i must have been before the Lego era. but one of the few good gifts/toys i got that i LOVED was a Kenner Panel & Girder Building Set:



i spent hours making things with it. my brother had a Lionel train set and my architectural marvels enhanced his set-up. then i was given another great gift - a slot-car racing set:



and that made the whole scene even cooler. being an "artsy-fartsy" kid - as Lancer says - i was more into customizing the little cars with paint and decals than actually racing them!

Lee

OMG Lee. I'd completely forgotten about the Kenner set! I made all kinds of skyscrapers and got frustrated when I ran out of the right window panels for my design. Sometimes, too, the little tabs on the ends of the red girders would wear out.

An artsy-fartsy frustration?

Crap. Now I have to go back to eBay and find that, too.

Will

Your airport puts my gas station to shame. Like you I could get lost for hours..days creating a massive lego city. Lego is one of the more 'constructive' toys for kids to play with.

Matchbox cars. YES. I forgot about those. I still have some of my favourite peices (57 Corvette Stingray, General Lee (Dukes of Hazzard, Car Carrier Truck etc etc). I gave the rest to my son and he loves them too. Although he is into Hotwheels more than Matchbox.
When I worked in an office I had one on my desk too.

We had this crappy little army tank handheld game and we loved it too.

Arr the memories.

Lee

Traveller

I have NEVER seen or heard of the Girder and Panel building sets...WOW looks like fun. What an education I am getting! I see it was made by the same people that made my Tree House (Kenner).

Was it a bit like Meccano?

I have 'heard' of slot car racing sets - but never seen one in real life. Awesome! Being arts-fartsy myself I probably would have been more into customizing the cars as well.

Lee

the girders were hard plastic and the panels were kind of flimsy but thin, stiff sheets of translucent plastic with different parts painted opaque - so that there were solid walls, full windows and partial windows, as well as doors, roofs, etc. like Lancer said, you often ran out of the style of panel you wanted to make the design consistent. It was the right scale for my cars - HO - but smaller scale than the train set.

the slot car set came with 4 cars - but 3 were grey and one red - BORING! i couldn't let that stand. it was also hard to tell who was winning if they were the same color. i left the Corvette red. the Mercedes i left grey. i painted the Jag white with flame decals. and i made the T-bird metallic blue. So cool!

Lee (either one):

I had the Tyco Night Glow "Empire 1000" slot car set. It had glow in the dark components like guard rails and lane stripes....and the cars had working headlights for racing in the dark.

I got it for Christmas from my grandparents when I was 6. I think it cost something like $75 dollars in the JC Penney catalog. That would probably be nearly $250 in today's money...wow!
Tyco Nightglow

There was a strange electric/ozone smell that the controllers gave off after playing with it for a long time.

Good times.

Will

OMGOMGOMGOMG!!!!! I had this...and the full Main Sub.

See you on ebay...gotta find one!!!!gotta find one!!!!gotta find one!!!!

I actually just found a bath-boy picture of me. No submarine toy to be found...which was weird cuz I never took a bath without toys-gallor.

wait....i have no money for this!

@FarmerBoy - we may all regret you started this thread

Got more ways to spend your money, guys. Remember the smell of burning plastic? Amazing I didn't burn down the house (like UL Listed meant anything):

My sisters had one. The finished items were around the house for many years. I remember everyone burned their fingers eventually.

That hot plastic did have a very unique smell.