Navy engineer Richard James invented the Slinky in 1943. The original design was made of steel and wiring, but the Slinky was later reimagined with plastic and funky colors. But who are we kidding? The steel ones are the champions at crawling down stairs.

Playing Monopoly is arguably a child’s first lesson in business and economics. The real estate board game launched in 1935 made us all fight over Boardwalk, Park Place and who got to be the thimble. All I cared about was owning the railroads to be honest.

We all knew the Etch-A-Sketch couldn’t make perfect circles like we wanted, but we silently played with it anyway. Red frame. Plastic white knobs. Shake the whole thing to erase. It was created in France and brought to America for sale in July 1960.

You never truly enjoyed Play-Doh unless you made a fake spaghetti dinner with the molding press that came with a jar of this compound. The toy traces its origins back to the 1930s, but since 1991 Hasbro has owned the goo made of flour, water, salt, boric acid and mineral oil.

Owning Mattel Hot Wheels cars was only half the adventure. Once you got a few plastic tracks to go with them, then you were really going hard. Mattel rolled out their first batch of these die-cast cars in 1968 and continues to make them today.