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I was thinking today about some of the toys that I loved growing up.  Since I was a pretty nerdy kid, I considered anything which required building or an engineering type obstacle course to pretty much be the Beez Knees.  Going way back, I loved my grandpa’s homemade wooden marble game which had a bunch of tracks the marbles would simply run down.  Later I graduated to Marble Run and I could spend hours “racing” the marbles down the courses that I set up.  This is probably also why I loved the K’NEX Big Ball Factory, a type of roller coaster obstacle course (I don’t know how else to describe it).  I even spent days creating alternate paths for the balls to go down.  Legos were at the foundation of my childhood and I may or may not still set up my Lego Trains around our Christmas Tree every year…  Finally, anyone who had one knows just how sweet Darda racetracks were and Dave and I would run tracks throughout the house that everyone would have to walk around. 

Lame Toys and Disappointments
No childhood is complete without incredibly lame toys and huge disappointments.  For example, I always wanted a Brio wooden train and would play with my friends every chance I got, but looking back, they seem pretty lame and I’m actually glad santa never got me one.  Second, remember the piece of crap that was Domino Rally?  Although commercials made it look like the coolest thing in the history of the world, IT SUCKED.  The wikipedia article about it even talk about how incredibly frustrating it was to try to set up because of the crappy dominos.  I remember being so frustrated by Domino Rally that I probably would have traded in my stuffed animal, Peep Peep, to get one of the Domino Dealers (sold separately of course) to set up the dominos.  I am very impressed by the video below, however.  Piece of crap number three: the game Mouse Trap.  Again, a sweet game in the commercials that disappointed thousands of children daily.  Finally, something that I’m still trying to figure out it why for about four months while I was in third grade did Pogs seem more popular than Monopoly.  For whatever reason though, at the time throwing “Slammers” at stacks of cardboard and trying to get them to flip over was exhilarating.  I still have my pog collection complete with slammers and even a Milk Cap Maker and recently checked out if I could get any dough for them.  Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be much of a vintage pog market.  In fact, selling Pogs for decent money seems to be even harder than selling valuable baseball card collections (selling my Griffey Rookie card wasn’t even worth it).