Thanks to her peculiarly oversized head and bulging eyes that change colour with the pull of a string, not many girls wanted to play with…
Browsing: Toys & Games
The BMX Burner from Raleigh (pictured below) was the action bike of 1982 in the UK. It was capable of stunt tricks and riders were…
Board games have been played in most cultures and societies throughout history. Archaeological evidence has revealed such games dating back as far as 3100 BC.…
The world has its share of word games, but perhaps none as hyperactive as Boggle, which was first released in 1973. Sixteen letters, three minutes,…
Life was good at the Ponderosa Ranch in the mid-60’s. Bonanza was the most-watched program in the USA, the Nevada mountains were still pristine and…
Designed by future Apple Computer founder Steve Jobs (though Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak reportedly did the bulk of the work), Breakout turned the video game…
World War II, cowboys and soccer were the tripod on which boys’ comics were built in the 1950s and 1960s. DC Thomson and Fleetway were…
Buck-a-roo! came from Milton Bradley. The idea was to load the buck-a-roo mule with picks, shovels and all kinds of stuff. But if it got…
Budgie Toys was formed in 1959 by Sam and Harry Morris, who had tried unsuccessfully to market a range of model trucks in 1958. Unfortunately,…
Launched on 7 February 1976 by DC Thomson, Bullet was their attempt to produce a tougher, more hard-hitting comic to appeal to older boys. Priced at 7p,…
You just had to love a game whose entire philosophy on life was summed up in its three-syllable title: Bump ‘n’ Jump. That’s all there…
Fragrant with the whiff of jolly hockey sticks and pigtails, Bunty first appeared in January 1958 as the first “picture paper” for girls. The weekly comic was…
This long-running Fleetway comic was launched on 28 May 1960 and was published weekly until 4 January 2000. During its 40-year run, Buster absorbed many other comics…
The most popular kids of the 1980s had ugly fat squished faces, stumpy arms and chubby little hands . . . They were The Cabbage…
Imagine that the Brothers Grimm invented a board game. Now take out the witches. Welcome to Candy Land. Eleanor Abbott was recovering from polio when…
Part of the beauty of early arcade games was the preponderance of “truth in advertising”. What you read was what you got. So when Atari…
The first cap guns were born out of economic necessity. After the American Civil War ended in 1865, several gun manufacturers found themselves with too…
With a change of clothes and mask, Captain Action could alter his identity into some of the mightiest heroes on the planet. The basic 12″…
It was 1981 when the first ten Care Bears were designed for greeting cards. Just two years later, the toy line was rolled out, which…
Battery-powered thing from Matchbox which launched ball-bearings onto three bouncy drums in succession and then onto a scoring receptacle at the other end. The ball…
