Construction toys
Dan and I were thinking about some of the toys we had when we were little. Since we're about the same age and apparently come from a similar enough background, we both easily remembered enjoying the same things: BRIO, Darda, Construx, and Capsela. All of these have in common that they are modular toys which allow the user to put the pieces together in various configurations which will work slightly differently; they let you build something according to your own designs. We could also compare Lego, although for some reason I was never as enthusiastic about Lego as about the four I've just mentioned. To this day I feel extremely nostalgic about each of them (although I spent the most time with BRIO and Construx and feel most nostalgic about those two).
Another modular construction-oriented toy of which I was aware was the Erector Set, although I never really got involved with that. I hear that it's led some people into mechanical or civil engineering careers.
In my childhood we also had Lego/Logo (which was a great privilege reserved for the exclusive use of the sixth graders*) but nowadays they have the reportedly much more exciting Lego Mindstorms, which is so geeky that there are two No Starch books and at least one O'Reilly book published about it.
It's nice to remember how much creativity these modular toys seemed to allow kids -- and to hear anecdotes about how even adults find them fun to play with.
* This is true. At my elementary school there were computer classes for fourth, fifth, and sixth graders, which were all taught in Logo at the time (using LogoWriter, a now abandonware Logo implementation, on PC-DOS). Sixth graders got to use Lego/Logo to build vehicles in conjunction with regular academic coursework on "simple machines" (in which we learned about mechanical advantage, pulleys, and the three classes of lever). This made some fourth and fifth graders extremely jealous. I remember having a dream in fifth grade that I was already in sixth grade and got to build Lego robots with our computer teacher Peggy. Vivant toys that you can build things out of!
