Here are four toy commercials from the sixties. First up is one for Slinky, which was one of those toys that was just fun to have around to keep your hands busy. In the commercial, which is from around sixty years ago, it says you can buy a Slinky for "under a dollar" — which, as I learned at a very young age means 99 cents and no less. I was curious as to what they sell for today and was impressed to find that you can order a Slinky from Amazon (here's the link) for only $3.39. I can't think of too many things that have gone up so little in price over that time period.
Next is Mr. Machine, an Ideal toy which encouraged you to take it apart and put it back together. Two different friends of mine back in my youth managed the first part, were unable to accomplish the second and had to call me in it show them how it was done. In both cases, I did this by trying something that had apparently not occurred to either of them: Reading and following the instructions. Danny watched me put it back together and thought, "If Mark can do it, I can do it," whereupon he immediately took it apart again…and discovered he couldn't do what Mark had done. That was around 1964 and as far as I know, he's still working on it.
Third, we have a spot with a couple of Hasbro products with a cartoon kid whose voice was done by Mae Questel, best known as the voice of Olive Oyl and Betty Boop. And then we have everyone's favorite plastic pugilists, the Rock 'em, Sock 'em Robots. You can still buy the robots for $18 and I just discovered there's a version of the game where Superman and Batman try to knock each other's block off…