These toys might be gone, but they’re certainly not forgotten

REMEMBER when there was a toy shop on every corner? We were spoiled for choice. Unleash your inner child with a look back on toys from yesteryear.

Who remembers these?

REMEMBER when there was a toy shop on every corner in Australian cities?

We had huge Toy Worlds all over the place, and World 4 Kids and Toys R Us used to be destinations for a weekend.

You could spend hours in there playing with everything you could get your hands on.

Toys have changed as technology becomes a greater part of our interactions and there are fewer stores.

Time might have forgotten these toys, but at least one of them is sure to live on in our hearts when we look back on our childhoods.

Here are some of the best from the past, most of which you won’t find in toy stores anywhere.

Have we missed any? Scroll down to add to our list in the comment box below.

Cabbage Patch Kids

Cabbage Patch Kids are still available, but they’re not in the masses they were in the 1980s and early 1990s. If you were a kid then, chances are you ‘adopted’ one of the Cabbage Patch Kids. We doubt American Art student Xavier Roberts had any idea his ‘Little People’ idea would become a global phenomenon.

Cabbage Patch Kids were all the rage in the 1980s and ’90s.

Dino-Riders

If you loved dinosaurs as a kid (who didn’t) then you probably had a Dino-Rider of some description. If you were a good kid, you went with the Valorians, who used telepathy to communicate with the dinosaurs, while if you walked the other side of the tracks, you had the evil Rulons, who controlled the dinos with an object called a ‘brain box’. Even if you were a goodie, Rulon boss Krulos and the armed-to-the-teeth Tyrannosaurus-Rex was still the pick of the toys. Hot on the heels of the success of the Jurassic Park reboot, Mattel is in talks about a live action movie to reboot — this reporter can’t wait.

Stretch Armstrong was both popular and resilient.

Stretch Armstrong

Stretch Armstrong was indestructible. The musclebound doll could be stretched to more than double its size, making it an absolute lark for kids. While there were more than 50 variations of Stretch over the years, the original dolls from the late 1970s sell for thousands now. A film was in the works, but eventually canned, with Twilight star Taylor Lautner mooted to play the roll of Stretch.

Masters of the Universe/He-Man/She-ra

“By the power of Grayskull... I HAVE THE POWER.” Was there a more inspiring catchcry for young macho men than this (apologies to Thundercats, HOOOOOOO). Mattel’s answer to the success of Star Wars figurines was a smash hit in the 1980s, kids clamouring for figures of He-Man and his evil nemesis Skeletor. She-Ra, the Princess of Power, was He-Man’s sister and an early symbol of girl power. She was also perhaps a first crush for the boys. Dolph Lundgren played He-Man in the so-bad-it’s-good 1987 live action movie.

Tamagotchi took the world by storm in the late 1990s.

Tamagotchi

The handheld digital pet that everyone had to have. If you had one of these as a kid, you will have experienced the highs of watching your eggs hatch and the lows of your Tamagotchi meeting its untimely death because you forgot to feed it. It was only the size of a key ring, but the little digital pet was a handy teacher of life skills at an early age.

Baby Alive

If Tamagotchi was the digital way to raise an offspring, Baby Alive was the “real” thing. The lifelike doll’s mouth moves and it eats and drinks — it also wets and, in some models, messes the bed. Pleasant... sort of. It would even tell you when it was hungry or if it needed to go to the loo. “I have to go potty” or “All done now”. We’re cheating a bit here, because you can still get Baby Alive and it even comes in different races.

A Sindy doll from the 1970s strikes a pose. Picture: Ian Cugley

Sindy

Barbie is the girl doll queen, but she once had a rival in British fashion doll Sindy. While Barbie was always No. 1, Sindy survived for more than 35 years, from the early 1960s to late ’90s. She even survived lawsuits from Barbie owner Mattel, but Hasbro was forced to remodel her head so she looked less like Barbie.

You’ll never forget this funky toy.

View-Master

No kid’s childhood is complete without a View-Master. A simple red unit that looked like a futuristic set of binoculars — way back in 1939 — this toy, that featured wheels with 3-D images on them, stood the test of time. While kids these days are more interested in their iPads and smartphones, if you wanted to see cool pictures that would blow your mind, a simple flick of the View-Master would get you there.

Rainbow Brite

Rainbow Brite and her friends Starlite and Twink brought colour to many kids lives in the 1980s and ’90s. She used her colour belt to make the world brighter, but the real toy the kids wanted was Starlight, her faithful talking horse, complete with technicolour mane. Rainbow Brite’s successful ’80s cartoon series has been rebooted twice since 2009.

Plenty of kids had Polly Pockets back in the day.

Polly Pocket

As her name suggests, the original Polly Pocket figurines came in pocket-sized carry cases, making them easy to move around for kids on the move. These days, they’re called Fashion Polly and are larger than the originals.

Who remembers these?

Pop balls

They’re now called ZeeBeez apparently, but for us big kids, they will always be pop balls. These dangerous little rubber half balls were just as likely to take your eye out as they were to frighten the hell out of an unsuspecting bystander when they popped and flew into the air. For those less adventurous, they would pop straight away if you dropped them on the floor from a decent height.

Care Bears used to line the shelves at toy stores across Melbourne.

Care Bears

Care Bears gave you all of the feels. And were a must-have toy if you were an ’80s kid. Each one was a different colour and had a ‘tummy symbol’ that signified the teddy’s personality. As with most toys, it had a TV show and some of the original Care Bear teddies are worth a small fortune. They still make them today, but it’s just not the same. This reporter never got one when he was a kid and he’s still bleeding about it.

GI Joe: Sgt Slaughter was the man.

*But wait, there’s more:

Creepy Critters

GI Joe

MASK

Voltron

Furbies

Tippy Tumble

Slinkies

Family Tree House

Baby Thumbelina

Mousetrap

Spirograph

Chrissy Doll

Etch-a-sketch

Even TV star Bert Newton had his own Cabbage Patch Kid look-a-like.

Teddy Ruxpin

Cuddles on Delivery dolls

Beanie Kids

Knitting Nancy

Popples

Slap bands

Elastics

Sea Monkeys

Magic Garden

Street Sharks

Muppet babies

Smurfs

Rubik’s cube

Totem tennis

Kerplunk

Scalextric

Cupcake dolls

Creepy Critters

Test Match game

Have we missed any? Add to our list by mentioning it in the comment box below.

Originally published as These toys might be gone, but they’re certainly not forgotten