Slot cars were famous for either going too fast and flying off the track, or running into dead spots in the track. But we loved them anyway. The H.O. scale came a little after my slot car era. We had either 1/32 or 1/24 scale sets. Instead of the metal spring contacts like the H.O. scale cars, ours had flat brushes made of braided wire that would always get frayed and pick up dust to the point where they wouldn't run so you constantly had to clean off the brushes and reshape them. It just came with the territory and was part of the game.
Probably the one toy that consumed most of my time and money growing up was my HO-scale Tyco train sets, along with the buildings, trees, bushes, telephone poles, Matchbox cars, transformers, and little hand-painted plastic people that were all part of my setup. Had a corner in our basement with a 4x8 piece of plywood set up with an elaborate track setup, along with the other features mentioned. Most of my buildings had lights, and all of my switches were remotely controlled. I could sit down there driving my train sets around for hours at a time.
I was fortunate enough to have all the toys portrayed. ......You are so right about how our generation benefited from toys and playing outside with friends. ........Unfortunately, I see very little of that in today's world!
I got an AFX set for Christmas in the early 70s. My teenage Uncle would race with me in the garage and we spent most of Christmas that afternoon having a blast. I loved the fact that he paid attention to me. He was supposedly “too old” to play with toys like that, but I never forgot that experience. He also took me and my best friend to my very first concert when I was 13....It was KISS. He passed away from Cancer about 15 years ago- I miss him but I do have these wonderful memories of him.
Just wanted to tell you how much I appreciate watching your videos. I’ve lost both parents and my three brothers. I’m the sole living member and these videos take me back to a better time. I can still remember playing with my brothers on Lowell avenue in Chicago with many of these toys. My parents gave us a great childhood. Miss you Mom and Dad. Thanks again.
As a kid in the mid 60's into the 70's being outside, hanging out with friends, just being a kid was a blast. We never thought about killing each other or that stuff we just had fun. Toys were great, cartoons, TV. We just had fun..
I remember playing with nearly all these toys whether I had them or a friend. My brother and did however have a A F X Aurora slot car racing track almost exactly like the one you showed at the begining of this video, we played with it for years and even incorporated our Hot Wheels and Match Box cars and Match Box city peices into to it.
Thanks for the trip down memory lane. I got that exact Aurora slot car track for Christmas in 1971. I was 12. I and my friends would race in my garage or basement for 4 or 5 years. I gave the track to my youngest brother (who got another 4 of 5 years use out of it before selling it to one of his friends). You're absolutely right about the longevity of toys back then. They lasted. They had to.
A racetrack was something I always wanted, but after seeing them online now, I am glad I never got one. They always seem to fall off the track, get stuck, etc.
my brothers used to actually put grease on their track, so the cars would sometimes go flying at the corners; I can recall vividly when a future c-list celebrity (in his teens at the time) got hit in the nads really hard by a car launched by my brother. :P
One of my favorite toys was a wind up metal army tank that shot sparks and had rubber tracks that would go over just about anything. I believe it was made by Marx
Who remembers Major Matt Mason? I had Matt, another astronaut in a blue spacesuit, and the alien guy, as well as sundry accessories including the Space Crawler, which was an awesome toy. It could crawl it's way over anything and had a working winch at the back. The only problem with those six-inch-high rubber astronauts was that the figure's rubber-coated wire joints would break after they been flexed back and forth enough times and the astronaut would then be permanently stuck in a spread-eagle position. You could then still bend the joints, but they'd spring back as soon as you let go. But the Space Crawler was fantastic, one of my favorite toys as a kid.
Me too!! Sizzlers & superchargers!! I modified my Sizzlers by taping a 9-volt battery to the top and running thin wires down to the motor. They went like heck until the motor would get hot and burn out!
My dad *did* make an Aggravation board out of wood! We called it "The Marble Game" and my sister and I had no idea there was such a thing as a commercial store-sold version. We thought our dad was a genius game inventor. That game got used a million times.
I remember a friend of mine getting that very AFX Race set for his birthday in 1973. It came with two cars, yet you could buy more individually. That was the epitome of being part of the CKC (the cool kids club).
One of my favorites was a Hot Wheels setup that used regular tracks, but the car itself ran on a rechargeable battery, and they disguised the charger as a gas pump. Genius!!!
Oh man. The memories. My first baseball glove, a Rawlings Billy Williams model was acquired with green stamps. Rock'em Sock'ems, the slot car, etch a sketch, aggravation... nearly all of them you have shown were a big part of growing up.
Oh jeez, I LOVED my Vertibird!! I played with that toy for YEARS. At one point, the spring that rotated at the base broke, and I managed to solder it back together using my father's soldering gun. The joint looked ugly, but it worked!
Great vid, thanks. Raised in Findley Ohio in the 70s where S&H was king. I could hang onto a Wham-O Superball about half a day, some how it would bounce into oblivion.
When I was a kid I had Big Jim and lots of accessories Like the Ski ramp search and rescue truck rhino catching truck motorcycle boat camping truck and of June buggy as well as a few other ones loved it Still have lots of them from my childhood. Also had 11 1/2 inch G.I. Joe with the kung fu grip
Man i fell OLD!!!!!! LOL But wouldn't give it up for anything !!!!! 55yrs old and have lots of LOVE (wife/kids) and money!!!!! Love the good old days!!.. Just kinda worried about the way our Country is Heading today.
