This early Atari title wasn’t exactly the black-and-white equivalent of a Swiss Alps nightmare, but it was the closest a video game could come in…
Browsing: Toys & Games
In a 1950s West German tabloid comic strip, there lived a buxom blonde character named ‘Lili’. She was very popular in two dimensions, so it…
Barney & Friends was an inane PBS children’s television show about a stuffed purple dinosaur who grows and comes to life. The series quickly developed a…
Lakeside Toys first introduced Barrel of Monkeys in 1966. It only took seconds to learn, but the challenge could keep players hooked for hours. Inside…
In the early 1930s, as pinball machines dominated arcades, a variation called ‘pitch and bat’ games emerged in the US. These games launched a ball…
“B-11”. “nah!” “A-3” “D’oh . . . You sunk my battleship!”. In this “classic naval combat game” the open seas were cluttered with ships of…
Battling Tops was as close to watching gladiatorial combat as most kids got (except those kids whose dads took them to illegal cockfights!). Once you…
Bayko was the invention of British engineer Charles Plimpton who patented it in 1933. Originally called ‘Bayko Light Construction Sets’, the name ‘Bayko Light’ was…
One of the most frustrating things about almost every pinball game is the gap between the two flippers. No matter how good players are, they…
Referred to by collectors as the “Original Nine,” the first line of Beanie Babies debuted in Chicago in 1994. The arrival of the bead-filled plush toys…
The “Best of the West” line of 12-inch action figures and accessories from Marx centred around the iconic cowboy Johnny West and his horse, Thunderbolt. The…
Already blessed with injection moulding skills, Airfix decided to take the plunge into the building construction kit market with Betta Bilda in 1961. No doubt…
Produced from 1972 to 1986 by Mattel for the North American and European markets, Big Jim was a poor cousin of GI Joe, so kids could…
This 23-inch-long cannon truck from Marx could swivel, elevate, and fire missiles via a push-button control powered by four “D” batteries. In addition to firing…
Big Trak (styled ‘bigtrak’ in the UK) was the brainchild of an electronically minded Milton Bradley Company (who released Simon and Microvision during the same…
There was nothing more glorious than getting a brand new Big Wheel. And nothing as inglorious as our mothers’ mandates that we not ride in…
He may not have looked as space-ready as Major Matt Mason, but don’t let Billy Blastoff’s cherubic little face fool you. This kid packed the…
The BILOfix wooden toy construction range was produced and marketed in Denmark in the 1960s first by the Lego company and then by a separate…
The Bionic Woman was a spin-off of another bionic-themed prime time hit, The Six Million Dollar Man. In the dramatic opening credits of the show,…
Blow Football was extremely simple. Each player had a straw and used it to blow the lightweight ball into the other person’s goal. It required…