Toys

Here we are…the week before Christmas and if you work in a corporate setting you know that nothing, and I mean nothing, is going to get done between now and New Years.
I have two projects that I’m working on since being grounded by the buy-out. Both require gathering information from outside sources but the only thing I’ve gotten for the last 3 hours is a successive string of voice mails and “Out Of Office Assistants.”
Bah!!!

Napster’s niece and nephew are getting laptops for Christmas. Not some Leap Frog Learning pad but full on Dell Laptops…one for each…how cool is that??

This got me thinking about when I was a kid and some of the presents I had received. Those were the days…might not have been very technologically advanced but damn, I had fun…

Can you remember back when “Lawn Darts” actually had metal tips??? I damn near killed my little brother with one of those things…he’s lucky I missed…
Try whipping these puppies out at a pinic now days and you'll be pummled by every mommy present.

Another favorite was the “Mr. Quarterback.” I couldn’t find an old picture of the original version but you get the idea. The only difference was that back in the day, the machine had an actual catapult arm that flung the ball. The ball never came out in a spiral and that sucked but it only took me about 5 minutes to figure out that “other” things could be hurtled across the yard and that’s where the fun began. Heh!
I once held my brother and father at bay for a good 45 minutes armed only with crab-apples…sucked running out of ammo though….

Next on the list of faves was my “Green Machine”. Damn!! I loved that thing, but for the life of me I couldn’t figure out why my parents bought it. Our driveway wasn’t even paved, it was crushed rock. Who does that shit to a kid on Christmas!?!? Look Johnny, here’s a super neato riding machine. Guess what?? You can’t play with it because it won’t ride on crushed rock. This beauty wound up being stored at my Grandmothers house that just so happened to live close by and happened to have a wonderfully large, paved driveway. Think my parents planned that???

Lastly is my first big kid bike. The Schwinn Stingray, need I say more. She was perfect and we were never far apart for about 4 years. Jumping ramps, skinning knees, popping wheelies, riding with no hands, off to school and back again, putting lame baseball cards in the spokes to make that sound (you know what I mean), riding to practice…I can still smell the air. If only things were as simple now as they were back then…

Anyway, do you guys remember any cool toys from back in the days before micro-chips and giga-bytes?