25 Forgotten 1960s Toys Only Boomer Kids Will Remember

There was a corner of the toy aisle that smelled faintly of warm plastic, and you knew exactly which box you wanted. Maybe you circled it in the Sears Wish Book in red crayon. Maybe you waited for it all the way to Christmas morning.

Some of those toys are long gone now, or so changed you’d barely know them — and a few were gloriously unsafe by today’s rules. Here are 25 that filled 1960s playrooms. See how many you can still feel in your hands just from the name.

1. Etch A Sketch

Ohio Art put it out in 1960, after buying the idea from a French inventor who had called it the Magic Screen. Two white knobs, a gray glass screen, and a cloud of aluminum powder inside: you drew by scraping lines clear, then shook the whole thing to wipe the world away and start over.

2. Chatty Cathy

Mattel’s talking doll arrived in 1960, and she was the first one that really worked. You pulled the ring at the back of her neck, a tiny phonograph record whirred inside, and out came one of eleven phrases. For a few years she was Mattel’s best-seller, behind only Barbie herself.

3. Mr. Machine

A see-through wind-up robot in a top hat, grinning as he clanked across the floor and rang his little bell. Ideal sold him in 1960 in a box of parts, so half the fun was building him yourself with the enclosed wrench — and taking him apart again when he jammed.

4. Ken

Barbie had been on her own since 1959, so in 1961 Mattel gave her a fellow. Just as Barbie was named for the Handlers’ daughter Barbara, Ken took his name from their son. His flat-top never did quite keep up with Barbie’s wardrobe.

5. Slip ’N Slide

Wham-O rolled out a long yellow sheet of vinyl in 1961, hooked it to the garden hose, and turned the back lawn into a runway. You took a running start, hit the wet plastic on your belly, and skidded clear off the end into the grass. Your elbows paid for it, and you didn’t care.

6. Fisher-Price Chatter Telephone

A wooden phone on four wheels, with a rotary dial that clicked and a pair of eyes that rolled up and down as you tugged it along by the string. It stayed Fisher-Price’s best-selling toy for years, long after real phones stopped looking anything like it.

7. Vac-U-Form

Mattel’s 1962 molding machine let you make your own little plastic cars and signs. You laid a square of plastic on the frame, pressed it against a hot plate until it drooped, then pulled a lever to suck it down over a mold. The heating tray ran hot enough to raise a blister, which nobody seemed to mind.

8. Easy-Bake Oven

Kenner’s 1963 toy oven baked tiny cakes by the glow of two ordinary 100-watt light bulbs, and the smell of warm batter drifting from a child’s bedroom was pure magic. It sold half a million in its first year, and every kid learned the same hard lesson about patience and a too-small pan.

9. Mouse Trap

Ideal’s 1963 game was really an excuse to build a wonderful Rube Goldberg contraption — a crank, a boot, a bathtub, a diving man — so that a little plastic cage could finally drop on somebody’s mouse. It was one of the first true three-dimensional board games, and honestly, nobody cared who won.

10. G.I. Joe

Hasbro didn’t dare call a boys’ doll a doll, so in 1964 they coined a new phrase: “action figure.” A foot tall, with a little scar on his cheek, “America’s Movable Fighting Man” came with uniforms and gear for every branch of the service.

11. Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robots

Two plastic prizefighters, the Red Rocker and the Blue Bomber, squared off in a yellow ring. You worked the levers, traded jabs, and waited for the glorious moment you landed the punch that popped your opponent’s head up on its spring. Marx made it in 1964, and the whole point was to knock his block off.

12. Creepy Crawlers

Mattel’s 1964 Thingmaker was an open hot plate that cooked a liquid called Plasti-Goop in metal molds until it set into rubbery bugs and worms. The plate ran near 400 degrees and the fumes were awful, which was, of course, most of the appeal.

13. Johnny Seven O.M.A.

The “One Man Army” crammed seven weapons into a single toy gun — a grenade launcher, an anti-tank rocket, a tommy-gun rattle and more. It was the best-selling boys’ toy of 1964, and it would give a modern parent a heart attack on sight.

