What Boys got for Christmas in the 1950's & 60's

Thanks for all the pics folks.

They really bring back a flood of good memories.

Merry Christmas

DXTS see and you did not shoot your eye out either I bet ha ha ha

I bet that all of thoes pictures your folks took them with a poloriod instantmatic cameras that had glass flash bulbs that had to be changed with every picture taken, what memories great times

Oh no, instamatics had flash cubes. You got four shots out of them before you changed 'em



I'm guessing this is '62. I was very proud of the boots. The rig was from the Christams before - Hop-a-Long Cassidy. I still have it.

My sister hand tinted the photo, added the song lyric and gave this to me for Christmas a few years ago.

I still can't believe my mother saved these. They stopped making them in the early '50s from what I just googled up.

Oh, and the Instamatic wasn't introduced until 1963, so yes, I remember burning my fingers on flash bulbs.

John

Great Hoppy dinnerware! Doesn't look like you got to use it too much.

And one more factoid: Instamatics weren't Polaroid, they were Kodak.

Back in the 1960's my parents brought a reel to reel recorder. They recorded the audio to Captain Kangeroo and I would go to sleep listening to it. There is one tape of when they first got the thing and was trying to figure it out where my Dad says to my mom " Damn Maggie I do not know how this thing works". It is the only recording I have of my Dad speaking. He is now gone for 10 years. I love to hear that tape. And thank God for all those squinting eye old reel to reel video tapes as I can see him alive when he was a young man (also my first dog). Oh and my Granny.

Gun toys were pretty common as Christmas gifts when I was growing up (born 1949), most of the ones I got were cheap plastic and shattered after a while. Toy cars, trucks, planes. But there were other things that were even more dangerous. One year I got a chemistry set -- the kind with actual chemicals in it, and an alcohol burner. You can't buy those anymore, or even the chemicals to put your own together. Better yet, back then, when you ran out of a chemical, say sulfur for example, you could go buy it at any drug store. It even included a little tube with a sample of radium in it, so you could see it glowing in the dark (not really as scary as it sounds; it had less radium than the average watch dial, and I never did actually see it). One year, my brother was given a microscope set, with orders to share it with me. Scientific educational toys were more common then, I think, and it's too bad.

I think my favorite gun toy was a somewhat crude replica of a military rifle, called Cadet something. It had a moving bolt action and trigger, wooden stock, cheap steel tubing barrel, and it didn't even fire caps. The thing about it that made it so great was that it came with a booklet that showed how to do field drills, all the positions like parade rest, right-shoulder-arms, etc., and the shooting stances too. I practiced those things a lot for a while. I don't recall clearly, but I think it may have included some kind of form in it; you'd get a veteran to watch you do the drills, and he'd sign off on it and you could send it in for a certificate or something. I do recall having one of our family's ex-military friends come over and watch me go through the drills. He had a problem when it came to the shooting stances, because I did them all left-handed.

"Great Hoppy dinnerware! Doesn't look like you got to use it too much."

I used it everyday for years and years.

It held up well; it wasn't made in China.

"Great Hoppy dinnerware! Doesn't look like you got to use it too much."

I used it everyday for years and years.

It held up well; it wasn't made in China.

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Ain't that the truth!

All is not lost. Toy guns are still very common. Have you seen some of the astonishing arsenal manufactured by the Nerf conglomerate? Or the weaponized squirt-engine which ejects massive quantities of synthetic slime? Mere "caps" are trivial.

The Daisy Winchester '94 BB gun is the first gun I ever shot. My oldest brother (16 yrs old than me) had one. We set up a range in our back yard, and he taught me to shoot. I guess I was about 3 yrs old. I remember the black eye I got because of the hammer hitting me. He still has that one tucked away.

My wife has a Davy Crockett fork and spoon set. About 5 years ago, the fork went missing. I found another one on eBay so she would have the set again.

Cap guns, BB guns bows and arrows, Child size toools, a real hatchet( still have that one 55 years later) and of course the Marlin 39a, was 8 years old when I got that one

I had a squirt gun modelled on the one Steve McQueen had on Johnny Yuma. The so-called Mare's Leg. The epitome of cool back then.

Can remember the morning I got a Fanner 50 with pistol belt and holster. Lasted for years. Times were different then.

Lionel trains!
Can't forget American Flyer trains also!
Am I dating myself?

Great stuff! I was born in '51 and got to play with much of that stuff - or similar toys. Didn't get a BB gun because my Mom was sure I'd put out an eye...

The Daisy 45 really wasn't very powerful and a couple of kids in my neighborhood had the same gun. We learned if you had on heavy clothes, hats, etc the pellet wouldn't go thru the clothing.

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...So when I got my hands on my friend's BB gun and we put on thick clothing for a BB gun war - I put his eye out! Well, not exactly out - but definately messed up. 50 years later we are still best friends - and he still doesn't see so well out of his right eye.

One year I got a chemistry set -- the kind with actual chemicals in it, and an alcohol burner. You can't buy those anymore, or even the chemicals to put your own together. Better yet, back then, when you ran out of a chemical, say sulfur for example, you could go buy it at any drug store.

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I and the same friend used sulfer from the chemistry set - along with charcoal and salt peter from the drug store - to make crude gun powder. I believe we even attempted to build pipe bombs out of the stuff, with poor results (fortunately!).

And then there was the bow & arrow set (for some reason my Mom thought that would be safer?). "Let's see how high an arrow will go if we shoot it straight up and watch it come back down..."

Of course we also climbed every tall tree in the neighborhood, and swung from ropes attached to the undersides of tall bridges over ravines...Come to think of it - how did we survive our childhoods?

But I wouldn't trade it for all the Nintendos, Play Stations, and Wii games in the world!

Holy Memories, Batman!

I've seen realistic toy guns, talk of neighborhood "shootouts" and even a mention of Ben Franklin stores. Man, talk about a trip in the "Way-Back Machine".

P.S., my son got a cap gun and a sword and shield for Christmas. All the other stuff was either train or game/puzzle related.

Lionel trains!

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Oh boy, yet another fond memory. First, the stuff was all made in the USA, and mostly made of metal! My favorite rail car was the little car that held eight missiles, four standing upright and four on a launcher. There was a target car that was spring loaded so that when you hit the bulls eye on the car the car would fly apart into several pieces.

These are the toys I never got tired of. Pre-video games. Today's kids have no idea what they are missing.

I think I have this somewhere, but maybe a few of the missiles are MIA? I wonder if my wife will call the paddy wagon if she catches me playing with it?