#TBT Toys: A Target Holiday Tradition

Toys bring out the kid in all of us — and no one does this better than Target. But faced with this many delightful options, sometimes it’s best to go back to basics—the toy-shopping equivalent of choosing the perfect Little Black Dress for your holiday RSVPs.

Year after year, traditional playthings — the Lincoln Logs, Chatter Phones and Etch-a-Sketches of the world — are every bit as popular as the top new toys. This year, the Toy Industry Association has identified these old-school classic toys as a “trend” to watch. It turns out, moms, dads and grandparents love to buy these retro favorites from their own days of playing with toys.

Target’s Archives are teeming with newspaper circulars that reveal the enduring appeal of playtime classics (including several that are found in Target’s 2014 assortment): We spotted a disco-era Fisher Price Record Player from 1976, an E.T. View-Master from 1982 and more oldies-but-goodies that prove the more things change, the more they stay the same!

Scroll down to see some of our current favorites and their predecessors from previous decades.

Etch-a-Sketch, $14.99 — first introduced in 1959 and named to the Toy Industry Association’s Century of Toys list (the Top 100 most influential and creative toys of the 20^th century).

Fisher Price Classic Music Box Record Player, $19.99 — a classic since it first hit store shelves in the 1971.

Lincoln Logs, $19.99 — invented in 1916 by John Lloyd Wright (son of the famous American architect Frank Lloyd Wright) and inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame in 1999.