00:00:00 Dwayne: Hey everyone. Welcome back to whatever. I’m Dwayne.
00:00:07 Heather: And I’m Heather.
00:00:08 Dwayne: And together we’re sharing our Gen X experience. We’d love to invite you along for the ride. Last week, we talked about our childhoods and how Gen X went from latchkey kids to life three hundred sixty.
00:00:17 Heather: And how we essentially started the helicopter parent movement.
00:00:21 Dwayne: This week, we’re going to lighten things up a bit and take a look back at some of the fun we had as kids and the toys we grew up with. Before we get into that, we’d like to remind you to subscribe so you never miss an episode. And if you’d like to support the show, there’s plenty of info on our website. You’ll find links to all that in the show notes. All right, let’s set the Delorean’s time circuits back to the nineteen seventies and start picking up our toys.
00:00:44 Heather: All right, so what was your all time favorite toy and your memory tied to it?
00:00:49 Dwayne: Man, I would have to say probably my all time favorite toy from when I was a younger kid was my Evel Knievel stunt cycle.
00:00:58 Heather: Yes, I know that because he talks about it all the time.
00:01:02 Dwayne: It was so much fun. It was cool. You had a little plastic motorcycle that was all geared up inside. You put it on this thing and cranked it up really hard, and as soon as you stopped, it would shoot off there. According to the commercials on TV, you could hit jumps with it and it would do flips and land perfectly every time. I don’t think it ever landed perfectly, and evil always fell off that damn thing. Always. What was yours?
00:01:29 Heather: Uh, I don’t know if I had a favorite toy. I liked all the toys.
00:01:35 Speaker 3: All the toys. Yeah. I mean, you were a Barbie girl, too, weren’t you?
00:01:39 Heather: I was a Barbie girl.
00:01:40 Speaker 3: In a Barbie.
00:01:41 Heather: World. I had all the Barbies. Loved all my Barbies. Skipper. Everything. Uh, yeah. Skipper.
00:01:48 Speaker 3: Who was skipper?
00:01:49 Heather: Skipper with, like, her little sister.
00:01:51 Speaker 3: Oh, and.
00:01:52 Dwayne: You being the little sister, skipper was probably your favorite.
00:01:55 Heather: Oh, no. No, no. I like being Barbie.
00:01:58 Dwayne: Like being Barbie. Okay, well, I never liked being Ken. Anytime any of my cousins wanted to play Barbies because they were always mean to him. Well.
00:02:07 Heather: Ken was dumb.
00:02:08 Dwayne: He was dumb. We’ve seen the movie. He was.
00:02:10 Heather: Dumb. Dumb. That’s never changed.
00:02:14 Dwayne: What would you say? The toy you played with the most, even if it wasn’t your favorite?
00:02:19 Heather: Um, again, probably Barbies. Barbies were pretty much my go to, but I had my Cabbage Patch dolls. Uh, my care bears.
00:02:29 Dwayne: Care bears.
00:02:30 Heather: Yes, I had Care Bears. I had pound puppies. We did have a rock tumbler at my grandma’s house, and I just did not appreciate that thing like I should have.
00:02:42 Dwayne: Yeah, she’s asked me for one. Now, if she can get a new one.
00:02:44 Heather: I’m gonna buy a rock tumbler. I will, I will show you all my rocks soon.
00:02:51 Dwayne: I would say the ones that I played with the most, even though they weren’t my, my quote unquote favorites were probably the matchbox cars and all the knock ups from those.
00:02:59 Heather: Yes.
00:03:00 Dwayne: I had the little plastic wheel thing to store them in. Yeah, like fifteen to twenty of them.
00:03:05 Heather: So my grandma, she had a trailer and she had, she never called it a couch. It was a Davenport.
00:03:11 Dwayne: Davenport. Yeah.
00:03:13 Heather: My, it was yellow and brown. And it had like, it was not the seats were like not straight cushions. They were like bumpy.
00:03:22 Dwayne: Like they had the buttons that pulled it down and made lumpy.
00:03:24 Heather: So they were like, what, six inch squares on each one. So I would use my match cars, and I would sit at the Davenport and have my little neighborhood with my cars, and my cars would go down the road and over the bumps and.
00:03:39 Dwayne: Oh, cool.
00:03:39 Heather: I did play with the magic cars all the time. My favorite was a green El Camino, by the way.
00:03:45 Dwayne: An El Camino. Interesting.
00:03:47 Heather: It was green. Yeah.
00:03:48 Dwayne: Were you a take care of a kid or a break it within a week, kid.
00:03:51 Heather: My mom would probably say I broke my stuff, but I didn’t break my stuff. But I did aggressively play.
00:03:58 Dwayne: Played hard with it. Yeah, yeah, I was the same. I mean, one of my favorite toys, if it would be classified as a toy that I had as a kid was a baseball glove and a baseball.
00:04:08 Heather: Oh yeah, we did have.
00:04:09 Dwayne: I always had, I went through probably a two year stretch where it was just me and throwing a ball up in the air and catching it. Or maybe one of the neighbor kids would come out and we would be able to throw a ball back and forth. But I was the only one with a glove.
00:04:23 Heather: My sister and I would throw a ball back and forth, but she threw hard.
00:04:26 Dwayne: Yeah, of course, she was always trying to hurt you.
00:04:28 Heather: She was trying.
00:04:29 Dwayne: To.
00:04:29 Heather: Kill me.
00:04:30 Dwayne: In her words, she was trying to kill you.
00:04:33 Heather: Yes.
00:04:34 Dwayne: But I just remember from that era. So I grew up in the seventies, uh, and was a teenager by the eighties. Heather was born in the mid seventies, so most of her toys memories are going to be from the late seventies, early 80s. In that time frame there, and I know there were just some incredible classic toys that came out in that time. We had things like big wheels. Do you have anybody in your neighborhood? Have a big.
00:04:58 Heather: Wheel? Yes, I did, and I was very jealous because I always wanted one, and I never had one of my own.
00:05:05 Dwayne: There were a couple of kids who had big wheels, but the one thing that I always wanted was like a green machine. The Green machine was kind of like a big wheel. It was shaped kind of the same. You had the big front wheel. You had a little further back on it, and instead of having a steering wheel like you did with a hot wheel, this thing had two levers that pulled the back wheels. So you could do like really.
