The Coolest Toys Of The 1970's

By Author: Kids in the 1970s may not have had games consoles,
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Kids in the 1970s may not have had games consoles, MP3 players or state of the art mobile phones, but they did have a whole lot of fun. And this is because there were so many awesome toys to play with!

Remote Control Toys

During the latter part of the 1970's, the first ‘proper' R/C toys were slowly beginning to appear. However, unless you had exceptionally generous parents, they would only be the stuff of dreams. But these days you can get a remote control helicopter, plane or car for a fraction of the price.

Modern kids have no idea of how lucky they actually are; thirty odd years ago we'd have given anything to have our very own remote control helicopter!

The Chopper Bike/BMX

Here in the UK, BMX bikes didn't take off in a big way until the early 80's... but before they did, we had ‘The Chopper'! This uber cool 1970's bicycle was instantly recognisable with its high handlebars, ‘T' shaped gearstick and plush high-backed seat.

Everyone loved these bikes to bits... until the BMX thing kicked off. And then we ...
... realised how damn heavy they were! You had to be a world class weightlifter to do bunny hops on a Chopper...

Space Hopper

If there is any toy from the 1970's that you are going to call iconic, then it would have to be the Space Hopper. Just about every child in the country had one of these giant orange balls with horns and a smiley face!

It was amazing just how much satisfaction could be had simply by bouncing around the back garden on a tangerine-coloured rubber sphere!

BigTrak

Any child of the late 70's would have ‘BigTrak' firmly at the top of their Christmas list! This six-wheeled fully-programmable vehicle was years ahead of its time. You could send it off on all manner of missions and it would trundle away quite obediently, zapping anyone that got in its way. There was even a special BigTrak trailer you could buy!

And now (probably thanks to the ‘Retro' thing), BigTrak is making a comeback! It looks totally identical to the original spacey tank and it is set to enthral a whole new generation of kids.

KerPlunk

In the decade of flowery and fly-away-collared shirts, it seemed as though everyone had a KerPlunk game at home! And a lot of us didn't even want to know how to play this game properly; using it to make a hellish noise with oodles of falling marbles was sufficiently satisfying in itself!!!

Needless to say, KerPlunk was not the most popular game amongst parents...