The 20 best geek toys from your childhood
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Darth Vader Collectors Set
Darth Vader Collectors Set
This giant Vader head filled with action figures was fun for generations of wannabe Jedis.
First introduced: 1980
100 in 1 Electronics Kit
100 in 1 Electronics Kit
These electronics kits let kids build oscillators, radios, light fixtures and more with no soldering irons or parents (!!!) in sight.
First introduced: 1955-1960
Creepy Crawlers
Creepy Crawlers
Creepy Crawlers featured a substance called Plastigoop, plus metal molds and a 390-degree oven, none of which would be involved in a children’s toy in the 21st century. Just make sure not to mix up your Creepy Crawlers with …
First introduced: 1964
Doctor Dreadful Food Lab
Doctor Dreadful Food Lab
Creepy Crawlers … that you could eat!
First introduced: 1994
Etch-A-Sketch Animator
Etch-A-Sketch Animator
It’s a far cry from the animation apps for iPad that the youths have today, but this toy did feature a dot matrix, a few kilobytes of memory and speakers that played a shuffling, static sound whenever the knobs were turned or animations were played.
First introduced: 1986
NES Power Glove
NES Power Glove
Only the coolest geeks in the neighborhood had this only semi-useful toy. While you could play any Nintendo game with the forearm buttons on the Power Glove, the two games that used the hand and arm gestures didn’t sell particularly well. Super Glove Ball and Bad Street Baller were the only two games that were ever made compatible with the glove.
First introduced: 1989
Erector Set
Erector Set
Erector Sets were certainly more complex than your average building blocks. Budding engineers could tinker away with small, sharp pieces of metal to build cool machines like cars and tiny cranes. They’ve been around for more than 100 years.
First introduced: 1913
Capsela
Capsela
Capsela allowed kids to build motorized machines with parts including wires, battery holders and propellers.
First introduced: 1978
Verbot
Verbot
Tomy’s voice-activated robot could perform eight commands, but you weren’t limited to using the stock vocabulary to trigger said commands. Creative kids could program any number of profanities to direct this robot to do things like move left, right, back and forth.
First introduced: 1984
Alphie Robot
Alphie Robot
Playskool’s educational robot was the humanoid droid for the youngest geeks in the game. Alphie helped young children learn things like math, spelling and matching.
First introduced: 1978
Nintendo Game & Watch
Nintendo Game & Watch
Before the Game Boy, there was the Nintendo Game & Watch series. Many of the Game & Watch series featured Game A and Game B buttons that corresponded to difficulty levels of the same game.
First introduced: 1980
Speak & Spell
Speak & Spell
Speak & Spell featured a few different games, including the original spelling game, a game that turned words into secret code and an electronic version of hangman.
First introduced: 1978
Jetfire Transformer
Jetfire Transformer
This Transformer was one of the hardest to track down, so if Santa managed to find one for you, you probably had a sizeable geek entourage.
First introduced: 1985
Boombox
Boombox
So they weren’t really toys per se, but when you’re a kid, anything can be a toy. Once you figured out how to record your own voice between songs on a cassette tape, the sky was the limit.
First introduced: mid-1970s
Rock Tumbler
Rock Tumbler
Rock tumblers have weathered the storm of the safety revolution in children’s toys and are still available today. The rotating chamber buffs and polishes rough-surfaced rocks into smooth, shiny pebbles.
First introduced: 1950s
Star Trek Playset
Star Trek Playset
Before the Millennium Falcon, there was the U.S.S. Enterprise, capturing the imaginations of child geeks and boldly going where no kid had gone before.
First introduced: 1975
Talkboy
Talkboy
Kevin McCallister used the Talkboy to pitch down his voice and make dinner reservations at New York City’s Plaza Hotel in the 1992 classic Home Alone 2: Lost In New York.
First introduced: 1992
Tomy Turnin' Turbo
Tomy Turnin' Turbo
This was basically immersive arcade driving for mice … or very tiny kid hands.
First introduced: 1983
Nickelodeon Director's Lab
Nickelodeon Director's Lab
Kids in the ’90s saw an influx of software-based toys, including this unusual game hosted by Melissa Joan Hart. It allowed children to edit thunder cuts of slimy, neon Nickelodeon b-roll. It also prepared a generation for a rudimentary understanding of Final Cut Pro.
First introduced: 1994
Number Munchers
Number Munchers
Games like Number Munchers and Dinosaur Park Tycoon taught kids valuable lessons about life. Number Munchers specifically primed your developing brain to be able to handle intense math-based performance anxiety.
First introduced: 1986
