show your age with a picture of a toy from your childhood

[passedpawn]

Both my parent's entire families are from Toledo, but my brother & I are the weird ones, born in Cleveland & only lived in Toledo the one year Dad was in Vietnam.

The joys of being an Army Brat

I was an army brat too - born on a base in texas. Dad got out (officer) just in the nick of time - discharged around '67 I think.

 

[betarhoalphadelta]

Reminds me of all the open lots/fields around in my youth. Of course, they are now all filled with 7-11, nail salons, etc.

My company just hired a bunch of new college grads and one was talking about being from [roughly] where I grew up. Turns out she's actually from the specific suburb I grew up. And when she told me what neighborhood she grew up in, I got to pull the "yeah, when I was a kid that was still farmland."

 

[passedpawn]

My company just hired a bunch of new college grads and one was talking about being from [roughly] where I grew up. Turns out she's actually from the specific suburb I grew up. And when she told me what neighborhood she grew up in, I got to pull the "yeah, when I was a kid that was still farmland."

haha. been there done that!

 

[bracconiere]

and it was great when we actually got to play games, too!

 

[wsmith1625]

You're parents had to be really well off to afford a computer when I was a kid. I do remember how awesome it was to get an Atari 2600. Games were expensive, so we only had a few of them.

 

[RocketBrewer]

View attachment 703365


and it was great when we actually got to play games, too!

That's more computers than my high school owned!

 

[bracconiere]

That's more computers than my high school owned!

 

[GrogNerd]

our HS had 2 teletype terminals & 1 CRT terminal to batch submit our programs (FORTRAN & COBOL!) to the mainframe at the county government building. since there were only 3 terminals, we had to code on CARD PUNCH machines & run the cards thru the reader before we could open the program on the terminal to compile/debug

my senior year, we got 3 Atari 800s

 

[Kharnynb]

lanparties were cool

 

[VApatriot]

Here's a few that I had.

 

[bleme]

We had IBM 5150 computers in junior high but then I moved to a rural high school, which didn't have any computers at all (unless you count the word processors). But then I got to college and there were computers EVERYWHERE!

Most of my time was spent in the library VAX lab (run on a VAX 8800 using VMS). After the lab monitor went home at 10pm, it turned into a gamers lab, with most of us playing various MuDDs. We had a huge advantage over most of the other players because we could coordinate our attacks with voice and were running on a blazing T3 connection!

I also loved playing Civilization in the Mac lab, but the lab monitors there kept deleting it so I had to carry a copy with my saved game on a floppy.

Then in 1991 Steve Jobs donated a whole lab of NeXTstations, which was cool because as long as the lab was less than half full, the monitor would look the other way while we ran LAN Doom!

 

[Snuffy]

 

[bracconiere]

the way assembly should be written!

edit: remember the demo scene on the BBs's, and how they'd brag about it being written in 100% assembly!

 

[GrogNerd]

the program my company developed & supports still uses 80 character wide templates for reports

View attachment 703528

 

[Kharnynb]

the program my company developed & supports still uses 80 character wide templates for reports

that makes your company more modern that the US nuclear systems until last year, who were still using 8 inch floppy drives.

 

[btbonser]

I don't care what the instructions said. The object of the game was to throw them straight up in the air and not get impelled when they came down.

 

[bracconiere]

just got a short throw XGA DLP projector used for $80...so i can lay in bed and play old arcade games in MAME with a screen the entire size of my bed, and quarters are as easy to pump in as pressing a button...

i remember these when i was a teenager..

 

[passedpawn]

When you're a kid, you assume EVERYBODY is playing croquet. I haven't seen anyone playing croquet since that time. Me on left, and my awesome little brothers. [edit another pic, years later, same brothers, but Dad there and uncle's red Cutlass that he lent me)

 

[bracconiere]

i remember playing croquet

 

[Jayjay1976]

The slip-n-slide was an essential part of summer days on my block. Sometimes as many as three yards had one going and we would make a circuit. Slide down one, hop on the bike and ride to the next one, go for a slide, hop on another bike, etc. As long as everyone had a bike we could go for hours. Always accompanied by fla-vor-ice for hydration, which would start to cut the corners of my mouth after eating a few, or those little barrel-shaped juice drinks.

 

[Snark_Wolf_Brewing]

Who else remembers these bad boys? A little water, pump some air, pull the trigger back and they'd go up about 150 feet or so.

 

[Jayjay1976]

Who else remembers these bad boys? A little water, pump some air, pull the trigger back and they'd go up about 150 feet or so.

View attachment 719189

I loved science toys, and that had to be the most fun one. My set had that big one and also a short, chubby one shaped like a bomb. So much fun and all you needed was some water.

 

[Jayjay1976]

I love the smell of gunpowder in the morning. Smells like victory.

Remember that feeling of loading up a roll and sliding that cover closed? Tuck it in my waist band and mount up on my schwinn tornado. I wonder if kids in other countries had cap guns or was it just us 'muricans?

 

[bracconiere]

Who else remembers these bad boys? A little water, pump some air, pull the trigger back and they'd go up about 150 feet or so.

View attachment 719189

are they dangerous now? you mean kids don't play with them now?

 

[bracconiere]

I love the smell of gunpowder in the morning. Smells like victory.
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I wonder if kids in other countries had cap guns or was it just us 'mericans?

old school huh, i remember the plastic ones that came in a pre loaded 6 shooter load...

 

[Snark_Wolf_Brewing]

are they dangerous now? you mean kids don't play with them now?

Not sure, but I haven't seen them anywhere since the late 80s, early 90s.

 

[Ogilthorpe2]

The slip-n-slide was an essential part of summer days on my block. Sometimes as many as three yards had one going and we would make a circuit. Slide down one, hop on the bike and ride to the next one, go for a slide, hop on another bike, etc. As long as everyone had a bike we could go for hours. Always accompanied by fla-vor-ice for hydration, which would start to cut the corners of my mouth after eating a few, or those little barrel-shaped juice drinks.

View attachment 719183
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I had a friend with a huge backyard, and we would gather up 4 slip n slides from throughout the neighborhood and play baseball with a base at the end of each slip n slide.

Good times.

 

[bracconiere]

Not sure, but I haven't seen them anywhere since the late 80s, early 90s.

nintendo's huh? hate to see what smart phones do...

 

[Ogilthorpe2]

I love the smell of gunpowder in the morning. Smells like victory.
View attachment 719191
View attachment 719192
View attachment 719193

Remember that feeling of loading up a roll and sliding that cover closed? Tuck it in my waist band and mount up on my schwinn tornado. I wonder if kids in other countries had cap guns or was it just us 'muricans?

I remember taking whole rolls of them and smacking them with a hammer to get one brief but very satisfyingly loud bang.

 

[Jayjay1976]

old school huh, i remember the plastic ones that came in a pre loaded 6 shooter load...

The plastic ones were primo, I love the revolver that they came with. I wish they sold the refills in larger quantities tho, guess that's why we got the roll type.