Favorite toys as a child ?

Erector set, I loved that thing and would spend hours just using my imagination building stuff.

These are my close seconds:
SST's
Slot cars (Aurora AFX IIRC)
BB guns
Cap guns of all sorts
Big steel tonka trucks
Hot wheels
The Evil Kneivel motorcyle toy first mentioned, man they must've made a few million of those, lol.
Rock 'em Sock 'em Robots (Friend had one).

Then there are two toys I don't know the name of:
One came with all kinds of parts and you'd build a car with a "welder". The welder was hand held battery operated drill that you would put a welding rod (special low temp plastic rod) on and it would spin at high speed and melt the plastic parts together. I spent days and days playing with that thing trying to get the perfect bead/weld.

Another I didn't have but a friend did. They were cars the size of a hot wheels with a tiny rechargeable battery in them. You would plug them into a "gas pump" (had regular batteries in it and the hose was a small cable with a 1/8" mini plug on the end) that would charge the car's battery for maybe 15 seconds of high speed action. :) I was facinated to end with those little cars and how they worked.