of your sister’s exposed forehead … well, let’s just say the temptation was often just a bit too strong to resist.
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Label a game as "educational" and it might just sit on a shelf gathering dust. Sometimes more covert tactics are necessary to get kids to put on their learning hat during playtime, perhaps by dangling a bunch of delicious-looking cherries from a tree. What youngster wouldn't want to be a part of the picking action? [...]
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Fads are not an easy thing to explain, especially to future generations. Take a kid who is accustomed to being surrounded by computers and gaming consoles and try to get them to understand the impact that a simple ring of plastic could have on the populace and you are likely to be met with the blankest of stares. They might even accuse you of making the story up. But truth is often stranger than fiction and the truth is, this single ring of plastic known as the Hula Hoop was something that, at one time, was the most coveted toy in existence. Its popularity transcended both gender and age and got a whole generation to gyrate their hips (and other body parts) with reckless abandon. Let's go back in time.
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Classic games become so for one reason, because no matter how many times you play them, they remain challenging and, more importantly, fun! A perfect example is a simple game where grasping at straws can make or break you and the sound of silence is most welcoming. Such is the challenge of those who choose to try their hand at KerPlunk – a test of hand/eye coordination and strategy that also requires plenty of sheer luck.
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Every once in a while, a toy is released with all of the good intentions of the world, and yet, no matter how popular it may become, an unforeseen safety issue arises which requires that it be removed from store shelves. Few, however, have the dubious distinction of being outlawed completely, which brings us to Lawn Darts - those popular ground-piercing projectiles that sent more than a few tykes to the emergency room back in the day. Let’s take a look.
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Perhaps the most foremost and beloved building blocks of all times, Lego is known the world over for their constructive and colorful bricks that can build most anything - from an airplane to an x-wing fighter, from an airport to a pirate ship to just about anything you can dream of. Today, we take a look at the history of the Lego company and their legacy of toys, video games and theme parks.
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For future gumshoes of the world, who needed a challenge greater than the iconic Clue game could provide, came the much more challenging detective game of the 60s – Lie Detector. Not only were up-and-coming sleuths faced with a staggering 24 suspects, rather than the six regulars that inhabited the competing game, but a real-life Official Mattel Lie Detector was included to put the screws on the suspected perpetrator.
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