Toys R us

jimistone

jimistone

long standing member
Man, I'm at toys r us with my wife, daughter, and grand daughter...just kind of browsing around and looking.

No wonder kids are so angry nowdays. These modern toys suck!

where are the model cars that you glue together?
where are the remote control airplanes with the Cox motors?
Where are the toy guns and grenades?
Where are the cap pistols?
where are the G.I. Joe's?

Where are the paint by numbers paintings?
Where are the BB guns?

Man if I was a kid I would tell my parents; "Just forget it....there is a stick and some rocks in the back yard I can play with"
 
Can't agree more - today is techno-driven.
We used to get kicked out of the house and invented games to play.
 
No kidding. I was just having a conversation with my wife the other day about getting a trampoline, one of those big rectangular ones that you can get some good height out of, to put at our place for our niece (and, why lie, me too). The lawyer immediately came out in her and apparently being outside and jumping on a trampoline is dangerous now. I don't remember having more than a bike or a skateboard - as well as a badass trampoline - and being kicked out until the sun was going down as a kid. Making up games was the name of the game back then!
 
Some of my best childhood memories were playing in the dirt or running around in the woods behind my house with mud smeared all over me pretending I was Rambo. I know I'm not even that old, but it makes me really sad to see a 4 year-old with an iPad and crap like that.
 
guitaristic said:
pretending I was Rambo
Click to expand...

I thought you were Rambo?:(

My best childhood play memories were of constructing entire freeways in the shale wall in the garage under the house, using whatever digging / scraping tools I could find lying around.

But we were poor, mind you. Dinner was a handful of 'ot gravel, and we lived in shoebox in middle o' road. But we were 'appy.:laughings:
 
I used to ride a big oversize girl's bike. I used to abuse it brutally by jumping off and seeing how far it would go before it crashed. It had superior balance and would go for 100 feet or more. That was fun for a few hours.

Then I found an old abandoned bees nest and raised it into my tree fort in a old pot on a string. When the bees woke up en masse I fell out of the tree fort - no broken bones but scared the hell out of me.

Then I went fishing on the riverbank with a bit of line, bobber and tin foil bait. Caught A LOT of ugly greenish/black catfish which I kept alive by sticking a stick through their mouth/gills and jamming the stick in a few inches of water. They all died though so I threw them back in.

Kick the can was fun for a few hours. I could go on and on but I have to check my email now.
 
My granddaughter turns 8 on Friday. My present to her is an iTunes gift card. After reading this thread, I'm sad. :(
 
man, when I was a kid if I had a stick and some rocks I would entertain myself for hours hitting "home runs". A bike was all you needed back then. You could find plenty of stuff to play with...like planks to make ramps for jumping shit.....grocery baskets to climb into and roll down a hill in....florescent light bulbs to throw against stuff and see explode....wasp nests to dare your buddies to throw water on.
Imagination was the key and there were few toys and few dull moments.
 
When I was looking at houses I was in this kid's room and he had a transformer toy. It didn't even fucking transform. It was just a robot that stood there with nonfunctional wheels on it's legs. What is the point in that? Transformers were pretty neat toys now that I think about it. Those manufacturers had to actually do design and think about things and be clever.
 
From a teacher's standpoint I can tell you that many, many kids now have to be taught how to play, how to join in with others, how to talk with others, how to use their imagination and how to agree on a common set of accepted rules for a game when they play with others - & I'm referring to 12 year olds!!!
Yep, along with all the other stuff we now teach we cover, in detail, those social skills that were once taught by parents or learnt by osmosis. If you look at many of the newbies & flybys in the MP3 Clinic it's clear that this is not a malaise restricted to preteens.
Luckily there're still mobs of kids who're happy with a ball and some grass to play on.
 
Well Im enjoying buying toys for my kids...dunno if theyre better or not but my eldest is only two, she seems to enjoy them. Shes bright, uses the ipad, my iphone too. Some toys I remember from my youth. You guys sound like old fuddy duddy's..."nostalgia's not as good as it used to be" ;)
 
jimistone said:
Man, I'm at toys r us with my wife, daughter, and grand daughter...just kind of browsing around and looking.

No wonder kids are so angry nowdays. These modern toys suck!

where are the model cars that you glue together?
where are the remote control airplanes with the Cox motors?
Where are the toy guns and grenades?
Where are the cap pistols?
where are the G.I. Joe's?

Where are the paint by numbers paintings?
Where are the BB guns?

Man if I was a kid I would tell my parents; "Just forget it....there is a stick and some rocks in the back yard I can play with"
Click to expand...

I think you have to be 10 to really appreciate a toy store, Jimi.
 
When I was a wee tacker, there was a hill behind where we lived. It had a number of rocky outcrops on it. These were my forts and look outs. I used to spend nearly the whole day up on that hill, scouting and looking out . . . well, for nothing in particular, but maybe injuns and stuff. I was only allowed to go up there if the temperature was above 70F.
 
Playing with other kids is THE most important developmental process for human beings. Whenever a group of kids play together they invent worlds, the rules of those worlds, the hierarchies of each other in those worlds and as a result their brains and their imaginations expand. I don't think you can be a functioning adult without that kind of play. Most bought toys are expensive but pointless when you consider a stick can be a gun, a magic wand, a sword; a tree is a citadel and a patch of bare earth is a swamp teeming with alligators. Technological toys have their place as well, but they're not the important ones.
 
We had a black oak in our back yard that was older than Methuselah. There was one branch that came within 3 feet of the ground and then turned back up. My brother and I played for hours on that silly branch. Swinging, climbing up to the trunk. We also had one of those other toys modern kids wouldn't know what to do with...a slot car set.
 
Eh slot cars are still sold...as are trainsets, lego, fisher pryce record players, gi joes (action man UK), wooden jigsaws, etch a sketch, red wagons, cowboy outfits, airfix models, r/c cars etc etc etc

Dunno where you guys think everythings went, its all still sold...and my kid still prefers outside, she has a swing on a tree, a slide, footballs...you really are a bunch of old foggies :D

But my kids wont be out on their own, thanks to megans laws I get emails that come onto my smartwatch whenever a convicted sex offender is within half a mile of my home....now thats fkd up
 
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