When I saw the Aurora AFX package, I was vaguely remembering it, wondering why it looked familiar. We had that set, and had more fun with it than anything. High maintenance, though, as you mentioned. You had to replace the brushes in the cars, and we'd have to clean the car electrical contacts with a pencil eraser. We had a track section with two humps in it (must've been an optional accessory, I don't remember). You didn't dare forget to unplug the transformer when you were done, because it would burn out if you didn't, and they were expensive. Thanks for sharing your toys. Brings back many forgotten memories.
Good memories. Part of the fun with the old toys were the interaction with friends. If the toys didn't work so well, at least it got kids working together to solve problems.
The AFX track was an improvement compared to pre seventies track with the two locking tabs. if one broke the track was useless. Btw run some fine grit sand paper over the rails to get the cars moving.
Later AFX track became snap together. My friend had that kind . I preferred that kind over fumbling with the pins . I accumulated around 100 feet of the ThunderJet pin types track.
I love " AFX"! I don't have any sets anymore, but at one time I had a killer collection. I had the adapter pieces to change to the newer track pieces, and the adapters to change to the other brand " Tyco". I even had the hill pieces from the " Turbo hoppers" Tyco set, and on Thursday nights we had tournaments at my place, and yes I always won, cause I had more practice than the people who were coming over. Great video dude. No way, you showed " Smash up derby"! I love that toy, and I do own the one you showed, I also have the Bi Centenial edition.
One of my favorites were Lincoln Logs! I loved building houses and then I'd take my Johnny Lightning cars and pull up to the new house. I also loved the old GI Joe's that were 1ft tall and had a lot of the play sets. I even had one that talked when you pulled the chord. I had a scuba diving out fit that I put on the one that talked and then put him in the bath tub to see if it really was waterproof. Unfortunately it was not! He never did talk the same again. :( The 70s had some great toys!!
Oh my hell, we had that Aggravation game with that box. And I had Etch-a-Sketch, Spirograph, Superball, and Gumbo and Pokey. I played with Gumbo and Pokey so much that the wire came through the it hands and legs.
I still haven’t seen my most favorite game. OPERATION. My mom said she couldn’t get it as a Christmas present they were all out of them. Well, on Christmas there it was. It’s the most surprised I’ve ever been. We’re so trusting as children. 😊
I had a Tyco TCR big rig set. I LOVED it, remember every detail of when and where I my parents bought it for me. I had it until my mid 20s, bust it out at my pad at times, even expanded it with new tracks and cars, decades later! I had a 'unitasker' handheld game, it was a bowling game, I forget exactly the brand, but I remember my mom bought it for me at Sears. Loved that thing. Tired of playing with my toys, I'd just move to the handheld bowling, was fun. Had red lights that moved down to knock pins at the end and depending on which buttons you pushed, you'd gain points or something. Black plastic. I always wanted the baseball and football ones, never got around to getting them though. Late 70s or early 80s. I had those metal Tootsie toy cars. LOVED those, early to mid 70s. I'd take my light blue VW Tootsie car and 'drive it' up my dad's arm and up over his bald head while he watched Conrad with one leg up on his favorite upholstered chair! Tears of joy. Thank you.
Those klackers were dangerous. You didn't realize how heavy those two ends were until it came crashing down on your wrists. I owned a racing track game as a kid with a novelty feature, that allowed you to tap the top of the controller and the cars changed direction. It was a cops vs robbers game with a tilting bridge in the center. The goal was to trap the robber on the side of the bridge that was up so it couldnt get away. Spent countless hours with my friends chasing each other cars around the track and changing directions lol.
Had so many of those. My dad made a track on a big plywood board and mounted it over my bed. It had a uphill corkscrew in the back corner where the cars would fly off all the time and I'd have to crawl under my bed and retrieve it.
I loved my Guns of Navarone play set. The Sears catalog ads for that thing are still awesome 50 years later. I had fun with that set. Then Star Wars came out!
LOVED this! I saw many of my old toys. Do you remember a toy called something like Vac-U-Form? I think it came out at about the same time as the "creepy crawler" maker kit. And of course, remember the very cool CHEMISTRY KITS?!!!
@@AlleyPicked My brother had a vac u form. It heated up thin plastic and then pressed it into a shape while very hot. I burned my fingers every time. I had a big wood burning kit that was even hotter. It had a pen that would get so hot it burned designs into wood. I always had burned fingers.
I had that race set when I was a kid and when I had my kids, they loved it too. My favorite was the Mighty Mo cannon that shot baseball size balls across the room.
The Pocket Rocket: it looked like a revolver grip with a short tube attached to the top. It had a latex rubber thing that looked like the nipple on a baby bottle secured on the front of the barrel, drop a bb inside, and pull back and it would launch that bb so fast that it would go through 3 soda cans and the wooden fence behind it. The bb's made a sharp crack sound when launched which may have been made by a sonic boom. They were much more powerful than those Daisy 1077 pump bb guns. I have no idea how I survived to adulthood with these crazy things that were sold to pre-teen kids like me at Big5. And don't forget the Lawn Darts!
I think one of the single greatest toys to come out of the 60s is LEGO. The fact that a company that makes one thing (plastic building bricks) can become the world's largest toy company and beat giants like Hasbro and Mattel that make such a wide range of toys shows the staying power of LEGO as a toy. And how many toys let you take everything from ancient Egyptian mummies to futuristic spaceships and combine them in one single creation?
