As with the race track, the magic set advertised in the video was not the one I owned.  Come to think of it, I had more than one set.  One had pictures of the classic magicians (Houdini, Thurston, etc.).  Heck, I don’t even remember what the tricks were. But I knew that just as I had wanted to be a Dominos guy, I wanted to be a magician, and I just loved having the sets I owned. If I could only remember what was inside them. Hmmm…..

Punching Bag + Socker Boppers = Fun Fun Fun!  I couldn’t find a vintage ad, so here’s a modern clip of some kid beating the shit out of Spiderman!

When I was growing up, there was no YouTube, no smartphones or tablets either.  No hand-held device for watching videos. But I had the Viewmaster and it was cool!

For me, dominos was never about “matching the dots”, or whatever the official rules are for game play. They are for setting up and knocking down as shown in the video.  Growing up, I watched a TV show called “That’s Incredible!”  The show was filled with stunt men and daredevils,  ghostly haunts and other supernatural stuff. Oh, and dominos competitions.    I was always amazed at what they got the dominos to do when the fell one after another.  I remember once falling dominos set of a rocket!

At one point as a kid, I thought I could be a domino showman when I grew up. I really thought this was a career (grown men were doing this on TV, how could it not be a career? LOL)   I would try setups of my own.  Nothing like in the video (of course not!), but I was able to arrange it so a domino fell into a toy car, the toy car rolled down a slanted ruler, only to knock over more dominos!  I was so excited to impress my family, that on Christmas Eve (after receiving more dominos as a gift), I ran to a kitchen drawer at my mom’s new place searching for a ruler.  I yanked at it and discovered it wasn’t a drawer at all.  It was a decoration with a fake wooded plate that mimicked a drawer. It fell onto my bare toe and two days later the poor toe at to be treated in the emergency room.  That might have ended my dominos career.

*****As a side note, I had a game “Domino Rally!”  It had plastic setups, ramps and miniature staircases.  I never like the game much.  It didn’t work as well as it did in the commercials.

Making letters fun and decorating them on blocks was one of the best ideas for educational toys.  I remember having a red sack filled with them. Supposedly at a very young age, I learned the alphabet thanks to blocks such as these (That’s what they told me anyway)  This might be higher on the list if I remembered more about them.