The 70s were a playground for learning courage, one scraped knee and one wobbly masterpiece at a time.
I’m too young to actually remember the 70s (my aunt is the keeper of those stories in our family), but I’ve spent enough time soaking up her memories and rummaging through attic boxes to recognize this truth: if these seven treasures lived in your house, you likely had a golden-ticket childhood.
The 1970s weren’t just bell-bottoms and disco balls; they were a masterclass in hands-on, imagination-first fun.
Below, I’ll walk you through the icons that defined that era’s playtime and the tiny life-lessons tucked inside each one.
1) The Big Wheel (and the sacred art of skidding sideways)
Ask my aunt about freedom, and she doesn’t talk about driver’s licenses; she talks about the Big Wheel.
Low-slung, all-plastic, and indestructible, it turned every driveway into a speedway. Kids learned physics without knowing the word: friction from sneakers as brakes, momentum into cul-de-sacs, and how to handle a dramatic sideways skid without tipping over (most of the time).
Why it mattered: The Big Wheel was confidence on three wheels. There were no apps or power assist. It was just your legs, your balance, and your willingness to try again after a knee scrape.
2) Polaroid SX-70 (instant magic, instant community)
Picture this: push a button, hear a satisfying whrrrrp, and a square of possibility slides into your hand. The Polaroid SX-70 didn’t just make photos; it made moments.
Family cookouts, birthday candles, the neighbor’s shaggy dog: snap, shake, and gather. Everyone hovered around, watching the image bloom like a tiny miracle.
Why it mattered: The SX-70 brought creativity into the living room. Kids learned framing, timing, and patience. Shaking the photo didn’t actually speed things up, but it felt like it did. It also created instant communities: “Can I see? Can I keep this one?”
3) Atari 2600 (8-bit wonder, infinite imagination)
By today’s standards, the graphics were blocky and the sound effects, adorable. But in 1977, an Atari 2600 at home felt like beaming into the future. Pong duels pulled siblings together. Space Invaders turned basements into arcades.
And the joystick, with one button and one stem, was the kind of elegant simplicity UX designers still chase.
Why it mattered: Atari taught strategic thinking, hand-eye coordination, and the joy of incremental mastery. High scores weren’t about beating the world; they were about beating yesterday you.
4) Shrinky Dinks (tiny plastic, huge wonder)
If you know, you know. Shrinky Dinks were like alchemy for kids: draw on flexible plastic sheets, cut your shapes, then watch in awe as your creation curled, shrank, and hardened in the oven. A doodle transformed into a charm you could hold forever.
Why it mattered: This was tactile, risky-feeling creativity. You measured twice before cutting. You placed pieces carefully on the baking tray. You learned that transformation takes heat, and that the results are smaller, but somehow sturdier, than what you started with.
5) Lite-Brite (glowing pixels before pixels)
Before tablets, there was a black screen, a box of colored pegs, and a tiny light bulb that made everything glow. Lite-Brite was meditative. You punctured patterns through the paper template or went rogue and designed your own sky. When the lamp clicked on, small dots of color became a neon galaxy.
Why it mattered: It trained attention and rewarded patience. Kids learned that a picture is just a hundred tiny decisions, placed well. And when a peg popped loose, you didn’t despair; you nudged it back and kept going.
6) Mood rings (feelings, fashioned into jewelry)
Technically a novelty, emotionally a conversation starter, mood rings turned body temperature into color shifts you could wear.
Was it pseudoscience? Absolutely.
Did it spark chats about feelings and “what color are you today?” Definitely.
Why it mattered: A mood ring was permission to talk about inner weather. It promoted curiosity about emotions, your own and your friends’, long before “emotional literacy” became a buzzword.
7) Star Wars action figures (epic stories, pocket-sized)
After 1977, lunchboxes, playrooms, and backyards were populated by rebels and droids. Star Wars figures had stiff elbows and stoic faces, but kids animated them with sprawling plots. The sandbox was Tatooine. The staircase was a starship. You didn’t need CGI when you had a broomstick for a lightsaber.
Why it mattered: These figures were catalysts, not crutches. The sparse details invited kids to supply the rest. Whole moral universes were negotiated between siblings: who gets to be Han, what counts as a fair trade for a cape, and whether the dog might, in fact, be a Wookiee.