The A-FX tracks were a lot of fun but they were a lot of work. If you didn’t have some light grade sandpaper you were out of luck. But I really knew that I graduated to the big times when the G plus cars came out. They had these very strong magnets that would keep the cars from flying off at the most ridiculous speeds. And they really went ridiculous speeds. Aurora made the best tracks in those days. And you had to lubricate the cars with Marvel mystery oil
If I remember correctly Aurora HO was older than AFX. I remember going the the hobby shop to buy the cars. A friend in the neighborhood had them too. I remember trading a cat for the Aurora motorcycle. Wish I still had that, it is most likely worth some money.
I still have my handheld electronic quarterback, & the baseball game as well. The wife & I also bought Aggravation & rock em sock robots. Plus who remembers toss across. We bought that too. Great way to cure the winter blahs during the winter.
@@AlleyPicked Sad part is, they made the newer version of the robots not only smaller, but the sound when the heads fly up is not the same either. But the wife & I still love em. It's a great way to let out our frustration. lol But my all time favorite game will always be the old time classic, Stratego. I found one on either ebay or maybe it was on Amazon & I only had to pay 7 bucks for it & the game was just as I remembered it. And all the red army & the blue army were all present & accounted for & the game board was in great condition. Not a bad investment for 7 bucks if I do say so myself!!!
Aww man, I'd forgotten about Verti-bird from your montage. For a while that was my favorite toy. I built stuff just to have new stuff to move or rescue. I gotta find me a new (old) Verti-bird someday.
I just posted about this on an unrelated forum when someone mentioned them: I had the steerable one - Oh Man those were a great idea that was a nightmare in reality. For the folks that don't know the Aurora AFX HO cars were identical to slot cars except they had no slots. There were three conductors embedded in the plastic roadway and that controlled the rear-wheel motor speed but also a motor that allowed you to actually STEER the front wheels. So it would allow you to change lanes where you would hit the guardrail and instantly line up with the other set of three conductors. Basically you followed by rubbing the guard rail instead of a slot. Now the nightmare came in because the cars would never change lanes properly and would fly all over and lose their connection. But an added feature was that changing lanes gave you a significant voltage spike to allow for a quick speed boost and a pass. So it took about once around the track for every kid to realize if you hold the wheel and deliberately turn against the guard rail you were already following you would get the speed boost. This made your car very fast until the motor burned out from over-voltage after about two laps.
If that was the set that had the "jam car" I had that one, and yeah, I don't think I ever got the hang of that one. If you weren't going fast enough, you would stall out trying to change lanes and if were going fast, your car would veer off the track and stall.
I currently have AFX super G-plus. Replaced the traction magnets with hard drive magnet. Make pick up shoes out of silver, the cars are ridiculously fast.
I remember when Green Stamps announced it was going out of business. My mother scraped together all her stamps to go redeem them before they became useless.
Did anyone have the Major Matt Mason space toys?? I had a ton of them - the space station, the big alien, Captain Lazer, and his crawler/tank thing, the moon suit and the jet pack. The 60s were a great time to be a kid!!
During the 70s I would hit woolworth stores as they had HO scale trains and slot cars marked down to almost nothing. I am not sure if I had that set, because I had enough to fill a basketball court.
I had it.lauda and hunt More detail than scalextric. the front tires atually touched the track .(spring loaded contact strips ) thanks for the memories. Now Age 56 uk.👍
My mom loves telling the story of how when I was little (around 4-5) I was at the store with her and she gave me a penny and I went and got a gumball and the machine broke and ended up pouring out, I came back to her with pockets full of gum asking for another penny.
I am 63 now. As a kid, I played with a battery operated, metal fire truck, or police car, that had siren, lights, and would drive around on its own. Underneath, it had a triangle with wheels, that changed direction, when it bumped into something. The arms turned on the steering wheel. Please show it. Thanks.
Great memories! Hey, I think we grew up in the same area. Northwest side of Chicago? I used to go to the Stanton Hobby shop too, and in the 80's, I worked at the Sears store you showed a picture of.
When I grew up my mom bought me a rocket launcher. It was a metal launch site with a large rocket with a huge spring. My first launch in the house the rocket went right thru the ceiling. After that the spring mysteriously disappeared.
@@AlleyPicked or, admittedly, our stupidity. Nobody got hurt, those were magical times I guess. . . although one lawn dart did punch its way into my cousin's hood, but he was an ass so no one minded 🤣
That AFX set is REALLY EARLY. It's still using basically the Aurora Model Motoring track. I got my set for Christmas '73 and it had quick connect track... which had a propensity for the prongs to snap off so there were metal spring clips which could be installed on the underside for repairs.
There was a bit debate as to whether Tyco or AFX was the better slot car set. However, the cars were not interchangeable. I think one kid on our block had AFX and the rest of us had Tyco. (I also had, and still have, a Tyco HO train, so it was a logical choice for slot cars, too.) S&H were a mostly national trading stamp, but there were regional ones, too. In SoCal, Blue Chip was the main stamp, although S&H was still around. My dad at one time worked for Gold Bond trading stamps in Minneapolis (founded by Curt Carlson of Radisson & TGI Friday's fame). How times have changed.