00:05:26 Heather: Donuts and stuff.
00:05:27 Dwayne: You could do donuts. According to the commercials, I don’t think anybody ever actually pulled one off, especially not where I lived. There was no asphalt or anything to be pulling it off in there, but I wanted one of those. We had toys like Lite-brite.
00:05:41 Heather: Remember those loved light brights? Those were so much fun. I remember going to friends houses and they had them. I don’t remember if I actually had one, but I know my friends did, I didn’t.
00:05:51 Dwayne: One of my cousins had one and we would spend hours making those things, trying to do them exactly like the pictures in the little book were with. No, they weren’t easy.
00:05:59 Heather: It wasn’t easy.
00:06:00 Dwayne: It took.
00:06:00 Heather: Time. I really had to take your time and patience with them.
00:06:03 Dwayne: Yeah. You did the Star Wars action figures. I remember for probably three years from seventy seven, seventy eight, seventy nine. I always had a little R2-d2 and C-3po in my pocket, even at school.
00:06:18 Heather: The movies now. But at the time that was not in my life journey.
00:06:21 Dwayne: Well, you were three and four years old when that was going on. Totally understandable. Uh, but to me, R2-d2, to me, he was kind of a hero. He was this little short, pudgy guy. He got knocked over all the time. He got thrown in the trash compactor. And yet at the end of the movie, he was the hero who saved the day. He was back there with Luke Skywalker guiding that X-Wing fighter through those tunnels on the Death Star. Uh, R2 was he was my man. He was my man. Later in the eighties, we had Transformers toys come around.
00:06:51 Heather: Transformers were awesome.
00:06:53 Dwayne: I loved the, uh, the cartoon. The show.
00:06:55 Heather: The show was.
00:06:56 Dwayne: Great. Even as a.
00:06:56 Heather: Teen, I used to watch that. Yeah.
00:06:58 Dwayne: Even when I was in the Army, man. Transformers and He-Man and the Masters of the universe. That was daily TV for us.
00:07:05 Heather: Uh, yeah.
00:07:05 Dwayne: Absolutely.
00:07:06 Heather: Skeletor. That’s why the Skeletor memes are so funny.
00:07:10 Dwayne: I love the Skeletor beams. Care bears?
00:07:13 Heather: Uh, yeah. Both me and my sister had Care Bears specific to us. I think hers was grumpy and I can’t remember my. I think mine had flowers or the rainbow on it, I can’t remember. They also had care bear animals like Lion Care Bears that they were Care Bears.
00:07:30 Dwayne: They were from their universe, from their little world. There. In the cartoons I remember there were more than just bears in the cartoons.
00:07:35 Heather: Yeah, they were like Care Bear friends.
00:07:37 Dwayne: My Little Pony first reared its head in the eighties.
00:07:40 Heather: I believe it was early eighties.
00:07:43 Dwayne: Yeah, long before there were bronies.
00:07:46 Heather: Long before bronies happened. Yes, I’m an OG pony. Brony. I don’t know. I loved My Little Ponies. They were awesome. Of course, when I was little, you know, of course, being a girl, I wanted my Little Pony nightgown and everything.
00:08:00 Dwayne: Oh, yes.
00:08:01 Heather: Oh, yes, those were super popular. And let’s not forget strawberry shortcake.
00:08:05 Dwayne: I was just going to say yes. Strawberry shortcake was from that same era, wasn’t it?
00:08:09 Heather: And Rainbow Brite.
00:08:10 Dwayne: Oh, yeah.
00:08:11 Heather: I loved her. They should bring back Rainbow Brite. She was awesome.
00:08:14 Dwayne: Those were cute. Although that whole little arrow was. Arrow was so sweet.
00:08:17 Heather: Cartoons and characters.
00:08:18 Dwayne: Yeah, the characters were sweet. Yeah, I remember one of the probably last toys I ever purchased when I was a teen or a kid was a Rubik’s Cube. Those things were all the rage in the in the early eighties. Everybody had one. Everyone was trying.
00:08:32 Heather: The only way I could fix them was to change.
00:08:35 Dwayne: Little sticker removal operation. Uh, not going to say I didn’t do it.
00:08:39 Heather: I mean.
00:08:40 Dwayne: Dishwasher soap would help get them right off. Mhm. Yep. Mhm. And then you could fix that stupid thing back the way it was supposed to be. It’s the only way I could make it work. I was never that smart. I, I hated I remember in. It was in basic training. There was a kid in in our group there who could solve a Rubik’s cube. Just hand it to him, no matter how it was mixed up. Yeah. And two minutes later he would have it back to you all.
00:09:04 Heather: I saw a reel of a kid fix one in, like, less than five seconds, and I was just like, you suck.
00:09:09 Speaker 4: You suck.
00:09:10 Heather: Overachiever.
00:09:11 Dwayne: This was also the era of the early electronic games.
00:09:15 Heather: Yes, I know. Even pre electronic games, the ones that came in water. Remember the the little games where you had to like.
00:09:24 Dwayne: Shoot the hoop.
00:09:25 Heather: Shoot the hoop and get it on.
00:09:26 Dwayne: Yeah, I remember those. But we had, uh, Simon.
00:09:29 Heather: I loved Simon.
00:09:30 Dwayne: The Simon was the, was the one where you tried to match.
00:09:33 Heather: The green and blue lights.
00:09:35 Dwayne: Yeah. Just tried to match the. That thing would advance so quickly. It seemed like I think probably the most I ever got was like eight or nine.
00:09:42 Heather: It was really addictive, actually. It was once you started playing, you didn’t want to stop because you wanted to beat the damn thing.
00:09:47 Dwayne: And then they they had mini Simon’s later so you could carry them around with you.
00:09:51 Heather: They were small pocket play, Simon. Anytime you wanted that loud.
00:09:54 Dwayne: Boop boop boop boop boop. I’m sure if I heard those tones today that it would bring back PTSD type memories for me.
00:10:00 Heather: We should buy one.
00:10:01 Dwayne: We should. Just because you want to trigger me, is that it? Speaking spells.
