Favorite toys as a child ?

I was the only person in my family that was really into cars. I loved to watch whatever racing they had on Wide World of Sports. I always read Hot Rod and Car Craft in our elementary school library, like over and over again. I drew a lot of cars. My grandmother always said I could name all the cars on the road as soon as I could talk.

But yeah, I had a Big Wheel of course, a huge box of Lego, Tonka trucks, Tinker Toys, Lincoln Logs, Aurora A/FX and a ton of Hot Wheels with all the associated tracks, loops and ramps. I loved running the tracks down the stairs to a ramp where I'd crash the cars into blocks.

I can remember flipping baseball cards a lot. One of my friends had Pong in the late 70s, that was cool. I think we got Atari around 1980 maybe? There was a short time where some of us played Dungeons and Dragons but it always seemed to end poorly. Kinda boring anyway, not my thing. Never really had an interest in action figures, models or guns. My dad tried to get my brother and I into electric trains but that never got off the ground.

Before BMX became real popular (late 70s) me and a few kids in my area transformed our banana seat bikes into BMX style bikes - knobby tires, BMX seats and handle bars, etc. Formative hot rodding.

Really though, after I was about 6 or 7 I was hardly inside at all. There were a lot of kids my age in our hood, we were outside from morning until dark playing sports, playing in the dirt, the woods, the street, our yards - we rode bikes, lit stuff on fire, played pond hockey etc. I seriously can not remember being inside at all, even if it was raining or cold.

I was very jealous though when my neighbors got dirtbikes and snowmobiles when we were around 11 or 12. I was really into motocross at the time, I don't think my parents realized the depth of my interest. They got me a tricked out BMX bike instead but I really didn't care about it that much, was like a consolation prize. Became a punker/skateboarder soon afterwards and never looked back.

Funny too, first thing I did when I moved out on my own and had enough money to do what I wanted was buy an old car I could wrench on. My interest in hands on mechanical stuff from my childhood never left me.