I was 7 years old when I played " TWISTER " , and played with the girls next door ... and had an ah ha ! moment that female anatomy was EXCITING ! child hood innocent 😇
@@imastupid7598 - Yes! That smell! I think I can STILL smell it! Wonder how many times we got high off those fumes and didn't know it! 😆🤪 Yeah, sometimes you'd get a bigger bubble, if you put a big glob of the stuff on the end of the straw. But they'd never be that colorful - mostly a muddy mixture!
Greetings from Clay County, Missouri ! wow That IS an early A/FX set . Still has the older T-Jet 500 pin-together track I thought they were all the Snap-together style. And I was hoping for the Auto World McLaren as shown on the box top :( but the Superbird and Camaro are cool too :) MY first slot car set was the Thunder Jet 500 "Golden Gate Bridge " with a Mako Shark and a Ford GT-40 ALWAYS loved the GT40 Yes, I'm old, I remember 5 and Dimes Woolworths and TG&Y I also remember seeing my 1st Digital calculator at a Sears & Roebuck store. 8 digit, about 6 "wide, 12" long and 3" high had a power adapter that plugged in the wall 4 functions +, -, x, and divide ( my keyboard doesn't even have a symbol for divide wtf? oh, wait / ) oh yeah, and a PERCENT key played with that thing for HOURS while my Mom was shopping hey it was 1973 about the time of Pong (other kids were already playing THAT ) Help my Grandma with S&H green stamps seemed like kind of a rip-off even at 10 I always thought the "S" was a DUCK, before I learned cursive , YES I learned CURSIVE in Grade 3 I AM old Had to smile at the EK bike and the balsa wood plane but NOT at the Gumby :( CURSE YOU, John Paul Pemberton, I WILL find you !!! Thanks again for the memories ! 243 thumbs UP 'scribed
I had an afx race set and I can’t remember if I ever made a complete circuit around the track without having to nudge it lol,but i had 3 toys that I really enjoyed was a Fort Apache play set .some sst where you polled the plastic strip and it shoots across the floor those were cool and I can’t remember the name of the toy but it was a helicopter on a stick
I remember the Klacker .. Kids used get a concusion by getting hit in the head one of the toys that I had as a very young kid( 3 years old0 was a kid sized verion of my mother's oldsmobile delta 88
There was a toy in the late seventies for boys called murder building set or something. It Was a set to build skyscrapers.i loved it. Anyone else remember it?
![F.HERO Ft. JSPKK x ลำไย ไหทองคำ x M-PEE - ไม่สนิทบิดหมด (Thai Riders Anthem) [Official MV]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/kPJZ0UihBfk/mqdefault.jpg)
Slot cars were famous for either going too fast and flying off the track, or running into dead spots in the track. But we loved them anyway. The H.O. scale came a little after my slot car era. We had either 1/32 or 1/24 scale sets. Instead of the metal spring contacts like the H.O. scale cars, ours had flat brushes made of braided wire that would always get frayed and pick up dust to the point where they wouldn't run so you constantly had to clean off the brushes and reshape them. It just came with the territory and was part of the game.
Probably the one toy that consumed most of my time and money growing up was my HO-scale Tyco train sets, along with the buildings, trees, bushes, telephone poles, Matchbox cars, transformers, and little hand-painted plastic people that were all part of my setup. Had a corner in our basement with a 4x8 piece of plywood set up with an elaborate track setup, along with the other features mentioned. Most of my buildings had lights, and all of my switches were remotely controlled. I could sit down there driving my train sets around for hours at a time.
I was fortunate enough to have all the toys portrayed. ......You are so right about how our generation benefited from toys and playing outside with friends. ........Unfortunately, I see very little of that in today's world!
I got an AFX set for Christmas in the early 70s. My teenage Uncle would race with me in the garage and we spent most of Christmas that afternoon having a blast. I loved the fact that he paid attention to me. He was supposedly “too old” to play with toys like that, but I never forgot that experience. He also took me and my best friend to my very first concert when I was 13....It was KISS. He passed away from Cancer about 15 years ago- I miss him but I do have these wonderful memories of him.
Just wanted to tell you how much I appreciate watching your videos. I’ve lost both parents and my three brothers. I’m the sole living member and these videos take me back to a better time. I can still remember playing with my brothers on Lowell avenue in Chicago with many of these toys. My parents gave us a great childhood. Miss you Mom and Dad. Thanks again.
Sorry to hear about your family. What was your address on Lowell Ave? I grew up on Kostner Ave. just south of Lowell. Tom
As a kid in the mid 60's into the 70's being outside, hanging out with friends, just being a kid was a blast. We never thought about killing each other or that stuff we just had fun. Toys were great, cartoons, TV. We just had fun..
I remember playing with nearly all these toys whether I had them or a friend. My brother and did however have a A F X Aurora slot car racing track almost exactly like the one you showed at the begining of this video, we played with it for years and even incorporated our Hot Wheels and Match Box cars and Match Box city peices into to it.
Thanks for the trip down memory lane. I got that exact Aurora slot car track for Christmas in 1971. I was 12. I and my friends would race in my garage or basement for 4 or 5 years. I gave the track to my youngest brother (who got another 4 of 5 years use out of it before selling it to one of his friends). You're absolutely right about the longevity of toys back then. They lasted. They had to.