00:10:06 Heather: Remember those I love speaking spell. I didn’t have one. Of course I had apparently rich friends that got them. Um, and they were awesome.
00:10:15 Dwayne: I was a little too old for speak and spell when they came out. One of my cousins, though she was much younger than me, she was probably six or seven years younger and she had one. And that was the coolest thing. And I would play with it even as a, you know, twelve, thirteen years old. And I want to play with this beacon spell when we would go visit. It’s kind of like the Etch A Sketch. It’s the.
00:10:34 Heather: Sketch is just.
00:10:35 Dwayne: The silliest thing ever. Uh, but because of the way you have to draw everything is one continuous line. But it was so much fun.
00:10:43 Heather: But then you see people that can make these amazing pictures with an Etch a Sketch. Yeah. Now I couldn’t do that. I could do a couple lines.
00:10:51 Dwayne: Yeah.
00:10:51 Heather: And get mad and shake it up.
00:10:53 Dwayne: I would always try to draw a little like, like, because everything I wanted to draw was more circular and rounded. And that’s what’s near impossible with an Etch a Sketch.
00:11:02 Heather: You have to do ninety degree corners.
00:11:03 Dwayne: Didn’t mean they weren’t totally cool though.
00:11:05 Heather: And you can still find them, you know?
00:11:07 Dwayne: Uh, speaking of the electronic games, I remember for the longest time, my favorite thing was a handheld football game made by Coleco.
00:11:15 Heather: Yes, I remember that.
00:11:17 Dwayne: I mean, kids today would look at this and go, what the hell is this? Because it was just a little red dot moving around. It was like one that flashed. That was the guy with the football. And there were other little red dashes on the screen that were the other players and everything.
00:11:32 Heather: Pretend that I even know how to play football or that I even like football. But I remember that game and I remember playing and I probably wasn’t any good at it, but I still played.
00:11:41 Dwayne: It was yeah, you couldn’t put it down. It was like the precursors to the Game Boy. Yeah, the Game Boys when they came around the OG game. Well, the OG Game Boy. Even when you look at the graphics on it compared to, you know, the handhelds that are out there today.
00:11:56 Heather: Kids have no idea how good.
00:11:58 Dwayne: They have no idea at all. I remember games like Tetris were just were the height of the graphics capabilities.
00:12:06 Heather: What about Kubert?
00:12:07 Dwayne: Kubert on.
00:12:08 Heather: Frogger.
00:12:08 Dwayne: Well, on the big screen. Oh my God, I never played them. Tried them on a Game Boy. I can’t imagine how terrible they would have been there.
00:12:15 Heather: Oh yeah.
00:12:16 Dwayne: Would have been.
00:12:16 Heather: Impossible. Atari and ColecoVision.
00:12:18 Dwayne: Well, speaking of Atari, we had the Atari two thousand six hundred, the ColecoVision.
00:12:23 Heather: ColecoVision, and Atari playing Donkey Kong and Pitfall. Pitfall. Pitfall was.
00:12:29 Dwayne: My favorite pitfall was the Shiz Man.
00:12:32 Heather: It was like for you youngsters, it was like Indiana Jones.
00:12:36 Dwayne: But you as the player had to use a lot of imagination to make it like Indiana Jones because it was really just a guy with a, with a hat, with a hat, walking through the jungle trying to jump over crocodiles or swing over open pits.
00:12:51 Heather: Imagination station. All right.
00:12:53 Dwayne: Yeah, yeah. You didn’t have a whole lot of story building going on with it. There was no five minute segment that put you in that world.
00:13:00 Heather: It was early video games. And again, kids have no.
00:13:04 Dwayne: No idea, no idea.
00:13:06 Heather: How great their video games are today.
00:13:09 Dwayne: My favorite game on the Atari two thousand six hundred was. It was also a stand up arcade game, but it was defender.
00:13:15 Heather: Oh yeah.
00:13:16 Dwayne: You were just flying. You know, it was a horizontal scrolling game. You were in a little spaceship shooting the bad spaceships as they flew at you, and your whole control was basically up, down. You could go left and right to kind of, you know, blast forward through space or back to back up a little bit to get a better shot. But it was hard, that one. And joust.
00:13:37 Heather: Oh.
00:13:38 Dwayne: Remember where you were. You were like riding a giant ostrich and you had to flap and fly around and you did sword fights like jousting. But you were on these flying ostriches and some of the guys, you would knock them off and the ostrich would lay an egg and it would be laying down there. And if you didn’t go collect that egg, it would hatch and have another guy on it. I love that.
00:14:00 Heather: Throwback.
00:14:01 Dwayne: I spent so many hours playing those games.
00:14:04 Heather: I played a lot of Donkey Kong. And Pac-Man.
00:14:11 Dwayne: Oh yeah.
00:14:12 Heather: I didn’t like miss Pac-Man. I thought they should. I was just like, people just keep it. Pac-Man. You don’t. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.
00:14:21 Dwayne: I actually liked miss Pac-Man better than Pac-Man, because Pac-Man was the same screen all the time, the same pattern, and miss Pac-Man. It changed. I know, and it got. And they were harder.
00:14:33 Heather: And I know.
00:14:35 Dwayne: So that’s why you didn’t like it now? Yeah, the secret’s out.
00:14:39 Heather: It was very stressful trying to get away from those damn ghosts.
00:14:42 Dwayne: It was. That’s why I like to turn around and eat them. There were also though before those, uh, the, the Atari and Coleco visions came around. There were games like these handhelds, like Merlin.
00:14:56 Heather: Merlin. Yeah, Merlin was awesome. We did have a Merlin. And yeah, you could play songs with it. Yeah. Um, memory games.
00:15:04 Dwayne: I didn’t have a Merlin. I remember playing around with it and we had to look it up. Going into this segment, I didn’t realize there were like eight different games built into that. That was the height of technology.
00:15:14 Heather: Then six or seven songs that you could play along with it, like, you know, Easy Ones, twinkle Twinkle Little Star.
00:15:20 Dwayne: Yeah, it held like forty eight notes. Yeah. So you could only play them, you know, store so much of a song in there. But the, uh, the whole thing. I mean, if you held it today, it looks so simplistic. What is this? But it was the height of technology in the early eighties.
00:15:35 Heather: And everybody wanted one.
