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The backyard water slide with a bump in the middle and an inflatable crocodile's open mouth at the end: run, slide, hit the bump, and dive into the splash pool. It was advertised on kids' TV from the late 1980s, sold alongside a Super Crocodile Mile, and is routinely mistaken for a Wham-O product. It was made by a toy company called Marchon, later part of Empire of Carolina.
The big green plastic turtle in the backyard whose shell lifted off to reveal the sandbox, and went back on to keep the rain and the neighborhood cats out. Little Tikes introduced it in 1979, and by the 90s there was one behind seemingly every house with a toddler.
A strip of yellow plastic laid out on the grass with a garden hose attached — the simplest recipe for a perfect summer afternoon. You ran, you flew, you belly-flopped into grass and chlorine-smelling joy, and by August it had worn through entirely.
A foam rocket on a launch tube, a plastic air bladder on the ground, and one instruction: jump on it. The Stomp Rocket sent a rocket a couple of hundred feet up with nothing but a kid's body weight, and it has been landing on neighbors' roofs since 1993.