Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire What was your favorite childhood toy?

A Daisy, a baseball and glove, and a fishing rod.

Toy guns of all kinds, Mattel Fanner Fifties, a "Rifleman" lever action, Mattel Tommy Gun, snub nose .38, cork ball firing muskets, cannons, machine guns, you name the war or era - Cowboys and Indians, Cops and Robbers, Civil War, WWII and a bit beyond and I probably had something appropriate for it.

Playing "Big Army" with the toy guns or "Little Army" with the hundreds of green and gray American and German soldiers. On any given Saturday you would find 5-10 young boys running around the neighborhood in everybody's yard carrying out attacks and ambushes. Lots of young bodies strewn across lawns waiting for the magic "two touches and you're alive".

Had a big sandpile and would build intricate forts for the toy soldiers with tunnels and log emplacements made of twigs. I was walking in my play area by the old house a few years ago and found one lone soldier half buried - a German carrying a rocket launcher. He is in a special box in the closet right now along with the very few other prized possessions left over from those days.

Models were probably next - fighter planes mostly, tanks, some ships, no model cars to speak of. Monogram made the best with the most movable features, Revell was second and I forget who was third. Most all of the model planes got bullet holes via an unbent paper clip heated on the stove.

Hit puberty right before GI Joe came on the scene. We thought he was the gayest toy in the world. Basically they wanted boys to play with Barbie dolls dressed in green uniforms.

Plastic army men and a string of firecrackers. I could recreate every battle known to man.

Mortar guys held up the best, germans chunking a potota smasher faired the worst.

Fishing Pole was # 1... #2 was a simple toy pistol that had a big spring on it... it had wood and cardboard planes that slide down onto the spring... when you pulled the trigger it "shot" the plane out and it flew around.... We use to shoot them at each other... had a blast with them.... # 3 was a BB gun....

Mattel made a whole series of models in the same scale that could be grouped together � tanks and a jeep with a 37mm anti-tank gun in tow, a deuce and a half and a bunch of soldiers in different poses. I remember the mortar squad in particular. Cool stuff for sure.

A wooden WW2 battelship with big guns that I played with in the bathtub in the mid-1940's

I didn't get a Red Rider but did have a Daisy pump BB gun. Probably shot close to a ton of BB's through that gun. It was a pain to load and didn't hold many BB's, but shot pretty close to where it was aimed. I grew to love a peep sight with that gun.

A hammer. I would use it to smash all my toys flat. My dad made me a solid, cast, indestructible car. When I learned that I couldn't smash it, I threw it away.

Worked well on stray nuts and bolts from the erector set too.

Loved Legos, Erector sets, lincoln logs and tinker toys. Did you know that if you glued a tinker toy airplane together you could put it on a string and dogfight your brothers airplane. They don't survive the collision so well though.

"Mom! We're out of blue sticks again!"

"Well, maybe Santa will bring some in 9 months."

i had a daisy red ryder. once when i was younger i tried to figure out how many bb's it fired before the lever broke. i came up with just over 100 cardboard tubes of 1000 bb's each.

can you imagine the plastic fantastic bb guns now lasting 100,000 shots?!

Definitely toy soldiers. And it was fun to "boss" the little brother around!

I don't think for a second that the Daisy BB gun made today would ever live up to what I remember my Daisy doing, but I'm going to give it a chance! Next time I get to Bass Pro Shop one of them is coming home with me and I'm going to have some fun.

I had a hand me down Daisy from my sister. It wasn't bad, had an adjustable peep sight on it with replaceable inserts in the front.

Was pretty damn accurate. Would take old dominos and put them way the hell out there and shoot them. You would see BB make a giant arc of about 10 feet to get out there but it would knock it down. Once you had the sight adjusted you could knock them down all day long.

I wish I still had it. I don't know the model but it wasn't a Red Ryder. I think it was fancier than that, had a sling on it and no saddle ring deal.

Got curious and looked it up. Champion Model 499. Dunno why we had that instead of a plain jane Red Ryder, but I really learned to shoot with it. See they still make them and they sell for $249 on the Daisy website, probably 1/2 that somewhere else.

my Daisy pump action, hands down!

A section of blackboard from an old country school auction my dad bought for a quarter...

I was 5 years old, and we had a pretty good year on the farm. Christmas presents were a little more spendy than usual. I got a couple of Tonka trucks and some other cool stuff, dad said I barely touched them until the box of chalk was gone.

I couldn't wait for Christmas in 1962. We would take the Sears catalog and circle our choice and put our name by it. I only wanted the Mattel shootin' shell rifle/pistol set.

I got it, and I also got a Sharps carbine from Woolworth's for only $.89, but it took a month of pop bottle collecting and a paper route to get it...

Was in good shape, but let my youngest son play with it for a few years. Rubber does get old and cracks. Still have it, will keep it for which ever grandchild.

I was fortunate to have a dad who was a regional manager of a five and dime store chain so my brother and I always had some cool toys around ...... one of my favorites was my Johnny 7 OMA (one man army), army men, tons of hot wheels and johnny lighting cars and miles of track, creepy crawly maker machine, 007 toys, batman utility belt, evil Knievel toys, Arnold Palmer golf course game, wrist rocket, red ryder, cox dune buggy, dragster and planes, estes rockets, slide show projector, chemistry set, old train set, slot car race track, model cars air planes and boats, slinkys, duncan tops and yo yo's, M-80's and black cats, sassafras whistles, june bugs and some thread, tinker toys, view master, snoopy snow cone machine,
man was I blessed... truth be told, Dad never had much in the way of toys growing up so he was just as big a kid as we were .... thanks Mom and Dad for a glorious childhood.

Legos like have been mentioned were a fav. We would make cars and have crashup derby contests. Also teh zip strip motorcycles.

A toy I remember most was a sword my dad made out of some extra surveyor's lath that he sanded down and attached a guard with leather and leather handle.

As I got older of course the daisy bb gun and then the crosman 760 pump. That one sure isn't made like it used to be. I had the benefits of living in the country as well but no neighbors for friends. My dog and I were pretty close.

Every summer I waged war on the red ant piles with black cats and other assorted firecrackers.

My Ruger 10/22, at least from age 12 on.