I LOVED Tonka trucks when I was a kid. I spent so much time out in a dirt box by myself playing for hours. I can't say how they inspired me, but for some reason when you ask for toys that inspired me that is what popped in my head immediately.
I spent A LOT of time playing with Legos in my formative years. I don't know if it counts as educational, but it kept me out of trouble and definitely allowed me to use my imagination in a constructive way.
Not exactly a toy, but I rally loved building forts with other kids from the neighborhood. There was an empty field near out house, with a beat-up old olive tree that was the base for a series of forts. After a while we moved to making forts in ~3 foot deep pits, and lining them with old carpet and covering them with discarded plywood scavenged from construction sites.
I'm just starting to build forts with my own kids. They are excited about it, but not as excited as, say, playing video games. It's kind of weird, but I hardly see any kids making forts any more. In ten years or so I've seen maybe one place that would qualify as a fort. Nothing like when I was a kid.
Sand and a tray. A bunch of different jugs and pots and funnels -- these can be used with the sand, or in the bath, or you can nail them to an outside fence to make a water chute.
Blackboard paint on a door and chalk.
Cooking.
A good magnifying lens; later decent binoculars; a robust microscope; later a decent telescope. And stuff to look at.
Playdough, both commercial and homemade.
In the UK local councils have industrial recycling facilities where they separate out a bunch of stuff that can be used for craft project. So, for example, you can find industrial sized bobbins of different shapes and sizes; fabric off cuts; some mis-shapen spectacle lenses; weird bits of plastic; etc etc. You turn up, pile stuff in a box and pay a small sum for it. You then make stuff from it. (We made fake binoculars and a race car.)
There's a bunch of sensory stuff that I thought my child would like, but it turns out I like them much more. EG: a glitter bottle. You take an empty plastic soda bottle, half fill it with clear glue, add a bunch of glitter (restrict it to two or three colours) and add a few drops of food colour. Top it up with clean water. Seal the top. Shake very well.
The theme here is fuck commercial toys. Imagination and time is what makes the difference.
I used to spend way too much time with my TI-82 calculator. I programmed it, I played with graphs on it, I played with numbers and equations on it. I received it at a time when there was no way my parents could afford to give me such a thing (I think they were darn close to $100 at the time, which was a lot, and honestly still is). I had a Junior High Math teacher who had cancer and was retiring, given only a few months to live. I was helping her to clean out her class room on the last day of school and she handed it to me and said "Make sure to pass what you learn to someone else". Honestly, I will never forget that woman and the lesson she taught me.
No other teacher ever gave me any problems which needed that kind of power at the time, so I just played. I learned so much.
My dad's hand-me-down Swiss Army Knife (IIRC I was ~8 when he gave it to me). It was one of the larger ones with lots of different tools and I used it to pry things open, unscrew electronics and put them back together, strip wires for repairing devices I may have previously torn apart to vigorously. Also used it for lots of dumb stuff that was kind of dangerous but the blades were no longer than ~100mm so I couldn't do much harm.
Made lots of models, primarily fighter jets (F-14, F-15, F-16, F-18) but also a lot of Star Trek ships (a large 1701-D was my baby). Lego as well...
Legos, bar none. I loved legos as a kid and I recently rediscovered a large stash of them my Mom kept for me all these years. Now my 3 year old daughter and I play "little legos" every chance we get. Love those little legos - especially the vintage ones that require imagination. Not a big "lego kits" guy... like to create my own stuff.
Lego was a huge one for me -- I loved having a giant tupperware box of random pieces and no instructions.
Another big one, but one that I don't see often, is Capsela (http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Capsela). I loved the fact that it actually moved and did stuff and could roll or float.
Nowadays, if I were a kid, I'd probably play with one of the programmable Lego sets until it broke or broke something else!
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 19.7 ms ] threadToys: Whatever I had would be dwarfed by any smartphone available today or even a Raspberry Pi.
Life Experiences: Doing my own (tiny kid-style) startup.
I'm just starting to build forts with my own kids. They are excited about it, but not as excited as, say, playing video games. It's kind of weird, but I hardly see any kids making forts any more. In ten years or so I've seen maybe one place that would qualify as a fort. Nothing like when I was a kid.
Lego.
Garden tools, seeds and bulbs, etc.
Sand and a tray. A bunch of different jugs and pots and funnels -- these can be used with the sand, or in the bath, or you can nail them to an outside fence to make a water chute.
Blackboard paint on a door and chalk.
Cooking.
A good magnifying lens; later decent binoculars; a robust microscope; later a decent telescope. And stuff to look at.
Playdough, both commercial and homemade.
In the UK local councils have industrial recycling facilities where they separate out a bunch of stuff that can be used for craft project. So, for example, you can find industrial sized bobbins of different shapes and sizes; fabric off cuts; some mis-shapen spectacle lenses; weird bits of plastic; etc etc. You turn up, pile stuff in a box and pay a small sum for it. You then make stuff from it. (We made fake binoculars and a race car.)
There's a bunch of sensory stuff that I thought my child would like, but it turns out I like them much more. EG: a glitter bottle. You take an empty plastic soda bottle, half fill it with clear glue, add a bunch of glitter (restrict it to two or three colours) and add a few drops of food colour. Top it up with clean water. Seal the top. Shake very well.
The theme here is fuck commercial toys. Imagination and time is what makes the difference.
No other teacher ever gave me any problems which needed that kind of power at the time, so I just played. I learned so much.
Made lots of models, primarily fighter jets (F-14, F-15, F-16, F-18) but also a lot of Star Trek ships (a large 1701-D was my baby). Lego as well...
Also had a decent microscope and chemistry sets.
Teach your kids to make things and explore.
[1] http://www.microworlds.com/solutions/mwex.html
Another big one, but one that I don't see often, is Capsela (http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Capsela). I loved the fact that it actually moved and did stuff and could roll or float.
Nowadays, if I were a kid, I'd probably play with one of the programmable Lego sets until it broke or broke something else!