00:15:37 Dwayne: Of course, there were also those games and things that were out during this era that were.
00:15:42 Heather: What about operation?
00:15:43 Dwayne: Oh my God, why we all have so much anxiety today.
00:15:47 Heather: Because.
00:15:47 Dwayne: You know.
00:15:48 Heather: I mean, that game is still available today. Yeah. And just as hard. Just as hard.
00:15:53 Dwayne: The stupid little tweezers trying to grab the things out.
00:15:58 Heather: Because I could not play that game.
00:16:01 Dwayne: I don’t have the stable, a stable enough hand to get all those out of there. I could get most, but never all.
00:16:07 Heather: Yeah. I couldn’t get all. I could get some of them. The wishbone, I think, was always the hardest.
00:16:11 Dwayne: There were so many great board games from that era too. We used to spend hours and hours at the at the neighbors and even adults would get together and play board games, card games, Candyland. Oh yeah. As a kid, that was my favorite. The Game of Life is probably still my favorite board game ever. I love that one where you have kids and and you.
00:16:32 Heather: Make your family.
00:16:33 Dwayne: Move your way through life and different jobs and everything progressed.
00:16:37 Heather: To battleship.
00:16:39 Dwayne: You sunk my battleship.
00:16:41 Heather: You have sunk my battleship. Yes. I love that game.
00:16:45 Dwayne: And.
00:16:45 Heather: I used to be pretty good at it.
00:16:47 Dwayne: The the ever present monopoly. And now there are nine thousand different versions of it. I think we own about eight thousand of them. We monopoly did the did a cool thing though, because that game is perfectly suited to be adapted for different places. Yeah, the original was based on a city, I think it’s Atlantic City, new Jersey.
00:17:07 Heather: Yeah, I think so.
00:17:07 Dwayne: And then but what’s to keep them from making it adapted to another city and the tourist bureaus from those cities? Or, you know, hell, these days you can get them at the local Walmart. You can get one, a Chicago based one, or just about any town.
00:17:21 Heather: You go to the National Park Service one.
00:17:23 Dwayne: We have the one for Roanoke, Virginia.
00:17:25 Heather: I think we have Heidelberg too.
00:17:27 Dwayne: We have Heidelberg, Germany as well.
00:17:29 Heather: We have an army one.
00:17:29 Dwayne: We have a US Army version of it. Yeah, it’s got tanks and cool stuff with it instead of a little hat and a dog. Although I like.
00:17:36 Heather: The dog, that game can take a long time to play correctly.
00:17:40 Dwayne: Correctly? Yeah, follow the rules. A lot of people don’t read all the rules and. And my favorite is the rule that says if someone lands on a square, it’s up for sale for. If that person doesn’t want to buy it, anyone at the table can buy it at auction.
00:17:54 Heather: Yeah, I think.
00:17:55 Dwayne: I give a dollar.
00:17:55 Heather: I think over time we just changed the rules. Unwritten rules?
00:18:01 Dwayne: Yeah. Another favorite one. It wasn’t really a board game, but it was definitely in the box section with everything else there. That was Spirograph.
00:18:08 Heather: Spirograph was awesome.
00:18:09 Dwayne: You could make all kinds of things with those. Those were so cool to make fractal art and everything. It’s so cool.
00:18:15 Heather: They’re really. I think you can actually still buy a Spirograph. It was a girl thing where you would change these plates to change a girl’s outfits. It had like three different sections, and then you would take like a black crown and color over the plates. You’d put a piece of paper on top of the plates and color over it, and you’d have a design.
00:18:34 Dwayne: Interesting.
00:18:34 Heather: I don’t remember what they’re called.
00:18:35 Dwayne: Interesting. If anybody knows what the heck she’s talking about, leave us a comment. Drop us a.
00:18:40 Heather: Line. I know what it is. Of course. You know, being the age that I am cannot remember the name of them.
00:18:46 Dwayne: It’s a common feature. We also had some really crappy games that came out in that era too. There were things like, uh, pet rocks. I think Pet Rocks probably first made a rise in like the fifties or so. And then they came back around.
00:18:59 Heather: Pet rocks should never have ever happened. Okay, yes, I want a Tumblr. And I want to make pretty rocks, but they are not my pets.
00:19:07 Dwayne: That’s that’s. You’re not selling the rock, though. You’re selling the device to make the rocks you find outside pretty. That’s that’s a bit different.
00:19:14 Heather: I don’t want to make them my pets.
00:19:15 Dwayne: Do you remember Stretch Armstrong’s?
00:19:17 Heather: Yes.
00:19:18 Dwayne: Those were.
00:19:18 Heather: I’m sure we probably had one.
00:19:20 Dwayne: And Stretch Armstrong. It was kind of cool. It was this hefty, chunky thing, but it had this. You could stretch his arms out really far and the legs and. But you put a couple of boys together and they’re gonna.
00:19:32 Heather: Be stupid.
00:19:33 Dwayne: Be stupid, and do everything we can to figure out what is in this thing. To make it like this.
00:19:38 Heather: Boys are dumb.
00:19:39 Dwayne: Turns out it’s goop. Not that I know, but it’s cool. And of course, once it leaks, it no longer stretches.
00:19:45 Heather: Silly putty.
00:19:46 Dwayne: Oh my goodness.
00:19:48 Heather: How silly.
00:19:50 Dwayne: Silly putty. How was it a toy? I never understood that.
00:19:53 Heather: I know it really wasn’t a toy.
00:19:55 Dwayne: And you couldn’t do much with it other than, you know, make it into, like a ball and chuck it at a wall and it would bounce all over the place. Or you could flatten it out.
00:20:04 Heather: Your siblings.
00:20:05 Dwayne: You could chuck it at your siblings. You could you could flatten it out and put it like on newspaper and it would lift the paper.
00:20:12 Heather: Yeah.
00:20:12 Dwayne: It would lift the ink and you would have, you know, the, the cartoon or whatever. That’s what I always did.
00:20:16 Heather: That’s what we did too.
00:20:16 Dwayne: I remember doing like The Family Circus or Ziggy Garfield, Garfield, all the great cartoons. But it was one of those, I’m like, how is Silly Putty even a toy?
