The Retro/Vintage Electronic-Toy Thread

[levi]

Re Lolla's photos in the OP, I recently chucked out on of those little robots when I found it had broken due to a plastic wheel that had shattered inside it. And I gave two of those tomytronic goggle games to my nephews last christmas - the red one which was a sort of space invaders type game, and a white one which was a car game.

 

[Rivaan]

OMG the nostalgia!

I used to have that Caveman game too, posted by Lolla. I also had the Aladdin game posted by Wally (my sister had the Beauty and the Beast one). And I had this Konami Star Trek game:

 

[rygD]

Seeing how daguerrotype cameras were popular in the mid 19th century I'd say so. Or you could be missing the essence of my joke.

I know, I was just trying to play along. You aren't much older than me.

 

[Wally]

KONG MAN.. I REMEMBER SOMETHING ABOUT THAT..

My neighbour had this orange dump train set which dumped balls into other carriers and they continued along their journey. I can't remember the name of it though. They also had this card based computer thing which had games on each paper card and they had Caveman and a commodore 64. Neighbours house was cooler than being at home lol

 

[levi]

Card-based computer? Not a MasterSystem v1 or a PC Engine I assume?

 

[rygD]

I don't know what Kong Man is, but I played Donkey Kong back in the day on the NES and at the arcade.

Neighbours house was cooler than being at home lol

The kids I hung out with, myself included, didn't really like going to the house of the "rich kid". Sure, he had all kinds of cool stuff, but he didn't seem to appreciate most of it (I understand now that he was very spoiled). He even had a decent telescope that he shoved in the toy box...I would have loved a telescope. We all had to work and beg for what we had, he just got whatever he wanted. Probably a lot of jealously from a couple of us. It didn't help that we were uncomfortable around his parents, as they were so different from those of the rest of us. We even liked visiting the old women in the neighborhood to help them out or get a cookie or candy, but some of us just couldn't relate to that kid's parents.
[doublepost=1468381248,1468381080][/doublepost]To keep it kind of on topic, the family across the street from my house had one of those built in intercom systems. We used to play with that.

 

[Klumpen]

“We all have our time machines, don't we. Those that take us back are memories...And those that carry us forward, are dreams.”
― H.G. Wells

I don't keep stuff/material I don't use anymore.

 

[EvilDragon]

Oh, geez I remember Little Professor, Kong-Man, Octopus and Caveman as well. Those were great

I also played a lot on the Tomy Pinball (got one at home as well) and I remember some LCD motorcycle game, where you used a slider to speed up and slowdown... no idea what the name of that was.

And I remember GrabCrab, that was awesome

Well, and I also remember common stuff... vcs2600, Colecovision...

 

[bukkit]

I remember having thrown one Mark in the latest sensation in the bar across the street... a Pong! I never had lost such a substantial part of my pocket money in such a short time, and hardly ever felt such a mixture of guilt, pleasure and urge for more. (Then came Asteroids.)

A bit later, this was my dream machine... I never owned one of those or one of the toys in this thread, those were way out of my league. But I do still remember my longing, vividly. One of the reasons I have a Pandora now, I guess.

 

[atari_afternoon]

I must say I love to play Pinball...on the Microvision. In 2016.

 

[rygD]

and I remember some LCD motorcycle game, where you used a slider to speed up and slowdown... no idea what the name of that was.

I remember something like this. Maybe someone I knew had it or something like it.
[doublepost=1468436074,1468435706][/doublepost]

I remember having thrown one Mark in the latest sensation in the bar across the street... a Pong! I never had lost such a substantial part of my pocket money in such a short time, and hardly ever felt such a mixture of guilt, pleasure and urge for more. (Then came Asteroids.)

I didn't start pumping a lot of coins into arcade games until I was a bit older and had my own money. Either Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, or T-Mek made the most off me. I have played a variety of Street Fighter games during my life, so that series was also a money maker.

 

[Rivaan]

Oh wow, I had completely forgotten about this gem too! I remember spending so much time on Tomy's Desert Race (part of the Pocket Arcade series), trying to be as perfect as I could. It wasn't digital as far as I recall, completely mechanical and required winding up the dial in the top right to play it until it ran out. You would steer with the wheel, and had to race but avoid the other cars. The inner lane clocked the most points onto the lap counter, the middle less, and the outer less still. If you hit a car, you stopped while the game jarred trying to move, until you press the pit stop button to go flying into the pit stop, enabling the game to carry on. The objective is to spend as much time in or as close to the inner lane as possible, manually steering into the pit stop when/before a collision was unavoidable. Fun times! I wish I still had all these games.

 

[erico]

Uau, that is an interesting one, probably an upgraded version of the one shown here
I never saw that tomy one.

Also, the first robotic toy, I recall a friend of mine had it and I used to play with it a lot...It was the closest industrial thing I could get similar to Johnny 5.

 

[Mr_Loon]

Merlin is missing on that classic list

Good to see some love for Merlin, still fire mine up every couple of years.

Another classic :

 

[alxm]

Here is my first video game ever, a Christmas present from my parents when I was 7 or so I remember reaching a score of 999 and then it rolled over to 0. I of course didn't know about integer overflow at the time, but I had an inkling that it was gonna happen but kept going anyway... what a bummer.

Anyway, my favorite LCD game ever was a clamshell called Crocodile Mario, which on the surface looked like one of those 9999-in-1 Tetris games, except one of the games was an actual platformer a bit like Mario with really cool levels. I've been searching for it on the internet and eBay for years without any luck (format is like the GBA SP, white, with a crocodile wearing a tan ranger hat), I suppose with "Mario" in the title it would be impossible to track down.

 

[Løra (Lolla)]

A couple more things I remembered:

 

[rygD]

Are Giga Pets as boring as Tamagotchis?

 

[TrashyMG]

A couple more things I remembered:

Nice I had a similar all in one electronics kit myself.

 

[Fzero]

Awesome!
I love that Kong one, I remember that from my youth.
I remember these two, which my mate had, and I played with a LOT, both from Tomy I believe...

I had some of the Grandstand games, and still have a couple, but they are re-buys rather than the actual ones I played with as a kid... those ones probably ended up being handed down to my cousins, like my original 2600 did [...sore point!]

Had the old Transformers watch too, which was kind of an electronic toy, in that it popped off the wrist band and could be used as a little figure

 

[levi]

That little robot looks awesome! What could it do though? I note the tape controls and the headphone port. Doesn't seem to have enough buttons to do a big trak and carry you your beer from the kitchen. Was it just a snazzy tape player?