Gilbert started selling its Microscope Set for kids in the s. Each surprisingly functional microscope offered three levels of magnification, while the set itself came with bees and flies for kids to inspect up close. The two men struck a deal and View-Master was the result, going to market in Perhaps the most famous BB gun of all time, the Red Ryder BB Gun was modeled after Winchester rifles and named for a beloved fictional comic book hero.
The perfect accessory for any water-based activity, the inflatable beach ball was supposedly invented by a California man named Jonathon DeLonge. The series offered the perfect escape from dreary WWII-era reality. Suffice to say, the series only expanded from there. Starting in the late s, Bergen Toy and Novelty Co. Molded in various wartime poses, the pint-sized soldiers had pods at their feet to keep them upright. Nowadays, we might be wary of a company named Chemtoy.
Just like today, most of the kids back then used bubble wands for the activity. Mechanical engineer Richard James was busy devising a spring in to steady boat equipment at sea.
That was enough to give James and his wife the idea for a new novelty toy: the Slinky. Two years later, they delivered their first order to Gimbels Department Store in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. With Christmas right around the corner, slinkies sold instantly—followed by million more over the next seven decades. The company started in the early s, slumped during the Depression, and then halted production during WWII. Named after Lake Minnetonka, Tonka Trucks was founded by three Minnesotans who were going into business in garden equipment manufacturing.
But when they bought out a competitor and inadvertently wound up with a toy steam shovel , they looked at making toys. Soon enough, the digger—along with a functional crane and clam—sold 37, units.
The men ditched garden tools altogether and refocused their attention entirely on toy work vehicles for kids. Contrary to most modern toy pianos, which are relatively small and plastic, s toy pianos were much bulkier and finished with materials like walnut. Was it Colonel Mustard in the library with a candlestick? Or maybe Professor Plum in the study with a dagger? The only way to find out was to play the game of Clue.
Developed during WWII by a British solicitor, the board game was patented under the name Cluedo in , and then sold in North America under the name Clue starting in The board game remains so popular that it even inspired a movie. You may also like: Most popular dog breed the year you were born. The Magic 8 Ball was inspired by the Syco-Seer, a cylindrical crystal ball with two dice inside of it.
The item was created by Albert Carter, the son of a professional psychic. Along with his brother-in-law Abe Bookman, Carter unsuccessfully marketed several incarnations of the Syco-Seer before passing away in Bookman subsequently redesigned the product to the one we see today. As a result, they turned their attention in to a relatively new medium: colorful vinyl. Soon enough the art students had created Colorforms, which could cling to smooth surfaces and be reused countless times.
Kids adored them—and being able to afford paint was never an issue again. The face parts were initially included as bonus toys in boxes of cereal. In , the concept was purchased by the Hassenfield brothers, who formed Hasbro Toys. Potato Head was thus born, soon followed by Mrs. Potato Head and a range of other characters. Toy cars in the s were neither toys nor collectibles.
The micro-sized models were created by car companies for promotional purposes. Most model cars were made of materials like tin, steel, and die-cast zinc—although by the s many in the U.
An out-of-work architect named Alfred M. Butts created a game during the Depression where lettered tiles were assigned points on a crossword puzzle-style grid. Butts came up with names for the game like CrissCross Words and Lexiko before licensing the idea to James Brunot, who called it Scrabble.
You may also like: 50 endangered species that only live in the Amazon Rainforest. After hearing from teachers that kids were turned off by the rigidity of modeling clay, a man named Joe McVicker began sending soft wallpaper cleaning products to schools as a substitute material. By , that substitute had a name all its own: Play-Doh. The product has been a grade-school staple ever since. Like so many iconic products, water balloons resulted from pure happenstance. They came about when a British man named Edgar Ellington tried inventing a waterproof sock made of latex and cotton.
As the sock began to leak water, Ellington angrily tossed it onto a table and watched it burst. Hula Hoops arrived after an Australian named Alex Tolmer designed a polyethylene plastic version of the bamboo hoops Aussie kids were spinning around their waists.
