Post yours…
The one that inspired my post:
It’s been discontinued for a a long time, but looking at it while I work in my room (and everyday when it wakes my A$$ up) I think it’s perfect. Sorry to see it gone and re-designed into something I never would have bought in the first place. Just sayin’.
Technically still available from other sources. But I don’t want to pay $1.99 for 20" of the stuff. I had miles of it when I was a kid, and my Mom sold it all. How am I supposed to teach my son how to launch Hot wheels cars using nothing but a staircase, orange track, a block of wood and some encyclopedias?
The totally, mostest, coolest, toy I ever had. Kenner Building, Hydrodynamic, and Bridge & Turnpike building sets.
Four basic modular components (interchangeable with all other sets); a vertical post, horizontal beam, vacuum formed “exterior siding” sheer panels, and a masonite board with a hole matrix punched into it. Later expanded to include roadway components, elevator and crane components, transparent tanks, valves, and pumps.
I could not even begin to estimate how many HUNDREDS of hours I spent playing with these sets. Preceded, in my childhood, by all-wood “Lincoln Logs” (invented by John Lloyd Wright (son of Frank)), and “Gilbert Erector Sets”
Not really a product but a feeling. I recently got back into 35mm cameras after picking up a Werra from the late 50’s. I forgot the feeling of developing the film weeks/months after I’ve take the pictures not remembering what pictures I took earlier. The surprise similar to opening Christmas presents when we were kids that digital cameras stole from us.
In the line of lost but not forgotten toys I have to add Construx. I always played with those or legos, but you can still get legos, and I did for christmas 
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Strangely I noticed the radio in the first post was tuned to 104.1, which used to be WBCN “the rock of Boston” another “product” I can no longer get but wish I could. It has since change to a lite mix station 
RIP WBCN
This picture does not do the toy justice but its the best I could find
Yes, Construx were awesome!! Anyone remember Capsela too? Kinda similar.
Yes! and Yes! I still have construx and still play with them at my parents house. Of course with my 10 year old nephew, but still…
Why do all new toys today (Lego, etc.) have to only build one thing? I remember getting the massive starter sets and just building anything I could imagine. Boats, cars, airplanes, houses, robots, you name it. Now you are limited to 1, 2 if you’re lucky, things to build with each set!
Back on topic. I miss metal Canon cameras. A-1, etc. There’s got to be a way to shoe horn digital guts in these things!
bummer… . .
The original Roland TB-303 bassline synth. They’re even impossible to find on ebay.
Absolutely!
And new to the list (you can still find them but they’re stopping production):
The technics quartz drive turntable 
(playing taps)
I so agree with this! I blame the designers for limiting the user’s creativity.
Also, I was visiting my parents over Christmas break and busted out the old Construx collection while watching a movie. Even with tons of pieces missing, my enhanced composition skills were quite useful!
Actually, blame the marketer:
Lego’s recent struggle is an instructive story, a fable, about an admirable company and its encounters with a fast-changing world. The lives of middle-class children have been revolutionized in the past 20 years – time compression, relentlessly programmed days, career-minded parents, electronics. Says Leah Kalboussi, head of sales for some of Lego’s electronics and software products: “Kids these days are busy people.”
Play itself is different today. A generation ago – with just a few TV channels, no computers, and primitive video games – children grew up in a play economy, of which entertainment was but a small, easily contained part. Today’s children grow up in an entertainment economy saturated with media, in which open-ended, self-guided play is a shrinking part.
…But anyone who hasn’t looked at Lego toys since his or her own childhood is in for a rude shock. The shelves at Kmart, Target, Toys “R” Us, and Wal-Mart, aren’t stocked with bins of multicolored bricks, windows, and wheels. Indeed, the blocks sometimes can be difficult to find – crowded out by a vast array of intricate Lego kits that look more like models than open-ended play toys. Whether or not there is a “correct” way to play with Legos these days, most modern Lego kits are so elaborate that they come with a folder of step-by-step construction instructions.
… “He and I have very different ideas about Legos,” says Ethan’s mom, Lisa Gates, a dean at Wesleyan University, who is in Orlando on vacation. “I prefer the free-form bricks, where he can make his own universe. Ethan is most drawn to the theme-based scenarios. He has an Egyptian-pyramid-dig set and some Star Wars sets. He’s fixated on the directions – when he builds it, he wants it to look exactly like it looks on the box. That introduces a note of anxiety into playing with Legos – did I do it right?”
if you follow the instructions it will work, and you have not “failed” and as anybody know FAILURE is BAD BAD BAD for the ego. Toys now are pass fail with 99.99% passing, hence good for ego and egos must at all costs be protected and nurtured.
Good point CG. Unfortunately, kids are increasingly trained to be acted upon instead of acting for themselves and developing their creativity. We’ve chosen not to let our daughter watch TV until she’s 2 because apparently it hinders creativity (I know there are a lot of old wives’ tales out there, but this one seems to make sense).
I’m glad I live near a Lego store, where they still have huge bins of solid colors available. That’s where I’m loading up…
A generation ago – with just a few TV channels, no computers, > and primitive video games > – children grew up in a play economy,
O-k-a-y . … . now I’m really feeling my age.
When I was a little kid I used to watch Romper Room (circa 1955 +/-). The show offered a “play along” kit that included a vinyl sheet (I recall it was tinted a slight green (for some reason)) that was placed on the television screen (held there by static electricity) and some colored grease pencils. The idea was that the show’s host would create a drawing, step-by-step at the easel. The cameras POV allowed the child to follow along by tracing over the lines on the screen. At the end of the lesson you peeled the vinyl sheet off of the television, and there was “your” drawing to show dad when he got home. The first “video game”?
And since all of us here are, by profession “drawers”, maybe you can remember the television show titled, Jon Gnagy’s (pronounced nay-gee) [u]Learn to Draw Show[/u]. It was one of the earliest “how-to” shows for kids. Each week he would create a “picture”, step-by-step to show you how it was done; they were usually about ten minute long segments. And of course, you just had to have his Learn to Draw Set; four “art” pencils (charcoal), 3 sketching chalks, sketch paper, lap top drawing board, kneaded eraser, shading stump, sand pad sharpener. The book, and oddly enough, the shading stomp, I still have.
Toys now are pass fail with 99.99% passing, hence good for ego and egos must at all costs be protected and nurtured.
“Why can’t I get it right” was a common emotion attached to this “toy”, but we all know that repetition, combined with observation, is how we learn to draw. Failure is an excellent teacher, in my view, it teaches perseverance.
I remember this episode, with a timely comment at the end.
And while surfing around looking for Jon Gnagy information I discovered that all of his stuff is still available, so I guess it doesn’t really quality as a R.I.P. product after all. Maybe there’s still hope for kids …
If anything we need more products where the Dad in the background has a pipe in his mouth. Classic.
I still have most of my classic Jon Gnagy set. My parents bought it for me one Christmas when I was very young after seeing that I had an artistic aptitude. What a great little book.
Also, I can remember a cartoon from the late 60’s - early 70’s called “Winky Dink” that also used the piece of plastic on the T.V. screen deal to help the characters out of various predicaments.
No, you can still buy Technics turn tables with quartz drive -direct drive motors. The SL-1200 for instance (that you pictured).
You can still get them but they announced that they are stopping all new production of them this year. So I guess they’re not r.i.p. yet, but definitely terminal.