A quick, modern note on reclaiming that 70s ease
I’ve been thinking a lot about how we can pull the fearless, messy delight of the 70s into our hyper-optimized lives.
Recently, I picked up Rudá Iandê’s new book, Laughing in the Face of Chaos: A Politically Incorrect Shamanic Guide for Modern Life. I know I’ve mentioned this book before, and I’m bringing it up again because I just read it and it genuinely helped me reconnect with that adventurous, try-it spirit my aunt talks about.
I won’t go into my personal situation in detail, but his insights nudged me to loosen my grip on perfection and experiment more, for example, taking a long walk before opening my laptop or letting a creative project be gloriously “in progress” in public.
One line that landed for me was: “When we stop resisting ourselves, we become whole. And in that wholeness, we discover a reservoir of strength, creativity, and resilience we never knew we had.” That is the same energy I feel in those 70s relics: scuffed plastic, sun-washed Polaroids, cartridges that needed a little blown-on luck to work.
If a small part of you misses the backyard risks and driveway victories, the book inspired me to treat daily life like a playground again, with fewer filters, more first drafts, and more skids across the pavement. If that resonates, check out Rudá Iandê’s work; his perspective is refreshingly human.
Why these seven things made your childhood feel epic
Looking back (and borrowing generously from my aunt’s memory reels), it’s easy to see the common thread: ownership of experience. Nothing here was passive.
Even Atari, the most “plugged in” item on the list, asked you to practice, fail, learn the patterns, and adapt. The 70s were full of imperfections, like the smudged Polaroid, the wobbly Lite-Brite pattern, and the Shrinky Dink that curled a little too much, and yet those imperfections became the story. They taught self-trust.
That’s why these items, modest as they were, felt like superpowers:
Embodiment: From Big Wheels to mood rings, your body was the instrument. You learned to read your own signals, balance, breath, and nerves.
Creation over consumption: You didn’t just watch; you made. Peg by peg, bead by bead, brick by brick.
Community in the small moments: Instant photos shared around a kitchen table; two controllers, one TV; siblings hammering out trade deals over action figures.
Resilience baked in: When the joystick drifted, you compensated. When a Shrinky Dink folded wrong, you tried again. When you wiped out on the sidewalk, you wore the bandage like a medal.
Those micro-lessons scale up. In adulthood, resilience is just falling off the Big Wheel and deciding you still want to ride. Creativity is Lite-Brite for your career, a series of tiny lit decisions that, together, glow. Emotional intelligence is the grown-up version of the mood ring, not perfect but a consistent check-in that keeps you aligned.
How to bring the 70s back (without a time machine)
If you don’t own these relics anymore, you can still borrow their spirit:
Make something you can touch. Print a photo, glue a collage, bake a loaf of bread. Let it be imperfect, and let it be seen.
Practice beginner’s joy. Pick one retro skill you never had: yo-yo tricks, a simple magic routine, a basic arcade game. Mastery is nice; momentum is better.
Engineer tiny friction. Walk to the store. Write by hand for fifteen minutes. Let your mind amble.
Play with your emotions, don’t police them. Name today’s “color.” Ask a friend theirs. Mood rings weren’t accurate; they were invitations to talk.
And yes, this is where I circle back to Rudá Iandê. I’m careful about what I recommend, but Laughing in the Face of Chaos: A Politically Incorrect Shamanic Guide for Modern Life met me exactly where I was (busy, a bit brittle, craving more aliveness) and gave me simple practices to loosen up.
Not a rigid system. Not another rulebook.
Just roomy guidance that echoes the 70s vibe of experimenting first and polishing later.
The takeaway
If these seven items live in your memory box, you probably didn’t just have great toys; you had a built-in curriculum for being human.
You learned to try, to share, to start over, to feel, to invent. That’s a pretty unbeatable childhood. And it’s not gone. It’s just waiting for you in ordinary places: a blank page, a long sidewalk, a photo you decide to print, a wobbly first draft, a conversation that starts with “I’m kind of green-blue today.”
So dust off that daring, 70s-kid part of you. Ride low. Make a mess. Snap the picture before it’s perfect.
And if you want a companion for that kind of alive living, consider exploring Rudá Iandê’s Laughing in the Face of Chaos: A Politically Incorrect Shamanic Guide for Modern Life.
His insights reminded me that the best parts of childhood aren’t lost to time; they are choices we can keep making: playful, honest, courageously imperfect.
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