14. Operation

Milton Bradley’s 1965 game dared you to pluck the funny bone and the Charley horse out of poor Cavity Sam with a pair of tweezers. Brush the metal edge and his nose lit up red while the buzzer jolted everyone at the table. The wishbone rarely came out clean.

15. Super Ball

Wham-O’s 1965 marvel was a small, hard ball of synthetic rubber its maker called Zectron, and it bounced like nothing on earth — off the sidewalk, over the garage, gone. A persistent legend even says it gave the Super Bowl its name.

16. See ’n Say

“The cow says… moooo.” Mattel’s 1965 toy let a toddler point the arrow at an animal, pull the string, and hear it answer — no batteries needed. It borrowed the pull-string trick straight from Chatty Cathy, and it still turns up in nurseries today.

17. Spirograph

A set of little plastic gears and rings with holes for your pen, dreamed up by a British engineer and brought to America by Kenner in the mid-1960s. You pinned the ring down, set a wheel spinning inside it, and watched a looping, endless rose of a pattern appear — until the gear slipped and spoiled the whole thing.

18. Mystery Date

Milton Bradley’s 1965 game sent girls around the board collecting outfits, all building to the big moment at the little plastic door in the middle. Open it and you might find a dreamboat in a tuxedo — or the dreaded “dud” in rumpled clothes.

19. Troll Dolls

A Danish woodcutter carved the first one for his daughter when he couldn’t afford a present, and by the mid-1960s America had gone mad for the little creatures — pot-bellied, wild-haired and oddly lovable. Sold as Wishniks or Good Luck Trolls, they rode on pencil tops and dashboards, and you rubbed that neon hair for luck.

20. Twister

Milton Bradley’s 1966 “game that ties you up in knots” was headed nowhere until Johnny Carson played it with Eva Gabor on The Tonight Show and the country roared. Overnight, a plastic mat of colored dots had living rooms full of tangled, giggling grown-ups.

21. Major Matt Mason

Mattel’s answer to the space race was a bendable little astronaut who lived and worked on the Moon, posed in his white suit. His secret was a wire skeleton under the rubber — which meant that, sooner or later, his elbows and knees snapped, and poor Matt went limp.

22. Suzy Homemaker

Topper Toys answered the Easy-Bake in 1966 with a whole line of working, kid-sized appliances — an oven, a blender, a grill. The name stuck so hard it slipped into the language, for better and worse, as shorthand for the tirelessly domestic.

23. Lite-Brite

Hasbro’s 1967 toy was a glowing box, a sheet of black paper and a tub of colored pegs. You followed the template or went freehand, pushing pegs through the paper one by one, then switched off the lamp to see your picture blaze in the dark.

24. Ker-Plunk

Ideal’s 1967 game was a clear tube crisscrossed with thin sticks and a nest of marbles balanced on top. One by one you slid a stick out and held your breath; whoever let the most marbles come clattering down lost. The suspense was half the fun, the crash the other half.

25. Hot Wheels

Mattel dropped the “Sweet Sixteen” in 1968 — sixteen die-cast cars with low-friction axles and a red stripe on the tires — to take on Matchbox, and they flew off the shelves. Snap together that orange track, send a Custom Camaro screaming off the edge of the table, and you were hooked for life.

Frequently asked questions

Why did so many of these toys disappear?

Tastes changed, and so did safety rules. A whole run of 1960s toys got genuinely hot — the Easy-Bake’s bulbs, the Thingmaker’s open plate, the Vac-U-Form’s searing tray — and tighter regulations in the 1970s either redesigned them or retired them for good.

Can you still buy any of them?

More than you’d think. Etch A Sketch, Lite-Brite, Hot Wheels, Operation, Twister and Mr. Machine have all been made again, sometimes by new owners and often in a gentler, cooler-running form.

What else from those years do people miss?

Plenty. If this took you back, you may enjoy our look at vintage candy you forgot existed, or the wilder freedoms in things kids did in the 1960s that would be illegal today.

Where can I check these facts?

Every maker and date here is drawn from the reputable sources listed just below.

Sources

• Etch A Sketch — Wikipedia
• G.I. Joe — Wikipedia
• Easy-Bake Oven — Wikipedia

Remember these? Play our trivia quizzes and take another trip back to the toy box.