By the early 1980s, thanks to hits like Pac-Man and Donkey Kong, video arcade games were starting to take on a playful, cartoon-like appearance. Sensing…
Browsing: Toys & Games
Poppin’ Hoppies were little mushroom-shaped plastic toys with spring-loaded stalks. Employing large amounts of saliva and spit, you pressed their heads down to the base…
Probe had threads of Scrabble, Wheel of Fortune and the classic dangling stick-figure Hangman running through it. Each player – and there could be anywhere…
One of the most famous faces of the golden age of arcade games was also one of the most bizarre. A furry orange orb with…
During the “cute” game era of the early 1980s, when hits like Pac-Man and Donkey Kong dominated the arcades, Taito introduced Qix, an abstract, minimalist “area capture” puzzle game. Featuring…
Launched in 1976, this popular bicycle accessory from Ideal was designed to make a standard bicycle sound and feel like a motorcycle or motocross bike.…
Race & Chase (distributed by Matchbox in the UK and Tyco in the US) was the slot car equivalent of holding up a liquor store…
Italian-born Antonio Pasin began making handcrafted wooden wagons in 1917, three years after his arrival in America. By 1923, Pasin’s wagons had been dubbed “Liberty…
Though Raggedy Ann is a perennial favourite for kids and collectors, this wildly successful and well-loved doll wasn’t dreamed up in any toy company’s R&D…
Hallmark Cards commissioned an animated television series in 1984 for its Rainbow Brite character. The company licensed the character to Mattel for a range of…
Raleigh debuted their Burner BMX bike in 1982 and followed on with numerous models, including the Super Tuff Burner, which featured the five-spoke plastic ‘Mag’…
In 1888, Sir Frank Bowden’s doctor told him that cycling could improve his health. He bought an interest in a small bicycle company in Raleigh…
Launched in 1976, the Raleigh Grifter became the ultimate 1980s bike – chunky and funky with throttle-style hand-twist gears. This was BMX before BMX. You even got…
Namco’s Rally-X is often mistaken for a Pac-Man clone with elements of Defender, but it was actually released alongside these games in 1980 and -…
Rebound was a miniature board-game version of shuffleboard. The board was split down the middle by a wall. The player launched one of four pucks…
Ricochet Racers were just cooler than cool – well, the bloody big gun you fired them out of was. Putting the cars into the cartridges,…
Parker Brothers unveiled Risk in 1959. From the point of Argentina in South America to the tip of Kamchatka in northeast Asia, the world was…
“In the distant future, the Ultimate Race will occur. Half road race and half battle, this will be the final contest between good and evil;…
When sci-fi shows like Captain Video and Tom Corbett, Space Cadet became childhood favourites in the early 1950s, so did sci-fi toys. Space helmets and ray guns were cool,…
Created by Eugene Jarvis and his Vid Kidz team at Williams Electronics and released in 1982, Robotron: 2084 was one of the most intense, claustrophobic…