A racetrack was something I always wanted, but after seeing them online now, I am glad I never got one. They always seem to fall off the track, get stuck, etc.
I remember AFX, Aggravation, putting nickels, dimes and quarters in those machines. I am a 70's kid.
AFX with magna traction, helped the cars stick to the track better.
my brothers used to actually put grease on their track, so the cars would sometimes go flying at the corners; I can recall vividly when a future c-list celebrity (in his teens at the time) got hit in the nads really hard by a car launched by my brother. :P
So happy I got a glimpse of my last toy ever -- Vertibird!
That was one of my favorites! My big cousin kept bumping me out to play with my own toy when I got it for Christmas. :-) Good memories with that toy.
The vertibird was terrific! I'd try for what seemed like hours (probably mere minutes in non 7 year old time) to get it to hover.
One of my favorite toys was a wind up metal army tank that shot sparks and had rubber tracks that would go over just about anything. I believe it was made by Marx
I grew up in the UK and many of the same toys were there and I had some of them. This video was a great trip down memory lane, thanks!
Who remembers Major Matt Mason? I had Matt, another astronaut in a blue spacesuit, and the alien guy, as well as sundry accessories including the Space Crawler, which was an awesome toy. It could crawl it's way over anything and had a working winch at the back. The only problem with those six-inch-high rubber astronauts was that the figure's rubber-coated wire joints would break after they been flexed back and forth enough times and the astronaut would then be permanently stuck in a spread-eagle position. You could then still bend the joints, but they'd spring back as soon as you let go. But the Space Crawler was fantastic, one of my favorite toys as a kid.
I remember that! Never had any of the figures, but I had a satellite launcher thing from the range of accessories.
Yep. I had the Major and his Space Crawler. The moon base thing was likely out of my parent's price range. You are right about the wire joints, too!
@@boblittle2529 I never had the Moonbase either, probably for the same reason 🙂
Wow, I had almost every toy in the video (had the exact same AFX track and cars). Had forgotten about most of them. I had pretty cool parents!!
Me to. The AFX!! the Supper ball. And the SUPERELASTICBUBBLEPLASTIC!!!! lololol WOW !!! Where in the hell did Those times go ?
I was all about the Hot Wheels and tracks. Especially loved my Sizzlers cars. And we collected Blue Chip stamps.
Me too!! Sizzlers & superchargers!! I modified my Sizzlers by taping a 9-volt battery to the top and running thin wires down to the motor. They went like heck until the motor would get hot and burn out!
YEAH, The Good Old Times 🤠
3:20 the Nürnberg Ring in the nursery 🤣
WONDERFULL GREAT AMAZING VIDEO 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
My dad *did* make an Aggravation board out of wood! We called it "The Marble Game" and my sister and I had no idea there was such a thing as a commercial store-sold version. We thought our dad was a genius game inventor. That game got used a million times.
I remember a friend of mine getting that very AFX Race set for his birthday in 1973. It came with two cars, yet you could buy more individually. That was the epitome of being part of the CKC (the cool kids club).
Christmas 1971 I got a smaller AFX track layout than the one you show here but very similar. Battling Tops was my favorite game shown in this vid.
Battling tops -- one of my favorites. Maybe because one of the tops had the name "Tom" on it. I remember they all had goofy names :-)
Man, I remember the smell of those motors running.
One of my favorites was a Hot Wheels setup that used regular tracks, but the car itself ran on a rechargeable battery, and they disguised the charger as a gas pump. Genius!!!
They were called sizzlers
@@marktreadwell549 Thanks! I just might have to go hunting on ebay...
I remember those, they were called sizzlers. So much fun
Thank you for taking me back to when being a kid was fun
Oh man. The memories. My first baseball glove, a Rawlings Billy Williams model was acquired with green stamps. Rock'em Sock'ems, the slot car, etch a sketch, aggravation... nearly all of them you have shown were a big part of growing up.
That race track was great! Thanks for bringing back some really great memories!
Oh jeez, I LOVED my Vertibird!! I played with that toy for YEARS. At one point, the spring that rotated at the base broke, and I managed to solder it back together using my father's soldering gun. The joint looked ugly, but it worked!
Great vid, thanks. Raised in Findley Ohio in the 70s where S&H was king. I could hang onto a Wham-O Superball about half a day, some how it would bounce into oblivion.
When I was a kid
I had Big Jim and lots of accessories
Like the Ski ramp search and rescue truck rhino catching truck motorcycle boat camping truck and of June buggy as well as a few other ones loved it
Still have lots of them from my childhood. Also had 11 1/2 inch G.I. Joe with the kung fu grip
Man i fell OLD!!!!!! LOL But wouldn't give it up for anything !!!!! 55yrs old and have lots of LOVE (wife/kids) and money!!!!! Love the good old days!!.. Just kinda worried about the way our Country is Heading today.
When I saw the Aurora AFX package, I was vaguely remembering it, wondering why it looked familiar. We had that set, and had more fun with it than anything. High maintenance, though, as you mentioned. You had to replace the brushes in the cars, and we'd have to clean the car electrical contacts with a pencil eraser. We had a track section with two humps in it (must've been an optional accessory, I don't remember). You didn't dare forget to unplug the transformer when you were done, because it would burn out if you didn't, and they were expensive. Thanks for sharing your toys. Brings back many forgotten memories.
