Rack Toys in your stocking

[RSS]

Hey, even Santa has a budget and shoving a cheap-o rack toy into your stocking is a time honoured, fun tradition. There's nothing particularly Christmassy about what's inside the display but it didn't matter. I've put together a collage of different Christmas dump bins (I'll always giggle when typing that word) from the shag decade.







A variety of Gordy items from 1979.




Surprise, surprise, Popeye got in on the action.


I love the graphics on this earlier Gordy santa box.


Seriously, that design is killer.




This is a Jak Pak display from 1986, if Inspector gadget wasn't a give away...





Nothing but rack toys and utility grade candy in there. It's the kind of thoughtless thing that one of your dad's co workers might give you and you'd probably think it was the best thing ever.




I closed my book with the above image from a 1976 catalog

. It's just so full of win.

For more Fashion Mockery and 70's toy love visit us at Plaid Stallions.com


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[ScottA]

When the stocking is taller than you are life is good.

[ctc]

Hmmmm....

Odd question; would the old pocketeers games be considered rack toys?

Don C.

[Earth 2 Chris]

When the stocking is taller than you are life is good.

Yes. I won one of those stockings when I was 4 years old or so, from the local grocery store. I think that was my peak in life. I was like Ralphie's old man and his "major award". I have no idea what was in it, but man, the sheer size of it was awesome!!!

Chris

[Actorman]

In the second picture... the third item in the second row (Richie Rich), is one of those "movie viewer" things I was trying to describe in the Space:1999 thread a week or so ago.

The thing that I love about these the most is how all of those different licensed characters from different companies were all together in the same bin under a generic banner. In that last picture alone you have Disney (Mickey Mouse), Warner Bros. (Bugs Bunny), Hanna-Barbera (Josie & The Pussycats, Inch High Private Eye), Filmation/Fox (Mighty Mouse), Walter Lantz/Universal (Woody Woodpecker) and Fleischer/Paramount (Popeye).

Nowdays, corporations are so protective and strict with their branding, trademarks and merchandising agreements, you never see stuff like this anymore.

[ddgaff1132]

Ah stocking stuffs. Opened Christmas Morn and broken by Christmas night. In our house the stocking was the domain for candy mostly. Though some of those candy's comprised a toy element too. The hollow tube candy cane filled with M&M's and the whistle built into the hook of the cane. Rack toy's were usually wrapped and added to our toy haul to max out the look of it.

[EmergencyIan]

I remember those huge stockings. Things have changed so much.

- Ian

[Werewolf]

You know, girls weren't terribly lucky when it came to rack toys. Boys got all kinds of cool toys. Army men, jigglers, squirt guns, cap guns, monsters, super heroes, cars, motorcycles and so on. Girls got garbage quality toy jewelry, scary ugly blow molded fashion dolls with a few sprigs of hair and hideous blow molded baby dolls that made the babies from It's Alive look cute in comparison.