Toys!
It's Christmas Eve!
While such things are sadly long behind me in most respects, how many Christmas Eves was I in high anticipation of some special toy?
Well, what better time for a bit of commercial nostalgia?
Well, at least that's where I'm starting, with a commercial for a set of toys I was very much into -- Major Matt Mason: Mattel's Man In Space!
These were likely my favorite toys of the late 1960s. They didn't even show all the cool things the Space Crawler could do.
Here's another of the toys I opened on a Christmas morning long ago. It's a dangerous, evil-smelling toy that brought burns and several messes: Creepy Crawlers!:
From a little later on -- something I don't believe I owned, but a grade school buddy was deeply into little racing cars so I got to play with these: Sizzlers!
Jumping back into the middle sixties, this is one of those toys a cousin of mine who never asked for a toy he didn't get, it's the Electro Shot Shooting Gallery
I don't know how it turned out that my younger brother didn't get one of these, but while we saw the commercials we never had our own Stretch Armstrong
Jumping backwards again, this is one of those toys I'd never heard of and remain unconvinced that any child really wanted one -- it's Milky!
...and I'd put $5 on the table to say that at least one kid in three who actually did play with this ended up taking at least one experimental sip.
To manufacturers were always on the lookout for the next hula hoopish activity toy fad. Swing Wing was not what they were looking for, but the kids demonstrating it are hilarious, some of them moving about as if they have Parkinson's... not that there's anything funny about Parkinsons...
(Apologies for the submitter not allowing that one to be played outside of YouTube.)
Some items never quite made it to market, though they did get as far as shooting test commercials. One such game was Ball Buster:
Some toy lines did make it out to the world, though, despite double entendre' references leaving us with some entertaining commercials such as one for toys made of wood -- Woodies.
... leaving us with the line "Woodies are wonderful" in the same commercial as "just like when I was a girl."
Every so often the sexual references - however unintended - became more visual, as with two of the three "tools" from the Ghostbusters set:
... only to be outdone some years later by The Ooozinator:
...which is as good a climax (complete with too, too many money shots) to this piece as I'm likely to find.
Tags: toy commercials
It's Christmas Eve!
While such things are sadly long behind me in most respects, how many Christmas Eves was I in high anticipation of some special toy?
Well, what better time for a bit of commercial nostalgia?
Well, at least that's where I'm starting, with a commercial for a set of toys I was very much into -- Major Matt Mason: Mattel's Man In Space!
These were likely my favorite toys of the late 1960s. They didn't even show all the cool things the Space Crawler could do.
Here's another of the toys I opened on a Christmas morning long ago. It's a dangerous, evil-smelling toy that brought burns and several messes: Creepy Crawlers!:
From a little later on -- something I don't believe I owned, but a grade school buddy was deeply into little racing cars so I got to play with these: Sizzlers!
Jumping back into the middle sixties, this is one of those toys a cousin of mine who never asked for a toy he didn't get, it's the Electro Shot Shooting Gallery
I don't know how it turned out that my younger brother didn't get one of these, but while we saw the commercials we never had our own Stretch Armstrong
Jumping backwards again, this is one of those toys I'd never heard of and remain unconvinced that any child really wanted one -- it's Milky!
...and I'd put $5 on the table to say that at least one kid in three who actually did play with this ended up taking at least one experimental sip.
To manufacturers were always on the lookout for the next hula hoopish activity toy fad. Swing Wing was not what they were looking for, but the kids demonstrating it are hilarious, some of them moving about as if they have Parkinson's... not that there's anything funny about Parkinsons...
(Apologies for the submitter not allowing that one to be played outside of YouTube.)
Some items never quite made it to market, though they did get as far as shooting test commercials. One such game was Ball Buster:
Some toy lines did make it out to the world, though, despite double entendre' references leaving us with some entertaining commercials such as one for toys made of wood -- Woodies.
... leaving us with the line "Woodies are wonderful" in the same commercial as "just like when I was a girl."
Every so often the sexual references - however unintended - became more visual, as with two of the three "tools" from the Ghostbusters set:
... only to be outdone some years later by The Ooozinator:
...which is as good a climax (complete with too, too many money shots) to this piece as I'm likely to find.
Tags: toy commercials
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