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With four other brothers to keep busy, Mom and Dad scored big with all of us when they brought home the Carry-All Action Playsets by Marx. These kept us entertained, and probably more importantly, quiet for hours.
You had to be careful with the pivot joints and mounting points, but other than that, these playsets could take a lot of abuse. I had Fort Apache, and one of my younger brothers had the Fighting Knights set.
Surprisingly, my Marine sergeant dad did not get us the Army Men set, but it did not matter much. No matter which one you had, these Carry-All playsets brought hours and hours of fun.
Small Shots was one of those 1971 toy ideas that sounds strange now, but made sense once you see it. Mattel basically took the Hot Wheels idea and put little dolls on skates, wagons, carts, and other rolling stands that could run on Hot Wheels-style track.
The commercial is pure early ’70s toy advertising. Everything moves fast, the kids act amazed, and the announcer makes it sound like this was the next big thing. It was not just a doll, and it was not just a car. It was Mattel trying to mix both worlds together.
That was probably the real idea. Hot Wheels was huge with boys, while dolls were usually marketed to girls. Small Shots tried to pull both sides together — little fashion-style figures that could race, roll, and crash down a track. It was a clever idea, even if it also feels a little odd today.
Another interesting note: one of the early Small Shots commercials is listed among Jodie Foster’s early TV commercial work. She was still a child actor at the time, years before most people knew her name.
Small Shots did not last very long, but it is a great example of how toy companies in the 1970s were willing to try almost anything. Dolls on Hot Wheels track? Why not. In that era, if it rolled, launched, flipped, or crashed, somebody was going to put it in a commercial.
This is the Big Jim a lot of kids remember: not just the action figure, but Big Jim’s Rescue Rig from Mattel. The 1973 commercial had everything a kid needed for instant backyard drama — a rock slide, danger, a crane, a ladder, and Big Jim rushing in to save the day.
The Rescue Rig was basically a rolling rescue headquarters, with enough parts and gadgets to turn a pile of dirt or rocks into a full emergency scene. It was the kind of 1970s toy that did not need batteries, screens, or sound effects. You supplied all of that yourself.
For kids who had it, this was more than a truck. It was the whole adventure.
I remember my mom calling it the “Shoop Shoop Hula Hoop,” and for years I wondered where that came from. Now I know she wasn’t just making up a funny name — that was actually part of Wham-O’s marketing.
The original Hula Hoop craze took off in 1958, but like most fads, it cooled down. Wham-O later tried to bring it back by adding a new twist: sound. They put small ball bearings inside the hollow plastic hoop so that when you spun it around your waist, it made a swishing, “shoop shoop” kind of noise. TIME described the 1967 version as the New Shoop Shoop Hula Hoop, with bright colors and ball bearings inside to give it that “whirry” sound.
That explains why the name stuck with so many parents. It wasn’t just a hula hoop anymore — it was the one that made noise. Toy collectors and nostalgia sites still point to the Shoop Shoop version as Wham-O’s attempt to freshen up the craze, and later versions from the 1970s kept the name alive.
It’s funny how those advertising names became part of everyday family language. A kid might have just called it a hula hoop, but Mom remembered the commercial name: Shoop Shoop Hula Hoop. And once you hear that, you can almost hear the sound of it spinning again.
The Slinky was just a coil of metal, but once you put it at the top of the stairs, it became magic. It could walk, stretch, flop, twist, and occasionally tangle itself into something no child on earth could ever fully fix.
Invented by accident in the 1940s, the Slinky became one of those toys almost every kid knew. You did not need batteries, a screen, or instructions. You just needed stairs, patience, and maybe a little luck.
And who can forget the jingle? “It’s Slinky, it’s Slinky…” Once that got in your head, it stayed there.
Did you have a Slinky? And did yours actually make it all the way down the stairs?
The Johnny Seven O.M.A. was one of the ultimate “how did kids ever get this?” toys of the 1960s. Made by Topper Toys/Deluxe Reading, it came out in 1964 and was marketed as the One-Man Army — a giant toy weapon with several play features built into one.
This thing was not subtle. It could act like a machine gun, grenade launcher, rocket launcher, rifle, and detachable pistol all in one. For kids watching the TV commercial, it must have looked like the jackpot. One toy did everything. You didn’t just get a cap gun — you got the whole backyard battle kit.
But here is probably why so many of us never got one: the Johnny Seven sold for about $10.88 in 1964, which sounds cheap until you adjust it for today. That would be roughly $115 now, so this was not just some little toy tossed into the cart. This was a serious Christmas-present-level toy, the kind you hoped was under the tree but maybe understood years later why it wasn’t.
