Ten vintage erector sets at oobject
oobject's latest list porn: a gallery of vintage erector sets, "an altogether different type of toy that resembled genuine engineering construction with trusses and girders, rather than plastic, primary color pixelated, objects." There's ten erector sets in the list, which roughly equals ten moist, juvenile guffaws at the sexual pun. Pictured, the 1960 Gilbert Erector Rocket Launcher Set... a set highly prized amongst erector set collectors for containing twice the amount of double entendres as a regular set.
Vintage Erector Sets to Buy [Oobject]
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That's the set I had as a kid. I still have some of the pieces, handy bits of metal for repairing various things around the house. And the motor. Plug-in-to-the-wall power, a gear shift with two forward and two reverse speeds that would mangle fingers if you weren't careful. (I was careful.)
I have a similar '60s set that was my dad's like the one pictured, though a motorized crane is pictured on the front of the sharp-edged, tetanus inducing metal box. As far as I know its a complete set, though the motor is shot, and I remember using it to create an automatic paper airplane launcher for a 7th grade science project.
...I too had that exact set as a kid, and rediscovered Erector in the mid-70's when I came across almost a dozen sets at garage sales one summer in various states of intactness - in all cases the motors were either shot or simply not present, alas. That summer I built some really LARGE contraptions, but by the next summer I'd discovered both Shortwave and CB Radio, and the Erector sets all got permanently retired.
Well, those ones are OK--but not even close to the most droolworthy Erector sets out there. Like, for instance, the Erector Zeppelin: http://www.girdersandgears.com/erector-1929-8.html
"Show off! Do some push-ups! Maybe it'll go away!"
I had one of the bigger sets as a kid, though I seldom made anything per instructions! Once I actually made a working DC electric motor with parts from my set!
Man, Erector Sets were the shiznit. At the very least, it prepared me for a life lived on flatpack furniture.