Lincoln Logs

Lies!

I got Magic Wood instead and was too embarrassed to tell anyone because the commercial was so sucky.

I'm so gay I got Mary Todd Lincoln Logs.

r2 what was the "magic" in Magic Wood? Magnets?

Yes, magnets.

My sister got a toy knitting machine called Knit-O-Matic. The commercial for that one was almost hypnotic with a chorus of little girl voices in the background chanting "knit a row a second, knit a row a second"

[quote]I'm so gay I got Mary Todd Lincoln Logs.

No, if you were crazy you would've gotten Mary Todd Lincoln Logs

Vivian Vance was so old that she got her logs directly from Lincoln himself!

How were Lincoln Logs "more manly" than Tinkertoys?

I'm glad we had toys like Lincoln Logs and Legos to build things and for an imagination. Better than having an iPad shoved in you're face like the kids today.

And yet you didn't learn the difference between "your" and "you're," R9.

Sorry about that, forgot that we need to type like we're in a spelling bee. My apology. You did miss *for* was supposed to be *form*.

I must have inferred that poor sentence structure was your thing, R11.

Papa was so poor he'd just break sticks from the yard and have us gnaw notches out of each end.

Becky still had both woman teeths so we had her do the rough cuts so's everything would be uniform and such.

Inferred. I inferred that you stuck your Linclon Logs up your ass, and your mother had to pull them out. Perhaps she missed one, and it's still jammed up there someplace. Inferred.

Pastels, Debbie?

I liked blocks better than Lincoln logs. Tinker toys had a outer space charm.

I never had either. I liked books, not toys.

R14 seems to understand "inferred."

What do you do for your next trick?

I got this great building toy in 1965 or so and wish I could find one today. It was like a 3-D Lite Brite, with transparent rods, straight and curved that you used to create buildings on a round black pegboard. UNDER the pegboard was a rotating translucent color wheel, lit from below, whose colored Rays would shoot up through the pegboard, making everything pretty

sounds fab

r8 Splinters. D'uh.

I had both and loved ’em. I loved my Spirograph more than either, though.

-10/10

Well I'm glad we had a piece of charcoal and paper instead of those newfangled etch-a-sketches! How are kids supposed to learn how to draw using knobs and looking at a screen? It ain't natural I tellya. No sir. No sirree

How old as a boy, were you? Were you too young to articulate more specifically what you wanted? Did your parents ever take you to a store so you could point out what you would like for Christmas? If not, it sounds very assuming.

I wanted silly putty. But I got a rock

Younger people don't realize it, but there were very few plastic toys in the '50s. Pretty much everything was wood (TinkerToys, Lincoln Logs) or metal (Tonka Trucks, Matchbox cars).

I got live bait and had to fish or christmas dinner.

The most important issue has yet to be discussed so I shall do it for all of you. OP, at what age did you buy yourself a set of Tinker Toys and do you still play with them?

I love OP's detail of having to burn the Lincoln Logs to keep warm. Even WE weren't that poor.

What can one build with the excrement of an assassinated American president?

I wanted Tinker Toys, all I had was Lincoln Logs. Never had Legos. I think LL where cheapest, Tinker Toys in the middle, Legos more expensive.

LL where more durable. Easy to break TT when a little kid is rough-housing.

Tinker toys sucked for budding engineers and architects because the lengths and angles were pre-set, and you couldn't venture beyond certain trusses.

Hit send too soon --

The most bitchin' construction set were Montessori peas and straws -- they let you make any angle you wanted with any lengths you wanted.

Had both, plus Erector Sets

Lincoln Logs were fucking dreary. Though I had loads of them to work with (inherited from a much older brother), the possibilities were extremely limited: you could build a cabin, or some limited non-building-like "structures", but the module was really geared just to that one thing and even imaginative kids ran hard up against the limitations of the design. A goddamned log cabin. A rectangle with a pre-made green roof. Done. Next.

Weren't the Lincoln Logs plastic? They were in the 70's.

I preferred Lee Logs

[quote]The toy sets were originally made of redwood, with varying colors of roof pieces. In the 1970s the company unsuccessfully introduced sets made entirely of plastic, but soon reverted to real wood.

[quote] They were invented [in 1916] by John Lloyd Wright, second son of the architect Frank Lloyd Wright.

There were very few plastic toys in the '50s. No Legos, for example. Pretty much everything was wood or metal (Tonka trucks anyone?)

I prefer Captain's Logs myself.

r13 And did you throw them off the Tallahatchie Bridge?

Granny done throwd my Lincoln Logs inta the ceement pond, bless her heart. I had ta fish 'em out with a stick. Good thing they floated!

I used to make lovely little parasols from Tinker Toys which I would twirl coyly above my silken tressed head.

And then I'd go dial the phone with a pencil...

Didn't Bea Arthur leave one of those in Betty Whites dressing room?

I was a child of the 90s. We had K-Nex. They were awesome.

We were poor so I didn’t have character toys, but I did get a used set of Lincoln Logs. I created little villages and used the smallest pieces as people and created my own “characters” from Lincoln Logs.

I bought a set for my nephew. They were never used. Or even opened.