00:20:28 Heather: Yeah, I wouldn’t necessarily deem it a toy. Kind of like, you know, that, um, the slime slime.
00:20:34 Dwayne: But slime is cool because again, you can sling it at your siblings. Right. And Nickelodeon made slime Cool.
00:20:41 Heather: And when you get it in your hair, you gotta cut your hair because it doesn’t come out.
00:20:46 Dwayne: It ain’t coming out. It ain’t coming.
00:20:48 Heather: Not that that happened to me or anything. Never got.
00:20:53 Dwayne: You mentioned Garbage Pail Kids before. Were those ever actually a toy or were those just cards?
00:21:00 Heather: Um, they started making, like, products, I don’t know, as if they actually had two boys, but they had, like, you know, Trapper keepers lunch boxes, um, shirts.
00:21:14 Dwayne: Oh, yeah. I remember seeing the shirts and stuff.
00:21:15 Heather: Yeah. I don’t know, as if they had, they may have had.
00:21:18 Dwayne: I think they were just kind of a play on the Cabbage Patch Kids kind of. They were satirical. Look at them.
00:21:23 Heather: They were the the disgusting cousin of cabbage.
00:21:28 Dwayne: Were they the Cabbage Patch kids that like were too ugly for the cabbage patch. And someone chucked them in the garbage pail.
00:21:33 Heather: Probably because they had boogers and everything going on.
00:21:36 Dwayne: Oh good grief.
00:21:37 Heather: They were really disgusting, but also a lot of fun.
00:21:41 Dwayne: Of course, the seventies and 80s was also the era of toys that tried to kill us.
00:21:47 Heather: Haha. Yeah.
00:21:48 Dwayne: You know. Remember? Lawn darts. Everyone. Every Gen X was like, oh, I remember lawn darts. Those things were so much fun though. As a kid, I could sling a lawn dart much easier than I could a horseshoe. Yeah, an actual metal heavy horseshoe. And they never banned horseshoes. They’re still out there today.
00:22:07 Heather: Cornhole.
00:22:08 Dwayne: Well, cornhole is just a bag that you could chuck at your sibling too, but it’s essentially the same thing. It’s essentially the same thing. I love the lawn darts, but yeah, the lawn darts, they were, they had that metal end on them. It was designed to travel if you chucked them straight up in the air. And yeah, because that was how the game would usually devolve for us. Like after someone won or not. Then okay, let’s see who can get it to land closest to them. Yeah. And throw them straight up in the air and watch it come down and.
00:22:37 Heather: Hope it doesn’t poke your eye out.
00:22:38 Dwayne: Yeah. Or crush your skull or anything. Remember? Clackers?
00:22:42 Heather: Yes.
00:22:42 Dwayne: On a string. Those little metal balls that were. They weren’t metal. They were like glass balls.
00:22:47 Heather: Yeah, and they could hurt your fingers real bad.
00:22:49 Dwayne: Oh, yeah. You get something smacked in between them and or just smacking them around. The sound of them, the sound of the darn things is probably why I have tinnitus today.
00:23:00 Heather: Slip n slides.
00:23:01 Dwayne: Oh, Lord. Yes. Nothing like putting a slip n slide.
00:23:04 Heather: A little metal. Um, stakes. The stakes in the ground.
00:23:07 Dwayne: You had to keep it stretched out. Yeah. And you go throw water on it and you go running across it and there’s rocks underneath it. Or you, you stick.
00:23:15 Heather: By the blades of grass.
00:23:18 Dwayne: Or, you know, you’re, you’re too big for this. You know, it’s an eight foot slide and you go ten feet and you wind up with all the mud and grass at the end of.
00:23:27 Heather: It, which happened frequently.
00:23:29 Dwayne: All the time.
00:23:30 Heather: All the time. Yeah.
00:23:31 Dwayne: Never quite understood the allure of that thing, I never did. It was it was fun running through the water.
00:23:36 Heather: It was fun running through the water when it was one hundred degrees outside. Yeah, that’s the whole.
00:23:40 Dwayne: But I didn’t need to slide with it. That’s just. Yeah, that’s just an element of trying to, you know, force a broken ankle or twisted knee or.
00:23:47 Heather: Something to see how far we could get. I mean, you know, past the slide.
00:23:51 Dwayne: Of course, we were also the generation that was, uh, given, uh, BB guns at the age of seven and eight, you know, to run around. And here’s a fully functional weapon that will shoot a round projectile thirty, forty yards, uh, pretty accurately.
00:24:04 Heather: It can do damage.
00:24:05 Dwayne: Oh, um, the, the stack of soda cans that I’ve blasted through, uh, and you, I mean, the damage that was done to those, the neighbor kids every now and then. I mean, that was always rule number one. You never pointed at anyone else, blah, blah, blah.
00:24:21 Heather: But it never failed. Well, some kid would get hit with a baby.
00:24:24 Dwayne: It was a ricochet. We would never point them at each other. But if you aimed it at the ground just right, you could get one to bounce off a rock.
00:24:31 Heather: Sounds like a boy thing to do.
00:24:33 Dwayne: Remember, uh, chemistry sets. Yeah. And electronics kits. and they.
00:24:37 Heather: Had actual chemicals.
00:24:39 Dwayne: Real chemicals in this thing that you could.
00:24:41 Heather: Build your own spaceship with.
00:24:43 Dwayne: Well, you could build rocket fuel with it. You could build poison with it. There was all kinds of things in those kits that.
00:24:49 Heather: I guess back then we weren’t that demented, that we would actually.
00:24:52 Dwayne: Write that. Yeah, well, most of us weren’t. And the ones who were grew up and became serial killers, I guess, I don’t know. I remember my one of my neighbors had an electronics kit. We would build all kinds of little electrical projects and stuff out of it. But the thing is, is, you know, it wasn’t battery powered, it plugged into the wall. So there’s here’s one hundred and ten volts of pure AC plugged in right down here, kids. Don’t touch it.
00:25:15 Heather: That must have been shocked or something at one time when I was a kid, because electrical stuff just freaks me out.
00:25:21 Dwayne: And I was shocked so much that I just learned to tolerate it. It’s like, ooh.
00:25:25 Heather: Ooh, that felt good.