Twenty-five million units sold in the first two months alone. Ruth Handler created the first Barbie as a 3D alternative to the paper dolls her daughter used to play with. Barbie remains the most iconic doll of all time. Agreeing to a point, toy company Mattel went to great lengths over the years to establish Barbie as a symbol of inclusion and female empowerment, giving her varying ethnicities, careers, and styles.
You may also like: Most popular baby names for boys the year you were born. The toy was renamed in the process. After some choice television spots , the Etch A Sketch shot to the top of Santa wish lists all around the country by In , an upholsterer by the name of Robert D.
Drawing on his work with synthetic fabrics, Carrier created a plastic slide for kids to put down over hard surfaces for a slicker and presumably safer experience.
The Chatter Telephone was created after Ernest Thornell spotted his daughter dragging their phone around the house like a pet. That gave him the idea to add wheels, followed by assorted noise-making buttons. A small, working oven for kids might sound like a brilliant idea and time has proven that it is , but the Easy-Bake Oven invoked some safety concerns among parents upon its debut. To address those worries, toy company Kenner installed two watt bulbs as a heating source to reduce the chance of burns.
While Barbie was being marketed to young girls, in Hasbro gave boys a savage war hero named G. While G. Joe would eventually undergo changes in persona and appearance and mirror actual American celebrities and heroes , his outsized masculinity remains intact to this day. You may also like: The 52 women who have won the Nobel Prize. Toy company Wham-O caught word of the discs and bought the rights in , renaming them Frisbees. Despite these reservations, the company put Twister on the shelves in to little fanfare.
Twister has been a cornerstone of youth culture ever since. Lite-Brite comprised a back-lit grid covered by black sheets of paper. By poking holes in the paper, young boys and girls could form patterns and images. Later editions would include pre-patterned images of pop culture figures like Darth Vader and Scooby-Doo. Mattel co-founder Elliot Handler whose wife Ruth invented Barbie set out to create a new toy that would be as appealing to boys as Barbie was to girls.
The result was a muscular, American take on die-cast English Matchbox cars. Dubbed Hot Wheels, the initial line-up offered 16 hot rods rife with color and metal.
What began in as a set of interlocking red and white blocks had become a veritable cultural phenom by the late s, complete with its own Legoland theme park. You may also like: Cities doing the most for a clean energy future. Over 4 million units sold in the first year alone. Weebles were a family of egg-shaped plastic figurines distinguished by bright colors and kinetic, somewhat hypnotic movements.
Merle Robbins, a barbershop owner and card game enthusiast , was convinced he could improve upon the game of Crazy Eights. The result was Uno, which Robbins initially sold through local businesses and his own barbershop. Robbins licensed the rights in to a funeral parlor owner in Illinois, who took Uno onto the national stage with spectacular success. Shrinky Dinks—thin sheets of decorated plastic that shrunk down and hardened after baking inside an oven—were marketed as pure magic upon their debut in Of course, the real explanation was polystyrene plastic, which hosts polymer chains that straighten out when heated, rolled, and cooled.
You may also like: Popular fashion trends the year you were born. Gary Ross Dahl supposedly thought up a pet rock over drinks with friends , imagining the ideal pet as one that made no mess and required no effort. Pair that idea with clever marketing and lucky timing, and you end up with arguably the most famous, most useless product in the history of America.
Indeed, even decades later the pet rock stands as both a tribute to and mockery of the perennial wonders of capitalism. Made from a proprietary blend of plastic, rubber, and gel, the iconic figurine could stretch his limbs up to four times their normal size.
The Atari was absolutely crucial to the development of gaming. To account for the sudden demand in merchandise, toy company Kenner hastily released a series of puzzles and games to uneven results. However, as soon as the 3. The electronic toy, which tested your memory by playing color patterns you then had to playback in sequence, was unveiled at Studio 54 of all places.
It was thereafter a staple in just about every suburban toy chest in America. The puzzle was an instant success, selling million units within the first two years alone.