Good memories. Part of the fun with the old toys were the interaction with friends. If the toys didn't work so well, at least it got kids working together to solve problems.
The AFX track was an improvement compared to pre seventies track with the two locking tabs. if one broke the track was useless. Btw run some fine grit sand paper over the rails to get the cars moving.
Later AFX track became snap together. My friend had that kind . I preferred that kind over fumbling with the pins . I accumulated around 100 feet of the ThunderJet pin types track.
I love " AFX"! I don't have any sets anymore, but at one time I had a killer collection. I had the adapter pieces to change to the newer track pieces, and the adapters to change to the other brand " Tyco". I even had the hill pieces from the " Turbo hoppers" Tyco set, and on Thursday nights we had tournaments at my place, and yes I always won, cause I had more practice than the people who were coming over. Great video dude. No way, you showed " Smash up derby"! I love that toy, and I do own the one you showed, I also have the Bi Centenial edition.
One of my favorites were Lincoln Logs! I loved building houses and then I'd take my Johnny Lightning cars and pull up to the new house. I also loved the old GI Joe's that were 1ft tall and had a lot of the play sets. I even had one that talked when you pulled the chord. I had a scuba diving out fit that I put on the one that talked and then put him in the bath tub to see if it really was waterproof. Unfortunately it was not! He never did talk the same again. :( The 70s had some great toys!!
Oh my hell, we had that Aggravation game with that box. And I had Etch-a-Sketch, Spirograph, Superball, and Gumbo and Pokey. I played with Gumbo and Pokey so much that the wire came through the it hands and legs.
I still haven’t seen my most favorite game. OPERATION. My mom said she couldn’t get it as a Christmas present they were all out of them. Well, on Christmas there it was. It’s the most surprised I’ve ever been. We’re so trusting as children. 😊
I had a Tyco TCR big rig set. I LOVED it, remember every detail of when and where I my parents bought it for me. I had it until my mid 20s, bust it out at my pad at times, even expanded it with new tracks and cars, decades later!
I had a 'unitasker' handheld game, it was a bowling game, I forget exactly the brand, but I remember my mom bought it for me at Sears. Loved that thing. Tired of playing with my toys, I'd just move to the handheld bowling, was fun. Had red lights that moved down to knock pins at the end and depending on which buttons you pushed, you'd gain points or something. Black plastic. I always wanted the baseball and football ones, never got around to getting them though. Late 70s or early 80s.
I had those metal Tootsie toy cars. LOVED those, early to mid 70s. I'd take my light blue VW Tootsie car and 'drive it' up my dad's arm and up over his bald head while he watched Conrad with one leg up on his favorite upholstered chair! Tears of joy. Thank you.
Thank you for the blast of the past
I had that exact AFX! I was born in 1970 and had a brother that ❤was ❤4 years older.
very cool!
battling tops!! Oh my, haven't thought of that since the 70s. Loved that one.
tanks for the memories those toys brought me so much fun being a kid then
Those klackers were dangerous. You didn't realize how heavy those two ends were until it came crashing down on your wrists. I owned a racing track game as a kid with a novelty feature, that allowed you to tap the top of the controller and the cars changed direction. It was a cops vs robbers game with a tilting bridge in the center. The goal was to trap the robber on the side of the bridge that was up so it couldnt get away. Spent countless hours with my friends chasing each other cars around the track and changing directions lol.
My mom use to collect both S & H Green Stamps and Blue Chip stamps. She never used them for toys though, only for household items.
Had so many of those.
My dad made a track on a big plywood board and mounted it over my bed. It had a uphill corkscrew in the back corner where the cars would fly off all the time and I'd have to crawl under my bed and retrieve it.
I loved my Guns of Navarone play set. The Sears catalog ads for that thing are still awesome 50 years later. I had fun with that set. Then Star Wars came out!
LOVED this! I saw many of my old toys. Do you remember a toy called something like Vac-U-Form? I think it came out at about the same time as the "creepy crawler" maker kit. And of course, remember the very cool CHEMISTRY KITS?!!!
I never had vac-u-form. I watched a classic comercial on TH-cam for it and it looked really fun. Thanks for sharing.
@@AlleyPicked My brother had a vac u form. It heated up thin plastic and then pressed it into a shape while very hot. I burned my fingers every time. I had a big wood burning kit that was even hotter. It had a pen that would get so hot it burned designs into wood. I always had burned fingers.
Vac-form was my favorite toy. I did get burned plenty of times on it though which is probably why it is no longer made.
My bro and I had a chemistry set with a microscope and slides. It also had a frog In a jar that looked like it was standing upright in the jar.
I had that race set when I was a kid and when I had my kids, they loved it too. My favorite was the Mighty Mo cannon that shot baseball size balls across the room.
I had a Marx 1/32 scale set- Xmas present at 8- Jaguar,Mercedes cars-hours of fun
The Pocket Rocket: it looked like a revolver grip with a short tube attached to the top. It had a latex rubber thing that looked like the nipple on a baby bottle secured on the front of the barrel, drop a bb inside, and pull back and it would launch that bb so fast that it would go through 3 soda cans and the wooden fence behind it. The bb's made a sharp crack sound when launched which may have been made by a sonic boom. They were much more powerful than those Daisy 1077 pump bb guns. I have no idea how I survived to adulthood with these crazy things that were sold to pre-teen kids like me at Big5. And don't forget the Lawn Darts!
