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Nostalgia Game

Riva_Roxaban said:
I think electric tin openers are going to be phased out, as there are a lot tinned stuff coming out with rip top lids on the can. Tomatoes, small tins of baked beans, one of the brands of tinned soups have them to name a few.
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Cat food, salmon, tuna fish ...
Usually easy, but sometimes so hard to pull they hurt my fingers or break off, leaving me reaching for the can opener anyway ...

I used to have a hand can opener like yours, @Riva_Roxaban . Mine had a corkscrew too. We kept one for power outages.


I'm looking forward to seeing Star Trek posts too. One of my best friends is a Trekkie and I love TNG and some of DS9.
 
I suddenly remembered I had these on a shelf in the garage, not necessarily vintage, more retro? Made in the mid 90s.
Holding either will make you feel like part of the crew on a 5 year mission (or longer) immediately!
Apologies for going a bit too modern, but the original TV show is a classic.
 
@chrisbug Cool! I love those! Seeing your pic I was suddenly reminded of Christmas gift catalogues when I was a kid and saw pics like these:




I had 2 horses like this, White Mane and Speeder.

My next-door neighbor had one like this, called Popcorn:
 
I definitely had my share of guns growing up, we lived at the back of some woods and disused runway, and all the local kids would gather in the summer holidays for 'war games'.
If you didn't have cap gun or spud gun, a cricket stump was allowed as a rifle, but you had to provide your own sound effects!
Then we'd hear the ice cream chime and that was that, 20 kids with toy guns would descend on 'Mr Whippy'.

I don't recall owning a broom stick horse, me and my brother definitely used actual brooms, which did the trick.
 
I love the idea of a cricket-stump rifle! What is a spud gun? We had cap pistols when I was little -- even more fun than yelling "Bang! Bang!"
Most of my childhood horses were invisible; we had whole stables full of them in our back yards, but we built real jumps for our "horse" shows and trail rides.
 
I never realized how dangerous /daft it sounds, after pea-shooters we moved up to spud guns.
Which as I recall, you pressed the end of the gun into a potato, the piece of 'spud' goes into the barrel, and when the gun is fired the bit of 'spud' shoots out.
To avoid getting hurt by being shot at, you just had to increase the distance away from the person shooting at you.
Very close range, I'm sure I remember they could hurt. Not sure if they ever caused serious injury?
It hard to believe these things were sold to children!

It's bad enough now, when you get a 'nerf dart' in the head unannounced by one of the kids who finds it highly entertaining!

I'm sure someone, somewhere came up with other vegetable projectiles, maybe a homemade 'sprout lancher'?
 
chrisbug said:
To avoid getting hurt by being shot at, you just had to increase the distance away from the person shooting at you.
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At full gallop on your broomstick horse, I presume!
I like the idea of a sprout launcher -- but talk about pain ... !

I think cricket stumps might have made good cross rails for invisible-horse show jumps -- maybe laid across the tops of the croquet mallets I once used as uprights.

Meanwhile, talking of violent toys ... I don't recall a single peaceful human figure in any set!


Or maybe they were all attacking the giant figure who somehow got mixed up with this lot!
 
This reminds me of the Stag game 'toy soldiers'

To begin you need a bag of toy soldiers.
Each person on the stag do, pulls out a soldier at random. That is now his pose. Between pubs or at any random moment, the best man shouts the command: "Assume the position!" and the life-size toy soldiers (stags) must hold the pose of their mini soldier.
It obviously comes with forfeits and penalties, I know of a wedding that the game continued on the wedding day.
Look out if you forgot to bring your toy soldier for inspection!
Kind of like a grown up musical statues.

My 8 yo son has my old toy soldiers, which he will spend hours arranging them, just to knock them all flying in a bizarre domino topple involving hot wheels track and cars, dominoes and the staircase.
 
I was so happy to find, a couple of weeks ago, nice stick horses for sale at the local tack shop. I bought one for Toys for Tots, which is a program the Marines have had for ages, where stores have big bins for donations of new, unwrapped toys.

I thought I had a picture of it but it seems to have been deleted. He looks like this one:


One of the best Christmas presents I've ever gotten was the Zorro fort I got when I was 4. It looked like this:

 
That Zorro fort looks great! I used to love a toy that would inspire endless games, which I'm certain the Zorro Fort would have done.
Action Man was the one that did it for me, I inherited a bunch of Action Man gear from my uncle, and combined with mine and my brothers Action Men, the adventures these guys had!
My mate had a frogman that went in the bath with him, the rubber diving suit was the only thing that eventually held him together, all of his joints had completely rotted out!
I also had the action man single that had battle sounds on the b-side.

The toys for tots thing sounds great, in the UK local radio stations sometimes have a drive like this. And my kids schools used to do a similar donation thing, but Covid has put a stop to that.
 
Action Man looks great! Your adventures sound like as much fun as mine and my friends' with our model horses. This is a typical family:



My collection began with one like this:

 
My latest 'adventures' have been based around an orange 1970s? Raleigh (trying to imitate a schwinn I think). I have begun stripping it down to hopefully get it back on the road as a cruiser, (banana seat, sissybar and ape hangers maybe?)
I've thrown some bits at it and will see how it looks, before I repaint it. (It's been repainted at some point, so I'm not affecting its originality).
 
It's brilliant! It does look like a Schwinn, and reminds me of one a friend of mine had at college; his was green, I think -- same high seat, similar handlebars. Another friend had a red Schwinn with high handlebars ...

I always wanted a black 3-speed Raleigh. With Sturmey-Archer gears. My dream bicycle.

Back in the '70s I had a beautiful orange Murray with chrome fenders. Before that, at college, my boyfriend chopped my basic blue bicycle. We took off the fenders, painted the frame black, added high V-handlebars and a red sissy bar and a black-and-red banana seat. I loved that bike. Wish I had a picture -- and I do, in my head ... wish I could post it here!
 
SaskiaKC said:
Know what this is?

View attachment 53201

The last one I saw was in a hotel room, 40-odd years ago.
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It looks like a shoe shiner? I can only imagine the handle helps you keep your balance while you offer in your shoe? One set of bristles for 'wax on' the other set for 'wax off' (that would not have been such a good concept in The Karate Kid...)
 
Thanks, it's changing gradually.
Problem is the frame is quite small, I've got to get a sissy bar made for it, and I need to bring the seat forward to stop me from doing inadvertent wheelies definitely work in progress, hopefully ready for the summer. I know what will happen, one of my kids will assume ownership!
 

Cool.

Is that a snake or a cat tail behind the wheel?
 
chrisbug said:
It looks like a shoe shiner? I can only imagine the handle helps you keep your balance while you offer in your shoe? One set of bristles for 'wax on' the other set for 'wax off' (that would not have been such a good concept in The Karate Kid...)
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Right. It's a shoe shiner.
I like your idea about "wax on wax off." I had thought red for brown shoes and black for black, but maybe not ...
 
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