In the time since, a peripheral sphere of competitions, books, and imitators has emerged. He-Man and the Masters of the Universe were introduced in as a series of action figures that could throw punches with a pull-and-release mechanism. Joe action figures. Each pony also came with an adorable name and a unique emblem branded on its backside. That storm turned into a full-blown monsoon by as desperate parents shoved, scratched, grabbed, elbowed, and punched their way down the toy aisle in hopes of snagging the popular doll before Christmas.
The Transformers legacy began in when Hasbro introduced a range of action figures adapted from two Japanese toys that could shape-shift from robotic aliens into motor vehicles. Along with the toy launch, came an epic backstory and a supporting line of comic books. The Transformers world would only continue to grow with TV shows, games, blockbuster films, and even cereal boxes all entering the fold.
You may also like: 25 pictures of abandoned military installations and their stories. A former Disney Imagineer named Ken Forsse created the cuddly, animatronic teddy bear that could read bedtime stories. Using the same technology that Disney used for animatronic theme park attractions, Forsse equipped the top-selling bear with a cassette tape and moving facial features. Even with the somewhat hefty price tag, Teddy Ruxpin was the best-selling toy of and Video games have been a benchmark of American culture ever since.
Jenga involves removing blocks from a tower one at a time until said tower topples over. The addictive game debuted in but took a few years to catch on. Derived from Scandinavian folklore, Troll Dolls were created out of wood in the late s by a Danish fisherman named Thomas Dam. American toy companies wasted no time ripping off the concept with a plastic variant that rode a wave of popularity in the s.
While not the birth of mobile gaming, Nintendo Game Boy arguably remains its biggest step forward. The 8-bit handheld console offered an approachable design, a bunch of great games, and a level of convenience that pretty much speaks for itself. You may also like: Iconic products released the year you were born. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles rose to fame on the back of a massively popular animated series about witty crime fighters with a appetite for New York pizza.
By the time their live-action movie dropped , the turtles had utterly conquered the youth market with best-selling toys and box office numbers to show for it. Marking a big step up from NES in essentially every department, Super Nintendo duly maintained a masterful grip on the video game console sphere. However, this time around the brand faced stiffer competition in the form of competing bit console Sega Genesis. A retail version was released on the same day as the movie, and thousands of far less effective pranks presumably ensued.
The product was so popular that several spin-off versions were created, including Talkgirl and Talkboy FX Plus. Lonnie Johnson was home working on a heat pump that could use vaporized water pressure instead of hazardous Freon. When the pump sent a stream of water across the room, Johnson pivoted toward creating a high-powered water blaster instead. He built a prototype out of PVC pipe and an empty soda bottle he called the Power Drencher, which used an air pressure chamber to pump water from a reservoir.
After a few necessary tweaks, the Super Soaker was born. Given such immediate success, merchandising a series of toys and a movie was an easy decision. Like so many great toys and franchises, the Power Rangers receded from the spotlight only to triumphantly return years later.
You may also like: Major cities most at risk of rising sea levels. Barring the basic principles of supply and demand, the phenomenon will likely remain a mystery—as will the fact that rare Beanie Babies still routinely fetch thousands of dollars on the resale market.
Before cell phones, teens and pre-teens were hooked on a virtual pet named Tamagotchi. To be fair, if left alone Tamagotchi would starve and die; so a consistent level of attention was more or less mandatory.
You may also like: Most popular baby names in the 21st century. Gaming has never been quite the same since. The initial roll-out included just four dolls, but that number rapidly grew as profits soared. A slew of movies, CDs, shows, and video games naturally followed. With roots in a Japanese Manga series, Beyblades are spinning tops that battle against one another inside a toy stadium. Z-Software seems to have listened to feedback regarding the sketchy driving controls of the first game. In this game, driving feels more responsive, with some tiny caveats.
Autobahn Police Simulator 2 is an improvement over its predecessor, even though the game still feels like it caters to a very niche market. Browse games Game Portals. Autobahn Police Simulator 2. Install Game. Click the "Install Game" button to initiate the file download and get compact download launcher. Locate the executable file in your local folder and begin the launcher to install your desired game.
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