I remember all of them, but I had very few. I and everyone I knew had a nerf football and most had a little nerf basketball and hoop. My older siblings had a Spirograph.

No kid played Boggle. Only middle-aged Moms.

I was all about Megos and Big Jim’s pack.

Conspicuously missing you me is Evel Knievel. Those toys were huge. And hand-held electronic football.

I had pretty well stopped doing toys by the time Star Wars came along.

We had in our house at various points in time:

Atari 2600
Rubik's Cube
Six Million Man Action Figures
Boggle (one of my mom's favorite games)
Nerf football, basketball and soccer ball
Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots
Battleship
Simon
Kenner Star Wars figures
had Stretch figures of super-heroes but not Stretch Armstorng itself



and knew people who had:
Pet Rock (an uncle)
Weebles-many of the kids of my parents' friends
Connect Four (same as above)
Hungry, Hungry, Hippos (cousins)
Easy Bake Oven (cousins)
Lite Brite (family friends' kids)
Shrinky Dinks (cousins)
Spirograph (at my grandmother's house for grandkids to use)


Slam_Bradley brought up Mego and Big Jim, Megos were big and I had friends form school who had Big Jim but I didn't. Someone mentioned Evel Knieval, I had a few of those. SSP pull string racers (and demolition derby which I had), Hot Wheels/Matchbox cars, View Master and G.I. Joe Adventure Team (the 12 inch line and Super Joe-the 8 inch line) were ubiquitous toy lines not mentioned here that were common with me and my friends and family. Holly Hobby was equal with Easy Bake ovens among female cousins and family friends (not to mention Barbie).

The following board games were also ubiquitous in the toy closets at my house, cousins' houses, friends houses etc. in the time frame covered here

Monopoly
Pay Day
Life
Trouble (with pop up die roller)
Stratego
Risk
Candy Land
Chutes and Ladders
Scrabble
Sorry
Parcheesi
Trivial Pursuit (at the very tail end of the period circa '82)
Hangman (the Milton Bradley version with I think Vincent Price on the game box)
Star Wars: Escape from the Death Star
Mastermind (it was in every classroom that had games for recess for kids in it I was in in 2 different states and 5 different school systems)

and as Slam also mentioned, lots of handheld electronic sports games (we had Mattel Football and Coleco Head to Head Baseball and Basketball plus a handheld Space Invaders game).

There was a period of about 4-5 years in the mid-late 70s where my mom would take toy related Christmas jobs, she worked at Child World for a couple of those and at the Milton Bradly electronic games plant which was only a few towns over form us in the late 70s, which with the extra income and employee discounts fueled some toy heavy Christmases during that period (but the only other time I ever got new toys during the year was birthday and occasionally for an exceptional report card.

-M

I had a 2600 daisy-chained up to my HD TV until someone showed me how to hack my Nintendo Wii so that I can play 2600 games with wireless wiimotes in gorgeous near-HD definition. It's funny - the later generation consoles look terrible on a big HD screen, but the simplistic graphics of the Atari remain exactly the same when expanded and cleaned up. There is no better way to play Pong Sports!

I've seen a few, but I think all or most were British in origin. I guess the most comparable thing in the US would be loot crates. People subscribe to receive monthly boxes of assorted merchandise, focused around their area of interest.

Vaguely remember these: