Games and toys of the 70s have been making a serious comeback in today’s market. Whether it is nostalgia or a true second life, many of the toys and games we forty-somethings grew up with are finding their way back into stores and homes across the Country.
Top Ten Toys of Yesterday: 1970s:
1. Atari VCS 2600
Known as the first true video gaming system, Atari’s star fell as quickly as it rose.
Founded in 1972, Atari Inc. was a pioneer in arcade games, home video games and computers. The company’s work defined the computer gaming industry during its first two decades. Their work opened the way for the more advanced home video game systems we now know.
Nolan Bushnell sold Atari Inc. to Warner Brothers where their popular Pong games led to the creation of a home video game system with interchangeable video game cartridges. The Atari VCS 2600 is the video game system people think of when Atari is mentioned. Atari VCS 2600 was released in 1977 for $199. The first year, there were nine game cartridges available.
When the year 1982 began, Atari was making two billion dollars a year. Because of over-licensing and competition from Nintendo (which was just released in Japan), Atari’s sales had plummeted so much that in 1983, the company sent thousands of cartridges to Texas to be used as landfill.
Oddly enough, people are now searching yard sales, thrift stores and flea markets for this game system and its cartridges. Is it just collectors, or could this game actually have a market again?
In 1971, an Ohio barbershop owner created a card game to play with his family. Merle Robbins’ family and friends loved the game. Robbins paid eight thousand dollars to have five thousand games made, which he sold from his barbershop.
A fan of the game bought the rights from Robbins for fifty thousand dollars plus royalties. This new owner formed International Games Inc. to market UNO and the sales took off. In 1992, International Games became a division of Mattel.
Creator, Erno Rubik, was a lecturer at the Department of Interior Design at the Academy of Applied Arts and Crafts in Budapest, Hungary. Rubik was a visual teacher and used models to illustrate his ideas. One idea he was attempting to teach was that the simplest things could be duplicated and manipulated into multiple forms. Through trying to model this idea for his students, Rubik eventually built a cube, the Cube, in 1974. Rubik was amazed at the reaction of his friends and students to this Cube. Everyone seemed compelled play with it and he found it difficult to retrieve.
During 1978, the Cube began to spread through simple word of mouth all through Hungary. A year later, the Ideal Toy Corporation went to Hungary to see the toy actually in play. One million Cube were originally ordered.
As with the success in Hungary, everywhere in the World that the Cube wandered, it was children who sold the toy through their enthusiastic word of mouth marketing.
Rubik’s Cube has been given a second life recently and has even been featured in a few movies lately.
4.SIMON
I remember telling my parents that all I wanted for Christmas was a SIMON game. SIMON was the first electronic game of its kind. The lights would pop on in a pattern and you had to repeat the pattern. Each time you got it correct, a new and longer pattern would begin. I can still hear the sound it made when you missed. I did that a lot.
SIMON was the brainchild of Howard Morrison and Ralph Baer who placed a microcomputer inside the game, which was what controlled the game and kept it competitive.
SIMON has always been around, but seems to be making a return. With all the hundreds of electronic games out there, SIMON has proven to deliver a challenge not found elsewhere.
5. Dungeons & Dragons
Ugh! Dungeons and Dragons. I remember so many boys from high school were into this game and they talked about it all the time. There was even an after school club. This game was the bane of many a high school girls’ life. Oh, but I know that there are millions of Dungeons & Dragons fans out there, especially since this game has been making a comeback.
The game invented by Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax opened the door to a two hundred and fifty thousand dollar market – fantasy and adventure toys and games.
6. Hungry Hungry Hippos
Hungry Hungry Hippos was created in 1978 by Milton Bradley. The game was designed for smaller children in order to reach that market. The Hippos would eat marbles which would fly across the board. The child would operate their Hippo through the use of an oversized lever, perfect for smaller hands.
Because of its design and fun factor, Hungry Hungry Hippos is still a favorite of young children.
7. Connect Four
I remember playing this game in middle school math class. There is some mathematical lesson to this game, and it is even featured on mathematic educational websites.
Created in 1974 by Milton Bradley, Connect Four is a vertical board game where two people take turns dropping checker-like pieces into one of six vertical slots. There were six horizontal rows, and the object of the game was to get four of your colored pieces in a row – vertical, horizontal or diagonally. Strategy played a key role in winning.
Today people will pay in advance for soon-to-be-released movies and video games, but in the 70s, the practice of buying a certificate for an item not yet produced was unheard of. Well, until Kenner Toys was faced with the dilemma of the decade.
Kenner Toys had sole rights to produce toys and games for the upcoming movie Star Wars. As their plan was to make standard movie-related toys of the day, they did nothing to prepare for what was to come.
When the movie was released in May 1977, everyone was blindsided with its tremendous success. As this was the biggest movie hit of all time, the only acceptable toy would be an action figure line. It takes almost a year to produce a line of plastic toys, and Kenner had not prepared for the possibility of plastic Star War toys. There was no way the toy company could produce an action figure line in time for Christmas. Even if they worked around the clock, they would not be able to pull it off. So they pulled off the biggest marketing coup in the history of toys.
They told stores that they would be selling an empty box. An empty box! Well, the box did hold a certificate which would then be mailed in to the company and when they toys were ready, they would be shipped to each individual child.
In 1977, thousands of children received Early Bird Certificate Packages for Christmas. Months later, the children would receive four Star Wars Action Figures – Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, R2-D2 and Chewbacca.
Magna Doodle was invented in 1974 as a creative way to doodle. It is a magnetic drawing toy with a drawing board, pen and magnetic shapes.
The inside of a Magna Doodle drawing board looks similar to a honeycomb. Each cell is filed with a liquid substance filled with magnetic particles. The liquid allows for the magnetic particles to rise in response to a magnetic force, but not but be affected by gravity. The pen and shapes are magnetized and create the magnetic force required to lift the particles through the liquid, resulting in the display seen on the drawing board.
Magna Doodle is still very popular and was given a toy of the year award in 2003.
10. NERF Balls
Although originally created as an indoor volleyball game, prior to release in 1970, Parker Brothers decided against the volleyball concept and marketed NERF as “The World’s First Official Indoor Ball.
Commercials told children that they could throw it indoors and it would not break lamps or windows or even hurt babies. Either every child or every parent wanted one because over four million were sold the first year.
Two years later, the NERF football was released and has since been the most popular in the line.
