toobfreak
Tungsten/Glass Member
Yep! They were really cool. I think there were a few I never bought. Not sure if they even sell stuff like that now, probably certainly not on the local drug store shelf! Likewise with the chemistry sets and other hardware. Probably illegal to sell that stuff now / government regulated. The state would want to know what I was doing with all those test tubes and chemicals.I know what I was doing at the age of 5 and 6. Can't say about you. I had somehow gotten very interested in medicine and the local supermarket had volumes of some sort of 12-volume medical encyclopedia for sale, a new volume available on some cardboard endcap every week or month. They were $1 per volume. I was adamant that my dad buy them and he did. I read and studied the whole thing and still have the set! Would you like to see a picture of them and the inside sleeve (early 60s)? I was likewise also began writing around that time, probably my own stories and things and soon typing thereafter on a cheap blue SC little typewriter that had a nice snap-on cover. Soon after that I began buying models of the heart, ear, sinus, the visible man, brain, etc., the local store had models of the human body and I was crazy about them (you assembled, glued and painted them and some of them came apart). Quite a different environment than today. I wish I had kept some of them. One even had a rubber diaphragm to simulate the lungs and we used to stick a cigarette in his mouth and could make him inhale a puff and watch the smoke (the whole thing was clear).And you too speak for whom? I say most kids can barely print their name at age 6- do you have evidence to the contrary?Speak for yourself.
It wasn't long after that I became interested in chemistry and likewise, you could buy all manner of stuff at the local store: I remember having a 50 or 100 chemical chemistry set complete with Gilbert microscope (I still have that), bunsen burner, protozoa chamber, slides, test tubes, rubber tubing, and a variety of flasks from Erlenmeyer to distillation, stands, clamps, the works. This was all before the age of ten or twelve by the most by then my interests had moved onto astronomy. But the medicine/anatomy and story writing definitely started around the age of 5-6 (1962-63).
I had all those models too. My room was filled with body parts, giant insects, spacecraft and monsters. Most popular kid's room on the block.
I'm afraid I wasn't a great painter at so early an age, still, I wish I had some of those models: the heart had blue cardiac arteries on it and the auricles and ventricles pulled apart to reveal the inside of the heart and the brain broke into two. But I still have a streak of a model builder in me, I have a 34" long model of the USS Enterprise here I'm trying to motivate to build, it has circuit boards, an electrical system, wiring, lights and motors in it. This is a hardcore advanced model. I have about $400 invested just in parts bought back around 2016.