The Best of 1960s Games and Toys
A Fun Peek Back at 1960s Games and Toys That Deserve a Comeback—and a Few That Never Went Away
At Boom Again, we’re big fans of games and toys, being a game ourselves and all. We specialize in the Baby Boom era—and if ever there was a time when what kids played with was at its most interesting and inventive, it was at the height of the boom back then, and 1960s games boomed, also.
Here, we take a look at the 1960s games and toys that are sure to spark fond memories for Baby Boomers.
Boys finally had an excuse to play with dolls
Think of all those poor boys who perhaps wanted to play with dolls but would have been teased back in those days. Then in the mid-1960s, Hasbro introduced G.I. Joe. Similar in size to a Barbie, this mini-military man wasn’t a doll, he was an action figure.
As a plus for girls, if your parents were too cheap to buy you a Ken doll as a beau for your Barbie, your brother’s G.I. Joe made a good stand-in.
1960s games secretly rewarded responsibility: The Game of Life
Milton Bradley released The Game of Life in 1960 to celebrate post-WWII values like going to college, getting a job, finding a spouse, and banging out kid after kid after kid (pretty symbolic of the Baby Boom when you think about it).
It may have its roots in responsibility, but the game has since become one of the best-selling games of all time.
“If you want to bake, you can just use my oven”
To a kid who wanted an Easy-Bake Oven but whose mom wasn’t bolting to the toy store to buy one, no more annoying words were ever spoken.
The thrill of the Easy-Bake oven wasn’t baking something. It was baking something tiny. Using only the heat from a light bulb. How on earth could any parent think a normal oven could possibly compete with that? Maybe this was less of a 1960s game, and more of an activity, but the point is the same.
What was better than robots? Space robots that fight!
Red Rocker and Blue Bomber took to the ring in Rock ‘Em, Sock ‘Em Robots. Players controlled their punches by pushing a plunger on a joystick. The first to knock the block off their opponent was the winner. It was a great way to throw a few punches without anyone getting hurt.
And speaking of action-packed 1960s games… what list would be complete without Twister?
Twister is such a classic, you might be surprised to learn that when it came out in 1966, it wasn’t an instant hit. Then Johnny Carson played it with actress Eva Gabor on The Tonight Show, and suddenly everybody was shouting, “Right foot red! Left-arm blue!”
The ’60s also brought the bounciest ball we’d ever seen
What was made of polybutadiene, hydrated silica, zinc oxide, stearic acid and could leap up tall buildings in a single bounce? It was Wham-O’s Super Ball! Though smaller than a golf ball, what it lacked in size it made up for in bounce.
It’s said that this 1960s game started as a pencil and paper game in the early 1900s
It eventually became what we know as Battleship. In this two-player board game, players set plastic “battleships” on a tiny grid, calling out coordinates to try to sink each other’s ships. You almost didn’t mind losing because then you got to shout out, “You sunk my battleship!”
Open the door to your…Mystery Date
Long before online dating, girls could try their luck finding a blind date with a roll of the die. The game came with a door in the center of the board that you would open to reveal your date. Would it be the dreamboat in the tux? Or the “dud?” (Though the dud was merely dressed a little sloppily and during the grunge phase of the 1990s would have probably been deemed a catch.)
Jacks was an updated version of ancient activity
It used to be played using the tiny ankle bones of sheep—but Boomers instead used six-pointed metal pieces. You’d scatter them on the ground, then at the bounce of a rubber ball, try to collect “onesies,” then “twosies,” and so on.
And last but not least…Mouse Trap
This was as much a building activity as a game, in which players took turns to construct an elaborate mousetrap while trying to capture each other’s mice.
Of course, the list of what we played with during the 1960s is too long to include all of it here—heck, Boomers even made of the game out of putting tiny faces on plastic potatoes. What was your favorite game or toy of the era?
***Follow our BLOG. Be sure to check out Boom Again® on Facebook, Instagram, & Twitter***