@awk I loved playing with FatBits.
Now that I say that, I’m not 100% sure that’s the official name of it… (wikipedia confirms it, so that’s good enough for me)
@Kyeh Spirographs are great! I got one for my birthday a couple of years ago after mentioning in passing that I loved them. Now I just need a Spin Art set.
@heartny That’s before my time too. I do remember the name but I don’t remember the show at all. I’m thinking they might have made another kind of toy or game with the same name.
@heartny@Lynnerizer it doesn’t predate me, quite. I remember the ads. My mom gave me the “don’t even think about it” look when I asked for one, though.
@heartny@Lynnerizer Maybe you’re thinking of Shrinky Dinks? (Evidently you can recycle your #6 plastic to make them - like the clear boxes that pastries come in.)
@Kyeh That is the device on the roof of an electric locomotive that touches the overhead wire and gives the locomotive power! Also called a pantograph.
@capnjb@llangley I still have mine from the 60s. I tried it a couple of years ago, and I had more success than when I was a kid. If you can’t find the right combo of pressure and speed, you can’t use a lot of the pieces.
@lisagd the tiny little pins it came with to keep everything in place where near useless, but I loved that thing. So glad I can just 3d-print my own whenever I want, now
@llangley I immediately thought of Spirograph, but I debated whether it met the poll criteria as it is a far different beast from the other choices. It is certainly not “awkward” in the same sense the others are. The others allow you to “free-hand” any shape, but it’s difficult to commit the image in your head via the medium. With Spirograph, using the same sprocket/ring/pen-hole combination is going to yield a pretty consistent result each time.
In the book Dead Drop: The True Story of Oleg Penkovsky and the Cold War’s Most Dangerous Operation by Jeremy Dunn, there’s a mention of Magic Slates being used in the US Embassy in Moscow during the '60s.
@blaineg It’s a board with iron(?) shavings and a clear plastic cover. You use the metallic stylus to drag the shavings to add hair to the picture of the man on the board. Moderately frustrating.
My first “drawing” toy was “Mighty Men and Monster Maker”. It actually pre-dated but was eventually outsold by “Barbie Fashion Plates” which used the same concept.
I actually picked up a rather complete set off ebay years ago and still have it. I spent countless hours with this thing. You could mix the heads, torsos and legs of heroes and monsters, then there were texture plates (scales, hair, etc.) you could use when coloring them in. So cool.
@ACraigL I had something like that for Peanuts. It even had some textured areas so you could add a pattern to their clothes. It was pretty fun. I might still have it; my parents kept a lot of my stuff, and when they sold their house after 42 years, I came across a lot of things I’d forgotten about. I kept some, but I couldn’t bear to spend another minute looking at this picture that hung on my bedroom wall. Maybe that’s where my anxiety started.
Ok, this is a little hard to describe. But I had a thing once that had a turntable and a ruler that you could move in small increments. So you could make drawings by precise cross-hatching. Don’t know what it was called and Google’s not helping.
@Kyeh You could do the same thing with one of those fancy-pants drafting arms. (I only ever got to use a T-square and triangles for drafting.) But the thing I’m remembering was specifically for creative use.
Comic impressions from silly putty
Vincent.
MacPaint 1.0
@awk Can Kid Pix count too?
@awk I loved playing with FatBits.
Now that I say that, I’m not 100% sure that’s the official name of it… (wikipedia confirms it, so that’s good enough for me)
Aside from Etch A Sketch, I loved Magic Slates
@heartny Wow, I actually forgot about those.
@Kyeh Inexpensive fun. We were easily amused back then
@heartny I think I still am; it’s just gotten more passive, i.e. looking at stuff on my phone!
@heartny Warning!
Do NOT write your PhD dissertation onto these. Reasons.
@heartny @phendrick Their appearance in The Last Of Us apparently caused a significant uptick in sales.
I still love the Etch-A-Sketch!
Spirographs are fun too, although you can’t really write with them.
@Kyeh Spirographs are great! I got one for my birthday a couple of years ago after mentioning in passing that I loved them. Now I just need a Spin Art set.
@ahacksaw @Kyeh Spin Art! I need one of those too!
@ahacksaw @cbatte @Kyeh Always wanted, but never got the Spin Art.
It pre-dates me, but I recall hearing about Winky Dink and You, the first “interactive” TV show that encouraged kids to draw on the TV screen.
@heartny That’s before my time too. I do remember the name but I don’t remember the show at all. I’m thinking they might have made another kind of toy or game with the same name.
@heartny @Lynnerizer it doesn’t predate me, quite. I remember the ads. My mom gave me the “don’t even think about it” look when I asked for one, though.
@heartny There was a plastic film that went over the screen. The pictures went by too fast for me, I always ended up disappointed.
@heartny @Lynnerizer Maybe you’re thinking of Shrinky Dinks? (Evidently you can recycle your #6 plastic to make them - like the clear boxes that pastries come in.)
I’ve never heard of a Manga Doodle! Is that a version for drawing Japanese comics?
@PooltoyWolf It’s a typo drawing toy–magna-doodle.
@crysanthummum I am very much aware lmao, I had a Magna-Doodle as a kid. (That was the joke.)
Sharp stick
@chienfou Rock
I’d like to have a pantograph.
/image pantograph
@Kyeh or the kids version: Tricky Tracer
@Kyeh Dad had a nice one, and he’d let us play with it, under supervision.
