In August 1975, Gary Dahl introduced his Pet Rock in San Francisco, Calif. The version of the Etch A Sketch that fills toy store shelves today is still essentially identical to the Etch A Sketch that ruled the '70s. Still, when commercials for the Etch A Sketch began airing in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the toy's popularity reached new heights. markets just in time for Christmas, the aluminum powder drawing toy was an instant success. paid French electrician Andre Cassagnes $25,000 for the rights to his new invention: the Etch A Sketch. Playsets, like the Weeble house, circus, and haunted house followed, expanding the Weebles into a bona fide empire by the end of the decade. Released by Romper Room in 1969, the egg-shaped figurines with an impressive ability to balance, were originally a brightly colored nuclear family: Dad Weeble, Mom Weeble, brother, sister, and baby Weeble, and even a family dog Weeble. "Weebles wobble, they don't fall down!" was the tagline for one of the 1970s most popular plastic toys, Weebles. Soft and squishy, these balls cause little damage when tossed around indoors, making them popular toys with generations of children. Parker Brothers debuted the first Nerf ball in 1969, a four-inch polyurethane foam ball marketed as "the world's first indoor ball." An instant hit, it didn't take long for the company to work on a whole range of Nerf products, including the Nerf football, which debuted in 1972. You may also like: Scientific breakthroughs from the year you were born Nerf ball From Stretch Armstrong to Pet Rocks to an updated Easy-Bake Oven, scroll through the list and take a trip down memory lane to recall some highlights of the often-overlooked '70s. In this article, Stacker used historical and retail websites to compile a list of 30 toys popular in the United States in the 1970s, many of which remain popular today. Also, toy companies seriously stepped up their game, producing some truly iconic playthings throughout the decade, and revolutionizing the industry. For example, Apple Computers was founded in 1976, Star Wars premiered in 1977, and Mother Teresa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979. The decade had its fair share of positive moments. According to American Heritage, this makes notions our culture used to take for granted, like deferred gratification, sacrifice, and sustained national effort a "hard sell."īut not everything that came out of the '70s was bad. Second, American culture, as a whole, is much more individualistic and far less communitarian than it was before the decade. Since the close of the '70s, this no longer is true. First, before the decade every class, culture, and industry was an upwardly mobile one. While it remains true that the '70s are often overlooked and undervalued, the decade did have several long-lasting, decidedly negative effects on American culture. Smashed between the white-hot 1960s and the "greed is good" attitude of the materialistic 1980s, the 1970s seem, at best, a troubled decade, primarily defined by the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal. But then nothing much is going to happen in the 1970s anyway." And for a time that prediction seemed to ring true. In a 1973 letter to a colleague, then-ambassador to India Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote "That's it.
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