00:25:28 Dwayne: It tickles. Did you ever get hurt by any of your toys and not tell your folks?
00:25:33 Heather: I didn’t really get hurt by any toys. We used to play army outside, and I don’t even remember the circumstances around it, but one of the neighbor boys threw or hit me in the face with a plastic gun, like a handgun. I still have the scar on my nose from it. I was very mad at him. My mom was so mad. It was one of those times where the parents called each other. I do.
00:25:57 Dwayne: Remember.
00:25:58 Heather: Yeah. It was a.
00:25:59 Dwayne: Um.
00:26:00 Heather: Yeah.
00:26:01 Dwayne: Uh, the worst I had was like, you know, the ricocheting BBS and that sort of thing. Never anything that broke the skin or or caused serious damage or anything. Thankfully. Any toys you’d like to see brought back?
00:26:13 Heather: Gosh, all of them. Oh, the Cabbage Patch Kid. Oh nineteen eighty three.
00:26:20 Dwayne: There were people, parents fighting with each other, trying to get these stupid, ugly dolls.
00:26:27 Heather: You shut your mouth. They were not ugly. They were adorable. I wanted one so bad. It was. I was like eight. I don’t think I got one in a three. Um, because the craze was for real.
00:26:39 Dwayne: It was for real. Yeah.
00:26:40 Heather: Um and you really, you couldn’t get em in nineteen eighty three like.
00:26:44 Dwayne: Mhm.
00:26:44 Heather: Like it was insane. Um, I got preemies. I ended up eventually getting two preemies. I had a little boy and a little girl. The little boy was Cornelius, I believe. I can’t remember the little girl’s name. Um, but we also had a lady in town that made fake ones.
00:27:01 Dwayne: Yeah, my mom got into that.
00:27:03 Heather: Those too.
00:27:04 Dwayne: My mother got into that. She would make these Cabbage Patch doll lookalikes.
00:27:09 Heather: They sold.
00:27:10 Dwayne: They. And, um, I’m not gonna lie, I wish I had some, uh, I.
00:27:14 Heather: Still wish I had them. I can’t remember her name. My doll’s name. But yeah, they were, she even put the. She even put something on the little butt cheek like Xavier. You know, the real Cabbage Patch Kids. You do a real Cabbage Patch Kid because it. Said Xavier Roberts on the back on his butt cheek.
00:27:31 Dwayne: Oh wow.
00:27:32 Heather: Yeah. That’s how you knew it was a real Cabbage Patch Kid.
00:27:35 Dwayne: Wow. I know that part of the allure of the Cabbage Patch Kids was that they were all to be adopted. And when you bought one, it came with an adoption certificate.
00:27:43 Heather: Yes, it came with an adoption certificate in an envelope. And it said, um, the full, um, baby’s name, their date of birth. Oh my God. You know, it had everything on it. It was awesome. You could even put your name on there. As a parent, I wish I still had my Cabbage Patch Kids.
00:28:03 Dwayne: I’m lucky that by nineteen eighty three I was fifteen. I was way past any of that kind of thing there. I do remember watching it. I mean, it was so bad. They ended up making movies that kind of, you know, jingle All the Way is based loosely on that whole thing. It’s a different toy that they use and everything, but just the whole idea that parents would go through so much to get these must have toys for their kids at that time. Today, you have no idea how lucky we are today, kids. We can sit back here on Amazon place bulk orders. Someone brings it to your house. It did not go down like that in nineteen eighty three.
00:28:38 Heather: And it it was legit. Like people were storming stores. It was bad.
00:28:44 Dwayne: Parents would get into fights in the lines and everything. It was crazy. I don’t know that we’ve really seen anything like that since then. Thank goodness.
00:28:52 Heather: I think the Cabbage Patch craze was the big one. Yeah, yeah. There were other must have toys each year. There was a must have toy, which I don’t even know if they really have.
00:29:01 Dwayne: I remember even up into the early two thousand iPods and when they would get released.
00:29:06 Heather: Yes.
00:29:06 Dwayne: They were the thing. And Apple did their release for those usually in the fall. So they were triggered for Christmas sales and everything. And those were must have items that kind of led to the same kind of things there in the early two thousand. That’s all gone now. It’s built into your phone. Now, for those who don’t know what an iPod is, it’s built into your phone.
00:29:24 Heather: Yeah, kids, you have no idea.
00:29:26 Dwayne: You have no idea, no idea.
00:29:28 Heather: Pre phone in your hand days.
00:29:30 Dwayne: And speaking of pre phone in your hand days back when we were kids, we had kind of a playground economy that went on. You know, if one kid had something that another wanted, it was perfectly acceptable to trade up, trade your toys for those. Yeah, one kid got this toy. Another one had to have it. It was not unheard of to trade this and that. My friends and I, we were always into trading Matchbox cars. So we always had like the same number of cars just in any given week.
00:30:00 Heather: I mean, I knew kids that did, I don’t think I actually traded the cars, but I did know kids that traded cars. And it’s a boy thing.
00:30:07 Dwayne: And there were there were trading cards, football cards, baseball cards, all that. That’s literally what they were built for. Originally, kids would trade them because you would buy a pack of trading cards.
00:30:17 Heather: Or a Garbage Pail Kid.
00:30:19 Dwayne: Or Garbage Pail Kids cards, whatever, and you would have a duplicate maybe, you know, or if you bought two packs, there was a good chance that there would be a mix up in there, or you would have an extra. And so you could trade the ones that you have extras for, ones you don’t have with other people to try to build the complete set. I don’t know that in the seventies and 80s that you could go somewhere and buy the complete box set of this year’s baseball cards. Oh, no, I don’t think. And today he’s just yeah, he’s ordered on Amazon. Boop. There you go. Yeah. Here’s his whole years.
00:30:47 Heather: It’s so easy these days.
00:30:48 Dwayne: Yeah. Back then, the amount of bubble gum I had to go through to.
00:30:50 Heather: Get bad bubble gum.
00:30:52 Dwayne: Bad bubble gum. It was flat. It was had that dry powder on it.
00:30:56 Heather: Kind of like.
00:30:56 Dwayne: Broke. Broke apart in your mouth. Lasted all of ten, fifteen seconds.