I think one of the single greatest toys to come out of the 60s is LEGO. The fact that a company that makes one thing (plastic building bricks) can become the world's largest toy company and beat giants like Hasbro and Mattel that make such a wide range of toys shows the staying power of LEGO as a toy.
And how many toys let you take everything from ancient Egyptian mummies to futuristic spaceships and combine them in one single creation?
Good point.
The A-FX tracks were a lot of fun but they were a lot of work. If you didn’t have some light grade sandpaper you were out of luck. But I really knew that I graduated to the big times when the G plus cars came out. They had these very strong magnets that would keep the cars from flying off at the most ridiculous speeds. And they really went ridiculous speeds. Aurora made the best tracks in those days. And you had to lubricate the cars with Marvel mystery oil
If I remember correctly Aurora HO was older than AFX. I remember going the the hobby shop to buy the cars. A friend in the neighborhood had them too. I remember trading a cat for the Aurora motorcycle. Wish I still had that, it is most likely worth some money.
I still have my handheld electronic quarterback, & the baseball game as well. The wife & I also bought Aggravation & rock em sock robots. Plus who remembers toss across. We bought that too. Great way to cure the winter blahs during the winter.
I loved toss across and rock en sock em robots also. Can't ever forget that sound when the head flys up.
@@AlleyPicked Sad part is, they made the newer version of the robots not only smaller, but the sound when the heads fly up is not the same either. But the wife & I still love em. It's a great way to let out our frustration. lol But my all time favorite game will always be the old time classic, Stratego. I found one on either ebay or maybe it was on Amazon & I only had to pay 7 bucks for it & the game was just as I remembered it. And all the red army & the blue army were all present & accounted for & the game board was in great condition. Not a bad investment for 7 bucks if I do say so myself!!!
Part of the fun was putting it together! Playing with it with afterward was the fruits of our labor!
Sir, That was a great Video. Bless your Heart. Can I come over to your house & play ??
Aww man, I'd forgotten about Verti-bird from your montage. For a while that was my favorite toy. I built stuff just to have new stuff to move or rescue. I gotta find me a new (old) Verti-bird someday.
I just posted about this on an unrelated forum when someone mentioned them:
I had the steerable one - Oh Man those were a great idea that was a nightmare in reality.
For the folks that don't know the Aurora AFX HO cars were identical to slot cars except they had no slots. There were three conductors embedded in the plastic roadway and that controlled the rear-wheel motor speed but also a motor that allowed you to actually STEER the front wheels.
So it would allow you to change lanes where you would hit the guardrail and instantly line up with the other set of three conductors. Basically you followed by rubbing the guard rail instead of a slot.
Now the nightmare came in because the cars would never change lanes properly and would fly all over and lose their connection.
But an added feature was that changing lanes gave you a significant voltage spike to allow for a quick speed boost and a pass. So it took about once around the track for every kid to realize if you hold the wheel and deliberately turn against the guard rail you were already following you would get the speed boost.
This made your car very fast until the motor burned out from over-voltage after about two laps.
If that was the set that had the "jam car" I had that one, and yeah, I don't think I ever got the hang of that one. If you weren't going fast enough, you would stall out trying to change lanes and if were going fast, your car would veer off the track and stall.
I currently have AFX super G-plus. Replaced the traction magnets with hard drive magnet. Make pick up shoes out of silver, the cars are ridiculously fast.
I had that very same track back in the day! I remember bending the track contacts ugh!
Tarnished contacts from age. Use a pencil eraser on the contacts on the car and the track. Your speed will increase.
I remember when Green Stamps announced it was going out of business. My mother scraped together all her stamps to go redeem them before they became useless.
Did anyone have the Major Matt Mason space toys?? I had a ton of them - the space station, the big alien, Captain Lazer, and his crawler/tank thing, the moon suit and the jet pack. The 60s were a great time to be a kid!!
I had one of those race tracks, they should have supplied the 220 grit sand paper.....I still have one of the cars hidden away in a cigar box
During the 70s I would hit woolworth stores as they had HO scale trains and slot cars marked down to almost nothing. I am not sure if I had that set, because I had enough to fill a basketball court.
Track cars! I loved the burnt smell those gave off.
I had it.lauda and hunt
More detail than scalextric. the front tires atually touched the track .(spring loaded contact strips ) thanks for the memories. Now Age 56 uk.👍
Finally! An Aurora kit with more than 5 or 6 parts...
My mom loves telling the story of how when I was little (around 4-5) I was at the store with her and she gave me a penny and I went and got a gumball and the machine broke and ended up pouring out, I came back to her with pockets full of gum asking for another penny.
I am 63 now. As a kid, I played with a battery operated, metal fire truck, or police car, that had siren, lights, and would drive around on its own. Underneath, it had a triangle with wheels, that changed direction, when it bumped into something. The arms turned on the steering wheel. Please show it. Thanks.
If someone were to go over my backyard of my childhood home with a metal detector wonder how many hot wheels cars they would find
My twin brother and I had the Aurora racetrack but the pieces that locked the track segments together were metal.
Great memories! Hey, I think we grew up in the same area. Northwest side of Chicago? I used to go to the Stanton Hobby shop too, and in the 80's, I worked at the Sears store you showed a picture of.
Do you remember the Jimmy the Greek football game that used cards on a draw pile to determine game action?
