Just to show you how bizzare the toy scene in the early 70s could get, I give you Aurora Models's Monster Scenes.

The only Aurora kit I think I ever built was a Nautilus (the nuclear submarine, not Capt. Nemo's boat) kit. Actually, my dad built it for me with superglue. Alas, polystyrene is really too brittle for a six year old, so after about the forth kit got pulled out of the tub in peices (what the hell else is a submarine model good for?), I was allowed no more.

I didn't go for figure models, especially not girl ones (smacked of "dolls", which were for girls), but I do remember playing with Steve Austin the 6-million-dollar-man and Evil Knievel "action figures" (boyspeak for "dolls"). The Steve Austin dol... ahem... ACTION FIGURE had "bionics", clear plastic blocks, imbedded in his arms and legs you could pull out. Knievel came with a lot of cool 'extras" like a motorcycle that would actually move and a car you could crash and make fly apart.

These were all the big GI Joe-sized figures, probably ~8 inches (20 cm) tall. It wasn't until Kenner came out with the 4 inch (10 cm) Star Wars figures that my collection really took off.

Those were the days though. You could get guns and knives and GI joe could jump out of a helicopter! What a time...