TGIF: Toys that Rock
This post is an extract from The Retro Machine (Vol 15) posted by Spencer over at RetroJunk.
Everyone had a variation of these rocking toys. They were usually situated on metal springs and you could do a whole lot of rocking and bouncing on them. I never had anything as cool as that Cringer model though! There was always one very large problem with these toys:
THEY ALWAYS PINCHED THE CRAP OUTTA YOUR LEGS. Not just little pinches either, more like “oh my god, did someone just stick a 1/2″ thick needle into my leg?” kinds of pinches. This always happened when you were rocking and the motion would stretch the springs out long enough for you to put your leg near it just in time to be pinched. Even today it sends shivers up my spine to think about this.
I absolutely recall the pain these things would cause. There was huge bolt sticking out that my knee would always hit.
So that everyone can feel better, my kids have one of those, redone in a newer safer fashion. The springs have padding and the springs connect to the horse further out. It’s completely lame, you can’t rock so hard you fly over the front of the horse or anything…and they say that our generation was babied…WTF!
@Nick Colton: It sounds like you might have tried this out?
haha I remember my dad sitting on it and stretching the springs out… after that, everytime you rocked a lil bit, you would flip the whole thing over!