We would Gamble with AFX cars I set up a 20 ft long drag strip all the toys we had back then you had to work on and that made me very mechanical.
When I grew up my mom bought me a rocket launcher. It was a metal launch site with a large rocket with a huge spring. My first launch in the house the rocket went right thru the ceiling. After that the spring mysteriously disappeared.
Jarts! We didn't use the targets. We were the targets! Fling them up as high as you could, then dodge!
Didn't see that method in the instruction manual but certainly shows your creativity :-)
@@AlleyPicked or, admittedly, our stupidity. Nobody got hurt, those were magical times I guess. . . although one lawn dart did punch its way into my cousin's hood, but he was an ass so no one minded 🤣
That AFX set is REALLY EARLY. It's still using basically the Aurora Model Motoring track. I got my set for Christmas '73 and it had quick connect track... which had a propensity for the prongs to snap off so there were metal spring clips which could be installed on the underside for repairs.
Thanks for the info!
There was a bit debate as to whether Tyco or AFX was the better slot car set. However, the cars were not interchangeable. I think one kid on our block had AFX and the rest of us had Tyco. (I also had, and still have, a Tyco HO train, so it was a logical choice for slot cars, too.)
S&H were a mostly national trading stamp, but there were regional ones, too. In SoCal, Blue Chip was the main stamp, although S&H was still around. My dad at one time worked for Gold Bond trading stamps in Minneapolis (founded by Curt Carlson of Radisson & TGI Friday's fame). How times have changed.
Me or my brother each got an AFX slot car set every Christmas and the sets slowly advanced with stuff like headlights and the loop the loop tracks.
my first and last race car track was a matchbox motor speedway...it used a janky long spring inside the track to pull the cars around
the aurora slot cars were absolutely the best.
Man I remember my giant G.I. Joes and my Six Million Dollar Man action figures!
I was 7 years old when I played " TWISTER " , and played with the girls next door ... and had an ah ha ! moment that female anatomy was EXCITING ! child hood innocent 😇
That was great! Had almost every toy and game you showed! Even the Lightning Bug Glo Juice! And Super Elastic Bubble Plastic! How toxic was THAT!
I think I can almost taste those plastic bubbles still 😁
@@AlleyPicked - 🤮😆
@@imastupid7598 - Yes! That smell! I think I can STILL smell it! Wonder how many times we got high off those fumes and didn't know it! 😆🤪
Yeah, sometimes you'd get a bigger bubble, if you put a big glob of the stuff on the end of the straw. But they'd never be that colorful - mostly a muddy mixture!
always good memories.God bless.
Greetings from Clay County, Missouri !
wow That IS an early A/FX set . Still has the older T-Jet 500 pin-together track I thought they were all the Snap-together style.
And I was hoping for the Auto World McLaren as shown on the box top :( but the Superbird and Camaro are cool too :)
MY first slot car set was the Thunder Jet 500 "Golden Gate Bridge " with a Mako Shark and a Ford GT-40 ALWAYS loved the GT40
Yes, I'm old, I remember 5 and Dimes Woolworths and TG&Y
I also remember seeing my 1st Digital calculator at a Sears & Roebuck store. 8 digit, about 6 "wide, 12" long and 3" high had a power adapter that plugged in the wall
4 functions +, -, x, and divide ( my keyboard doesn't even have a symbol for divide wtf? oh, wait / ) oh yeah, and a PERCENT key
played with that thing for HOURS while my Mom was shopping hey it was 1973 about the time of Pong (other kids were already playing THAT )
Help my Grandma with S&H green stamps seemed like kind of a rip-off even at 10
I always thought the "S" was a DUCK, before I learned cursive , YES I learned CURSIVE in Grade 3 I AM old
Had to smile at the EK bike and the balsa wood plane but NOT at the Gumby :( CURSE YOU, John Paul Pemberton, I WILL find you !!!
Thanks again for the memories ! 243 thumbs UP 'scribed
I had an afx race set and I can’t remember if I ever made a complete circuit around the track without having to nudge it lol,but i had 3 toys that I really enjoyed was a Fort Apache play set .some sst where you polled the plastic strip and it shoots across the floor those were cool and I can’t remember the name of the toy but it was a helicopter on a stick
My brothers had that race car set in the basement. It took a pro to make the dragsters turn on the corners (they were only supposed to go straight).
i got a bunch of different Star Trek models with my grandmas S & H green stamps :)
Awesome track loved AFX!!!
I remember the Klacker .. Kids used get a concusion by getting hit in the head
one of the toys that I had as a very young kid( 3 years old0 was a kid sized verion of my mother's oldsmobile delta 88
Green Avenger water pistol. Looked like brass knuckles.
my late uncle made an aggravation game out of wood using 2 pieces when put together made a plus sign fun game
I had a lot of these. Nothing left.
There was a toy in the late seventies for boys called murder building set or something. It
Was a set to build skyscrapers.i loved it. Anyone else remember it?
I loved Stanton hobbies on millwakee Ave
Hah! A fellow Chicagoan! :-)
Wow@ that thing is complete.
I also had those same Mattel electronic Football and Baseball games, and I had Basketball, too. Now I'm wondering what ever happened to them.
We had the electric football game where the playing field vibrated and caused the plastic players to move aroun
Fantastic flashback!
I had the AFX track!!!! Wow!