The Mattel Spinwelder was the coolest Christmas gift of the 1970s
I never had the Spinwelder but remember seeing it in the back of the Sears catalog. One of my favorite toys as a 70's kid, the Vertibird toy helicopter:<p><a href="http://www.timepassagesnostalgia.com/&searchkeywords=vertibird&sis=-1&rdir=1" rel="nofollow">http://www.timepassagesnostalgia.com/&searchkeywords=vertibi...</a><p>Like any good helicopter toy I was unable to fly it when I first woke up on Christmas and shoved the batteries in. You actually had to control the lift (not a collective but speed control on the rotor) and the pitch. Too much pitch and you lose lift so had to compensate with extra lift.<p>By the New Years I was flying like a pro, swinging around and pulling back on the pitch to reverse thrust and stop over a dime....<p>My favorite "make stuff toys" of the 70's were my Erector set and Lego set of course.<p>But then I also had this trippy Buckminster-Fuller-meets-Light-Bright building toy called an Astrolite:<p><a href="https://blog.adafruit.com/2019/01/16/vintage-toy-fun-astrolite-by-hasbro-1969-toys-adafruit-hasbro-adafruit/" rel="nofollow">https://blog.adafruit.com/2019/01/16/vintage-toy-fun-astroli...</a>