Looking back now, it feels almost impossible that this was once a mainstream toy. But in the mid-’60s, with war shows, spy shows, James Bond-style gadgets, and G.I. Joe all part of the culture, the Johnny Seven fit right in.
Did you have a Johnny Seven O.M.A., or was this one of those toys you wanted but never got?
This is one of those commercials that makes you stop and say, “Wait… is that who I think it is?”
In 1971, GAF ran a View-Master commercial starring Henry Fonda, of all people, giving the toy a grandfatherly stamp of approval. Sitting with the kids is a very young Jodie Foster, years before Taxi Driver, Freaky Friday, The Accused, and Silence of the Lambs. Some postings also identify one of the boys as Christopher Knight, better known to TV kids as Peter Brady.
The ad is pure early ’70s View-Master magic: kids gathered around, clicking through those little reels, while Henry Fonda explains the wonder of seeing pictures in 3-D. Before home video, before tablets, before YouTube, this was how a kid could “visit” Disney, see TV characters, travel the world, or look at dinosaurs from the living room floor.
A fun fact: View-Master had been around since 1939, long before it became mostly thought of as a children’s toy. Under GAF, the reels leaned more into kid-friendly subjects like cartoons, TV shows, and entertainment tie-ins.
Another fun fact: Jodie Foster was already a seasoned child performer by this point. She began working as a child model and actress in the 1960s, so this commercial came before her big teen fame in the mid-1970s.
There was a time when a kid could watch a Saturday morning ad and immediately know what he wanted next: a Dick Tracy gun set.
Mattel’s Dick Tracy line included the Snub-Nose .38 pistol with a holster and the Tommy Burst Machine Gun, both tied into the famous comic-strip detective. The ad was pure early-1960s kid fantasy: a young boy playing detective, saving the day, and turning the living room into a crime-fighting headquarters while Dad tried to read the paper.
The Snub-Nose .38 was the kind of toy that made a kid feel like an undercover detective. Add the shoulder holster, and suddenly you weren’t just playing cops and robbers — you were Dick Tracy. The Tommy Burst took it even further, giving kids the look of an old gangster-era machine gun, except now the kid was the good guy chasing the crooks. Collectors still identify the Tommy Burst as part of Mattel’s early-1960s Dick Tracy toy line.
Watching those ads now, it is almost shocking how casually toy guns were sold to children. No disclaimers, no bright orange tips, no nervous wording. It was just “here’s the cool detective gear,” and every kid understood the assignment. Back then, toy guns were part of cowboy shows, police shows, war toys, spy kits, detective sets, and neighborhood games that lasted until the streetlights came on.
Of course, times changed. Today an ad like that would probably cause a committee meeting before it ever made it to TV. But for kids of that era, the Dick Tracy Snub-Nose and Tommy Burst weren’t about violence. They were about imagination, sound effects, hiding behind the sofa, and yelling “I got ’em!” before your mother told you to take it outside.
Did you have one of these Dick Tracy guns — or was this the kind of toy you circled in the catalog and never got?
I felt that changing the discs to make it do different maneuvers meant you might as well have pushed it by hand. Was I wrong?
Shark Pack was a 1970s toy boat line from Ideal, and the big feature was its interchangeable program discs. Instead of radio control, you put in a disc, set the boat loose, and it would follow a preset pattern, turning or circling depending on which disc you used.
For the time, that was a pretty clever idea. It gave kids a way to “program” the boat before home computers and remote-control toys became common. The commercial made it look exciting, with the boats cutting through the water and changing direction on command.
Like a lot of toys from that era, the real fun probably depended on where you used it and what you expected from it. If you had a pool, pond, or enough room to let it run, Shark Pack may have been a lot of fun. If you were expecting total control, the disc-changing part may have felt a little less magical.
That’s why I’m curious. Did Shark Pack really live up to the ad, or was it one of those toys that looked better on TV?
The idea was great: give Barbie a haircut, style her hair, curl it, and somehow keep the fun going without ruining the doll forever. Of course, commercials always made these toys look effortless. At home, I’m guessing it depended on patience, steady hands, and whether Barbie’s hair ended up looking salon-ready or like she had just lost a fight with a brush.
But here’s what I really want to know: Did you have Barbie Cut ’n Curl? Did it actually work the way the commercial showed?
And even better, did any of you start by cutting and styling Barbie’s hair and later end up becoming a hair stylist, barber, or working in cosmetology? Sometimes those childhood toys really did point us toward what we’d do later in life.