00:31:01 Heather: Oh, yeah. Kind of like the stripes, the zebras.
00:31:04 Dwayne: The fruit stripe.
00:31:04 Heather: Gum.
00:31:06 Dwayne: Yeah. Well, I think the flavor lasted 20s on those. Maybe a little longer.
00:31:10 Heather: Stuff was so bad.
00:31:11 Dwayne: Which toy made you instantly cool at school?
00:31:14 Heather: Dude, I don’t think I was ever cool, ever. I was different, I was unique, I was me. Why would I want to be anything else?
00:31:22 Dwayne: All right there, Danny Rojas uh, no, actually, that’s Jamie Tartt. Yeah, I would say the only toy I ever had that made me think I was cool at school would have been my boom box.
00:31:33 Heather: Yeah, like I didn’t take my boom box to school.
00:31:35 Dwayne: Oh I did. Yeah, I wanted I wanted everyone to hear. I wanted everyone to hear my musical tastes. Of course, the one thing that got me teased the most was probably my musical taste. So there was that.
00:31:45 Heather: I think though I. And it didn’t even make me cool, but I liked to dress differently than everybody else. I didn’t want to be the same as everyone else.
00:31:54 Dwayne: Why not? It was the eighties. Fashion was amazing.
00:31:56 Heather: Fashion was amazing, and I was different.
00:32:01 Dwayne: We’re talking about how, like our generation, we were all into trading, trading cards, collectibles and everything, and our generation really is the ones behind collectors and collectors editions of things. I know when in nineteen seventy seven, if you bought a Star Wars action figure, a toy from Star Wars, if you bought one of those back then it was to be taken out of the package and played with. You didn’t buy two, so you could have one that you kept as a collectible.
00:32:28 Heather: Nobody knew at the time that these toys were going to be.
00:32:31 Dwayne: And yet today, when when Marvel first started coming out with their movies or anything else, a part of the whole marketing strategy of them as well is the collectibles that will come with it. And people will buy these things and never take it out of the box. Never use it, never play with it, because it’ll ruin the value of it.
00:32:47 Heather: I’m like, you’re ruining it. Take it out of the box of play. Take it out of play.
00:32:52 Dwayne: Exactly. But we also, I mean, hell, today you got people collecting the squishmallows. Yeah, the millennials are all about those.
00:33:00 Heather: Squishmallows remind me kind of like maybe like pound puppy kind.
00:33:03 Dwayne: Mhm.
00:33:04 Heather: I wouldn’t necessarily collect them, but, you know, pound puppies, there were a lot of them.
00:33:08 Dwayne: So we got people collecting Stanley Cups.
00:33:10 Heather: I mean, okay, girls, we do not need one hundred Stanley Cups. Okay?
00:33:17 Dwayne: Just ten.
00:33:18 Heather: two or three. A two or three is plenty hundred. We do not need one hundred Stanley Cups.
00:33:25 Dwayne: One for the car, one for the office, one for the house. That’s enough, that’s enough.
00:33:28 Heather: Like, I get it, they have some cool ones. But you know how many times I see people, especially living here in Germany, you know, and they’re going back to the States and they’re selling their fifty Stanley Cups.
00:33:40 Dwayne: Because they can’t move.
00:33:41 Heather: Them because they can’t move them.
00:33:43 Dwayne: Yeah.
00:33:44 Heather: Don’t need them anymore. I mean, what are you gonna do with fifty Stanley Cups?
00:33:47 Dwayne: Right?
00:33:48 Heather: Right. I mean, come on. Excess. It’s it’s kind of gone overboard, but I digress.
00:33:53 Dwayne: Do you remember when the the tamagotchis first came out?
00:33:56 Heather: Yes.
00:33:56 Dwayne: Wasn’t that early nineties, late eighties somewhere like that?
00:33:59 Heather: Uh, I think it was late, late eighties, like eighty nine ish.
00:34:03 Dwayne: Those were basically a, a little, uh, it was like, could fit on your keychain, a little pocket sized device.
00:34:09 Heather: I never had one, but I know our girls had the older girls had one.
00:34:13 Dwayne: And you basically had to feed it, keep it alive.
00:34:16 Heather: Stupidest toys.
00:34:17 Dwayne: Yeah. Basically, you had to take it out and play with it every so often to keep it alive. Yeah.
00:34:23 Heather: They were dumb. Yeah. I didn’t get it, but.
00:34:25 Dwayne: But they did. Hey, it was.
00:34:27 Heather: It was fun.
00:34:28 Dwayne: It was. It was there that generations pet rocks. I guess I had to keep it alive.
00:34:33 Heather: Yeah.
00:34:34 Dwayne: I was hoping to see if I could find, like, some of the Star Wars toys or like the Evel Knievel toys or anything like that on eBay, just to see if I still had them, what they would be worth. And really kind of surprised, especially because again, I was not one to keep the toy in the box. I wanted to take it out and play with it. I did find on eBay like one of my little R2d2 that’s worth today’s like worth twenty bucks. Uh, which in nineteen seventy seven would have been like two dollars and fifty cents that you paid for it. So it’s probably about the same, probably hasn’t gained any value at all.
00:35:10 Heather: Yeah. I found, uh, a cabbage patch preemie that looked literally, I thought it was mine. I think it was twenty nine. And it, it varies wildly, you know, to gently use one’s being like fifteen, twenty bucks to ones that have never been taken out of the box, which is ridiculous for two hundred.
00:35:28 Dwayne: Now, I did find the Evel Knievel stunt cycle. I found that in original catalog it was like fifteen dollars in seventy three seventy four. You can find them on eBay now for like ninety five dollars. And that’s taken out of the box and played with. But looking that up reminded me of the coolest toy that went along with that. We see the Barbie dolls and how Barbie had her dream home. And there was the Malibu and the car, Barbie’s Corvette and everything. Boys action figures didn’t have all that, but we sure had the Evel Knievel scramble van that would. It was just a big van that was pretty much empty in the back. So to hold the tool boxes and and all these things that any good stunt cyclist would need, uh, before he went and tried to jump the snake River Canyon.
00:36:18 Heather: Oh, Evel Knievel, he was crazy.
00:36:21 Dwayne: Said it was a totally different time.
