15 Aussie Boys' Toys From The 1960s And 70s That Are Gone Forever

Every Aussie boy who grew up in the 1960s and 70s woke up on Christmas morning to one of these toys sitting under the tree, and not one of them is being made anymore. The factories are gone. The men who built them are gone. The hands that turned a screw or wound a clockwork motor or burned themselves on a hot plate are sixty years older now. We count down fifteen Aussie boys' toys that are GONE FOREVER. The original Gilbert Chemistry Set with real sulfur, gone when A.C. Gilbert folded in 1967. The Mattel Vac-U-Form with its factory-fire smell. The Creepy Crawlers Thingmaker that burned every boy's fingers. Super Elastic Bubble Plastic, pulled for chemical fumes. Clackers — banned across Australia between 1971 and 1973 after acrylic balls shattered into shrapnel. The original Coca-Cola Russell Yo-Yo, twenty cents in 1966, when Aussie schools held the only official tournaments outside America. Louis Marx tinplate playsets — liquidated by Chemical Bank in 1980. Lone Star cap guns with the burned-saltpetre smell, killed by Vietnam War news. Cox point-forty-nine petrol engines with their castor-oil scream — closed forever in 1996. Aurora monster model kits — Frankenstein, Dracula, the Wolfman — built with Testor's enamel glue on the kitchen table. Aurora Model Motoring slot cars on Christmas morning. Meccano — the wonder toy of the British Empire, the Xbox of two generations of Aussie boys, killed when Lines Brothers bought Frank Hornby's company in 1964. Ferris Toys — heavy Aussie pressed steel, now only in glass cases in regional museums. Robilt of Sandringham — tinplate clockwork Spirit of Progress locomotives, Peters Ice Cream goods wagons, Golden Fleece tankers. And at number one — Boomaroo and Wyn-Toys. Hugh Watt Findlay deaf from scarlet fever, Alec Tonkin home from the AIF. Two Aussie men. Two Aussie factories. Two Aussie childhoods stamped on the side of every truck. We are the last generation that opened a metal box on Christmas morning and looked up at our father in the kitchen doorway and knew, without being told, that we were loved.