Of the toys I remember playing with as a youth, the best were the ones that fostered creativity by allowing me to assemble various pieces and parts into a whole of my own devising. These are the top five.
Radio Shack Electronics Learning Lab
My Dad’s Dad was forever getting my brother and I Christmas gifts from Radio Shack and these sets were the cream of the crop. You were presented with a web of loose wires which you would attach, via tiny spring-coil connectors mounted on a circuit board, to resistors, capacitors, a LED, and—the pièce de résistance—a piezo buzzer. With it, you could fashion a burglar alarm that would trip the buzzer when a wire was disconnected from a circuit. But they never provided a wire long enough to make it effective. So if you wanted to burglar-protect a foot-wide area, and were certain your burglar would be stupid or lucky enough to disconnect just the right wire, you were safe.
Capsela
Capsela were the gold standard of modular building, by which I mean the most expensive. The clear plastic spheres contained motors and rotors and could be interlocked via sockets. You could make motorized stuff like hovercrafts and windmills. Complicated stuff, and lots of D batteries.
Lincoln Logs
Was there a smell as capital as the fresh wood blast that hit you upon opening a canister of Lincoln Logs? Maybe only the smell of a fresh 64-count box of Crayolas (with sharpener!) smelled better, but not by much. What you could make with these was limited: a Unabomber cabin, two small cabins or a duplex cabin. If you were feeling adventurous and had two sets of Logs, you could create a castle or a Branch Davidian Compound. And if you were of a certain age, these were great to teethe on, particularly those slats meant for roofing. It was good to mix and match Lincoln Logs with Matchbox cars or Fisher-Price Little People so you at least you had someone to live in your damn cabin. What is it that makes me think our President really likes Lincoln Logs?
Lego
My brother was always more into these than I was. Although it was against the Lego Code, it was fun to mix sets, so you could have, say, a space station on your pirate ship, or a tree sprouting from your Lego Person’s head.
Tinkertoys
The coolest thing you could make with these was a giant jungle gym-like cube, or possibly a windmill. Grandma had a set of these in a musty closet upstairs and they were only to be played with as a last resort. Played with, that is, until dissolving into whipping those wooden honeycombed discs at someone in an all-out mêlée.