Erector sets (1929 and 1922)
Hello boys! Girls? Sorry, come back in 60 years and we'll let you design and build Mars rovers. But it's 1929 right now. No engineering toys for you.
Exclusion aside, thinking-toys for kids are good stuff. Erector sets were first sold in 1913. The company went into decline after the death of the founder in the 1960's, and was bought by another company in 1990.
That $25 kit in 1929 dollars is close to $500 today!
Another ad, 1922,
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I got to play with my dad’s old Ferris wheel set. I never built the Ferris wheel but made all sort of cursed contraptions with the motor, gears and pulleys.
That's the beauty of toys like this, or legos! Going off-script and exploring where your imagination leads with the parts available.
We need more toys like that, for kids of all ages.
Lonely autistic boys thinking their special interest will get them friends, existing as an exploitable market since 1922.
I'm from the 1960s, and we used to visit friends who had the better toys all the time.
A video game console was the only toy that brought me to anyone's house. The cool stuff--like a giant Millenium Falcon--was a brief draw, but you couldn't really play with it. It was more like going to the museum. A 5-foot-zeppelin doesn't sound like a toy you can play with.
The playing part is not that interesting, the building on the other hand...
Yep, exactly that. Endless possibilities and variations, especially on rainy days.
I don’t know what specific set I played with as a kid, but I distinctly remember making a cool windmill, and then getting my finger caught in the electric motor’s gearbox.