Future Pilots in the '70s!

Someone said something the other day that sparked a memory and I had to write about it.  This was one of those times when I realized that we did a lot of simple things growing up and had a lot of fun doing them. 

We lived on the west side of Washington state, and we often vacationed on the east side of the Cascades.  It was almost always warm and sunny over there and we would go stay in campgrounds and state parks.

We often went to a place called Entiat, a beautiful state park on the Columbia River.  We would spend hours as kids playing in the river, playing frisbee, playing on the camping playground and generally just having a lot of fun being kids.

One thing that was a real treat was when we would go to the little general store in town and buy those little balsa wood airplanes that had the wind up rubber band to power the propeller.  Entiat was a nice park and had a huge green grassy area which was perfect for playing with these planes.  If I remember correctly, they came with an extra rubber band which was good, because that ended up being the limiting factor on how long the planes lasted.

The whole length of the park had a row of huge Poplar trees that acted as a windbreak and were cool to climb in.  Sometimes we had to climb the trees to retrieve our planes and we weren't always able to find or reach them.  I bet to this day you can still find 40 year old balsa wood plane skeletons in those trees.

Sometimes, we would splurge and spend a little bit extra to buy the planes that had the little set of wheels on them.  While the grass wasn't ideal for take offs and landings, it was really cool to have them and made us feel like we were running our own little airport.

These were really awesome and gave us hours and hours of outdoor, fresh air fun.  I bet kids to day would love to play with them, too.

Troll Dolls

So - I'm sure that I probably at least made mention of some of the toys that I grew up with here in my blog at one time or another, but I was just reminded of a certain one the other day.

Jimmy Fallon had Kyra Sedgwick on his show and she got to talking about how much loved those little Troll dolls.  And Jimmy loved them, too!  You remember them...the little yellow/fleshy skinned guys with huge frizzy wild colored hair and the funny little grin?!?

Notice the gemstone-less belly button!

Well, it turns out that there is quite a history behind these things.  The Troll dolls were originally known as Leprechauns, and were also known as Dam dolls, Gonks, Wishniks, Treasure Trolls and Norfins.  We only ever called them Trolls.  They were a huge fad from 1963 through 1965.  Their popularity faded out for awhile, but surged again for brief periods in the '70s, '80s and '90s and were made by a bunch of different manufacturers.

They were originally created in 1959 by a Danish fisherman and woodcutter named Thomas Dam - Hence the "Dam dolls" name.  He couldn't afford a Christmas gift for his youngest daughter and so he carved the doll from his imagination.  How cool is that?  These dolls that we all grew up with all came from him making a toy for his daughter!

Some of the clothes that the Troll dolls wore

We used to play with them - somehow it was ok for us boys to playing with "dolls" since they were Troll dolls!  We had clothes for them... we brushed their wild and colorful hair... we really did play with them.  Kind of weird now that I think about it.  But - it was a part of my growing up, it was a cool thing of the '70s (although I think I really did this more in the late '60s); and it's neat to look back on them now!

A boy Troll and girl Troll - It was all determined by colors

It seems like I couldn't find many pictures of the older ones.  The newer ones have gemstones in their belly buttons. Did you all have Troll dolls growing up?

Hot Wheels

What ‘70s blog would be complete without at least mentioning Hot Wheels? My brother and I were very fortunate in that we got a big incredible set as a base for our collection and then we got a second one. We also had the loop-de-loop set and a ton of cars.

There wasn’t a rainy day that could get us down. We’d set up huge track layouts – we had 2 superchargers, tons of curves and lots of awesome cars. We even had the little plastic clamps that connected onto the edge of a table or bookshelf. We had the really cool cases for our cars, and we even

had the little pins that went along with the cars.

Mom loved it – we’d be out of her hair for hours

on end, and the most it would cost her was a few

D size batteries. I wrote more about playing with Hot Wheels in my book, but I had to mention them here and throw in a few pictures to help us all remember.

Next time you’re at your folks house, you should grab a niece, nephew (or brother), pull whatever you have left of your Hot Wheels collection, and spend an afternoon reliving your race car memories.

The OJ Train

Ok – this one may be a bit obscure. I can’t even find anything about it on the web. When I was a little kid, so this would’ve been back in the mid to late ‘60s, my mom sent away for a kit in the mail that would use frozen orange juice cans to make little toy pull-along trains.

As best as I can recall, the kit contained a few different things. It had little axels that would poke through the lower edge of the sides of the cans with wheels on them so the cans could roll – they would resemble a fuel car. There was also some sort of connection pieces that would enable the cars to be connected together… I can’t remember if they were some little ball-joint hinges, or just a connecting string. I believe that it also came with auxiliary pieces that could be used to fashion an engine and a caboose out of cans. I don’t remember much else… were there decals to put on the cans? Was there a track that came with it? What all was included?


I do remember that it was a really special thing for us. While it may have seemed simple, it was exciting to build these trains out of empty frozen orange juice cans. They seemed to take on a magical quality when we got them done and could play with them. And of course – major props to the OJ company advertising exec that realized a great way to sell more orange juice. And I’m sure moms all over were happy that their kids wanted to drink more OJ so that they could build these trains. Between the excited and nourished kids, the happy moms and the spike in sales, it was definitely a win-win situation.

Does anyone else remember these?