It was magical.
@Kyeh Someone say pantograph?
@PooltoyWolf Umm - how the heck does that work?
@Kyeh That is the device on the roof of an electric locomotive that touches the overhead wire and gives the locomotive power! Also called a pantograph.
@PooltoyWolf Oh! Well, I don’t want one of those, but I bet you wouldn’t mind having one. Thanks for the lesson!
@Kyeh No worries XD
Spirograph. For the win.
@llangley I got a vintage set of these for my daughter when she was about six. It provided minutes of fun!
@capnjb @llangley I still have mine from the 60s. I tried it a couple of years ago, and I had more success than when I was a kid. If you can’t find the right combo of pressure and speed, you can’t use a lot of the pieces.
@lisagd the tiny little pins it came with to keep everything in place where near useless, but I loved that thing. So glad I can just 3d-print my own whenever I want, now
@llangley I immediately thought of Spirograph, but I debated whether it met the poll criteria as it is a far different beast from the other choices. It is certainly not “awkward” in the same sense the others are. The others allow you to “free-hand” any shape, but it’s difficult to commit the image in your head via the medium. With Spirograph, using the same sprocket/ring/pen-hole combination is going to yield a pretty consistent result each time.
Magic Slate. Plastic film over waxy black base. Wrote on it with hard plastic stylus.
@pekepuppy The original and still the best
@2many2no @pekepuppy
@heartney beat you to it:
https://meh.com/forum/topics/whats-the-best-awkward-retro-drawing-toy#6458754300dd06d9a076a01f
@Kyeh @pekepuppy @heartney Yeah, saw that, but some things need to be repeated for the uninitiated.
@2many2no @pekepuppy @heartney
Here’s a fascinating story about them!
https://www.completeset.com/the-classified-history-of-the-magic-slate/
@2many2no @Kyeh @pekepuppy That’s pretty clever. I guess they didn’t press down as hard as I did and make indentations in the base that could be read.
@2many2no @lisagd @pekepuppy
Or maybe they heated them to melt out impressions?
@2many2no @Kyeh @pekepuppy Could be. I don’t have a cloak and dagger kind of mind.
@2many2no @lisagd @pekepuppy
I guess I do!
/image spy vs spy
It’s MAGNA-doodle, not manga. And it’s the best!
@crysanthummum It’s Japanese.
Does Lite Brite count?
/image lite brite
@xobzoo I can still sing the song from the commercials.
What’s a Wooly Willie?
@blaineg It’s a board with iron(?) shavings and a clear plastic cover. You use the metallic stylus to drag the shavings to add hair to the picture of the man on the board. Moderately frustrating.
@lisagd Ok, I remember playing with one of those briefly, but the name wasn’t ringing a bell.
Thanks.
@blaineg @lisagd Here’s a kind of similar toy:
You jiggle it to make different profiles, more fun than it sounds.
@Kyeh @lisagd Now that one was good! We’d get giggle fits sometimes.
@blaineg @lisagd Us too!
My first “drawing” toy was “Mighty Men and Monster Maker”. It actually pre-dated but was eventually outsold by “Barbie Fashion Plates” which used the same concept.
I actually picked up a rather complete set off ebay years ago and still have it. I spent countless hours with this thing. You could mix the heads, torsos and legs of heroes and monsters, then there were texture plates (scales, hair, etc.) you could use when coloring them in. So cool.
@ACraigL I had something like that for Peanuts. It even had some textured areas so you could add a pattern to their clothes. It was pretty fun. I might still have it; my parents kept a lot of my stuff, and when they sold their house after 42 years, I came across a lot of things I’d forgotten about. I kept some, but I couldn’t bear to spend another minute looking at this picture that hung on my bedroom wall. Maybe that’s where my anxiety started.
@lisagd horrifying. I don’t know how you slept at night!
@ACraigL @lisagd
Euwww! Poor you!
@ACraigL I know, right?
@ACraigL I think I had one of those, but with a different theme (no, not Barbie). Maybe a different brand.
Ok, this is a little hard to describe. But I had a thing once that had a turntable and a ruler that you could move in small increments. So you could make drawings by precise cross-hatching. Don’t know what it was called and Google’s not helping.
@walarney Sounds like a drafting tool of some kind?
@Kyeh You could do the same thing with one of those fancy-pants drafting arms. (I only ever got to use a T-square and triangles for drafting.) But the thing I’m remembering was specifically for creative use.
@walarney That sounds interesting, I hope you find an image of one.
My “Peanuts Picture Maker” was one of my favorite toys as a pre-schooler.
@DrWorm That’s what I had! It was so much fun! I didn’t have that white thing with the tree and mailbox, though.
@DrWorm @lisagd Woah! We had one of those. Hadn’t thought about it in decades. I think ours was Hot Wheels.
@DrWorm @lisagd
@blaineg @DrWorm Cool!
@DrWorm @lisagd Sweet! I just found a set on Ebay for a reasonable price.
There’s also a combined Hot Wheels and Barbie set, if anyone’s interested.
I remember playing with most of these things.
The Wham-o Shrink Machine! Yet another in the long line of “What could possibly go wrong if we made heated toys with no interlocks?”
AKA: “If they get burned, they’ll learn not to touch it.”
We had this before Shrinky Dinks, if I remember right, but the shrinking plastic was the same.
Super Gorilla Magnet!