00:36:22 Heather: It really was. It was the best time. Would you give your childhood toys to kids today, or would you consider them collectibles?
00:36:29 Dwayne: Well, if they were the toys that I literally played with, yeah, those were mine.
00:36:35 Heather: Get your own toys.
00:36:36 Dwayne: You get your own toys. Honestly, though, I think most of the toys that I had as a kid, most kids today would find boring and throw to the side and just a few minutes.
00:36:46 Heather: Yeah. Like, you know, for girls, there were dolls were huge when I was a kid. Like just dolls in general. I mean, you had your Teddy Ruxpin.
00:36:54 Dwayne: Oh my Lord, that thing.
00:36:57 Heather: You know, Teddy was awesome. But also then Chucky came out not too long after that, and it made everybody decide never to have a toy with batteries in it ever again.
00:37:09 Dwayne: The for those who don’t remember, Teddy Ruxpin was a teddy bear that you could put a cassette in. And when the. When the cassette played, Teddy’s mouth would move to go along with the cassette.
00:37:22 Heather: But when the batteries started running, it was not pretty.
00:37:26 Dwayne: My thing was, I remember guys putting in like, you know, Hells Bells, little AC, DC coming out of Osborne. Ozzy Osborne.
00:37:35 Heather: And then, you know, Chucky came out and it ruined it for everybody.
00:37:39 Dwayne: What was that child’s play? Yeah. With the movie that doll was creepy. And yeah, when Teddy’s batteries would start to, uh, to wane.
00:37:46 Heather: He’d start sounding real diatonic.
00:37:48 Dwayne: Yeah. Instead of the tape player refusing to play, it would just slow down.
00:37:53 Speaker 4: So it was very creepy.
00:37:59 Heather: Yeah. I mean, I would give my childhood toys to kids today. I think it would maybe foster more imagination than kids have today. I don’t think kids have enough imagination.
00:38:08 Dwayne: When the story has to be very robust and given to them today. And some of it is how we create the toys and the games and everything today to make them more engaging and to write because, you know, the market is saturated. There’s so many games that are out there. You’ve got to you’ve got to have a story. you’ve got to have everything behind it, and that some of it will lead to more imaginative gameplay. But a lot of it, it’s already curated and provided, and you’re just a character in the movie.
00:38:33 Heather: Then, like Barbies, I know they’re they’re here, they’re still being sold. But do kids play with Barbies anymore? I don’t think so. I don’t know. I’m not a big deal like it used to be.
00:38:42 Dwayne: You don’t see toy stores that much anymore.
00:38:44 Heather: No.
00:38:45 Dwayne: And I think largely that has to do with more of the online shopping experience and what’s available there. It’s just easier.
00:38:51 Heather: For parents go to Walmart or Target. It’s the movie that’s out, the current movie that has the accompany toys.
00:38:57 Speaker 4: Yeah.
00:38:57 Dwayne: Well, the, you know, the studios have bought shelf space at Walmart or Target to display the toys, the collectibles that go along with it. And that’s how that section is set up anymore.
00:39:06 Heather: But on a good note, you can buy like lots of the board games we used to play as kids at target. You can and they do have some of the retro toys if you look. Target does carry some retro toys.
00:39:19 Dwayne: And of course eBay and Amazon have them as well. There they are out there. I miss going to stores like toys R us. That was an entire store.
00:39:26 Heather: I never went to a toys R us till I was an adult.
00:39:29 Dwayne: Well, yeah, I didn’t. They didn’t exist when I was a kid. They existed when I had kids.
00:39:32 Heather: I was like rude.
00:39:33 Dwayne: But they were such cool stores, right? As a kid, I remember going to like the shopping mall and there were several toy stores in the mall. They weren’t as big as the toys R.
00:39:42 Heather: Us or have like regular toy stores. We had a, um, a store called Allens in my town and it had the grocery store cart was up top and you know, the home like Ace Hardware kind of stuff was in the basement with the toy section.
00:39:57 Dwayne: I remember also at the mall, there was Sears always had a toy department.
00:40:01 Heather: Yes. Sears did.
00:40:03 Dwayne: It was pretty good.
00:40:04 Heather: J.C. Penney I.
00:40:04 Dwayne: Don’t know if Penney’s did or not.
00:40:06 Heather: I think they did.
00:40:06 Dwayne: Montgomery wards definitely did wards. I miss Montgomery.
00:40:10 Heather: Wards. Oh, Montgomery Wards was.
00:40:11 Dwayne: It was a good story. I remember I loved monkey wards, so we always called it monkey wards because this monkey needed to be kept in a ward for real.
00:40:20 Heather: What toy did your mom throw out that you’ll never forgive her for.
00:40:23 Dwayne: All of them.
00:40:24 Heather: Yes, all of them. Like I never wanted to get rid of anything.
00:40:28 Dwayne: Well, my mom did hang on to some of my toys as I got a little bit older, though once I became a teen, it was taking up all this space in the house. Let’s get rid of it. Get rid of it, get rid of it. A lot of my stuff was either given to cousins or just thrown out. There were so many, so many toys that I would love to still have today that she just threw out.
00:40:50 Heather: I know I, I always got out all of my toys all the time all at once, you know, and it wasn’t okay. Always the best to picking them up. I know I get it and my mom would like to go into my room with a garbage can and she’d start throwing my toys away and it was awful. So I’m mad about all the toys that went to the pile always.
00:41:14 Dwayne: Okay, folks, that’s going to wrap it up for this week. Not to worry though, we got plenty more next week and a whole lot more to discuss. If you enjoyed this week’s episode, we invite you to subscribe to the podcast wherever you listen. We’re available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all the other podcast outlets. You can even listen on your smart speaker. Just ask us to play the most recent episode of whatever the podcast. We also invite you to follow us on the socials. We’re on Facebook and Instagram at whatever pod and show notes, guest information and sponsorship opportunities are on our website at w w w dot dot com. You can even leave us comments or a voice message. Some of our listeners have asked how they can support the show, so we’ve set up a link on the website. Just click the support link to learn how you can help keep us in ibuprofen to help relieve some of the aches and pains of growing older.
00:41:58 Heather: And never growing up.
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00:42:17 Heather: Okay, bye.