I can't resist telling this story: As a little kid, I could not figure out why my erector set was so superior to all of my friends' kits. I finally asked my parents about it: My grandfather worked for AC Gilbert as a tool and die maker, and he made a lot of the original tooling for the erector set. (We had the original big red metal box filled with pieces (from the 30s?), and another cardboard box with the overflow.)

We also had a killer American Flyer train set (also an AC Gilbert product), and the Lead Castor kit: Molten lead for kids! Hard to imagine in the current age. https://picclick.com/Vintage-Ac-Gilbert-Kaster-Kit-Furnace-T...

Fortunately, we did not have the Gilbert Atomic Energy Kit. I probably lost enough brain cells on the lead.

I assumed this was a joke but I googled it in the off-chance that it wasn't, and I'm glad I did. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilbert_U-238_Atomic_Energy_La...

There's something about toys like that at a formative period in your development that means that small details seem to stick in your memory. I can even now remember the feel or the rotating spring that took the horizontal rotation of the shaft through 90 degrees to meet to the propeller blades, and which wobbled to a blur when the machine was running.

I seem to remember it didn't hurt much when you got hit by it, and you could trip over it repeatedly without breaking it, so it was very well designed for a typical 8 year old.

I didn't have the erector set, but plenty of lego. The technics stuff had come out and I built all sorts of stuff with it. I remember getting this http://technicopedia.com/853.html which was released in 1977 for christmas.

The Legos I had in the 70s did not have any mini figures (did they exist in the US at that time? None of my friends had any either) and there parts were only a few standard sizes as I recall (no small ones like today). I don’t even remember “kits” so much as “here’s a bunch of Legos, go build something” like another version of blocks of Lincoln Logs.

Did you actually have kits with build instructions that came with the kit?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girder_and_Panel_building_sets

What I really liked to do with them is to make all kinds of all-terrain trucks with lots of wheels and stuff. This was all just from imagination, and they I came up with fresh designs every time.

I really don't understand what people do these days, with kits that are supposed to be assembled just so. I mean, I get that people like to build scale models, but why not just do that? With lego, it's not going to look like the real thing anyway, so why not use it for your own expression?

I remembered the JC Penny's and Toys R Us catalogs but forgot about the sears toys sections!