Diabolo
Sam Brown explains both how to make your own diabolo and how to control it.
Spin A Diabolo For Fun (original article)
Boomerang
Keenan H. Ward describes building and throwing a boomerang.
Boomerang Throwing Is A Great Sport (original article)
Wiggling Pup
B. Van Buren describes how to make a “wiggling pup” toy. This might act as an inspiration for your own wiggling toy.
How You Can Make A Wiggling Pup (original article)
Oct 192010
Many-Cornered Rubber Ball
This short news item describes a 12 sided rubber ball, the bouncing unpredictability of which is supposed to make playing with it more interesting. Who knows, this might inspire some new version of this that will make someone a millionaire. Just remember where you first got the idea. 
Many-Cornered Rubber Ball Gives Greater Exercise (original article)
Two-Propeller Helicopter Toy
Here is an article by famous Hi Sibley describing making a simple rubber band powered toy helicopter. It might make an excellent project for a parent-kid team.
Make This Two-Propeller Helicopter
Sep 222010
Meccano Ad
Here is an advertisement for Meccano “toy engineering for boys” erector set kit. It promises you can build hundreds of models. Millions of kids learned how to build things with such sets. Today they are wasting time watching TV and playing electronic games.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meccano
Sep 132010
Home Made Toys for Girls and Boys
You will enjoy this book. It is a treasure of ideas from toy windmills to a reflectoscope. You might even decide to build some of these toys from a simpler era when manual dexterity of making things was still valued.
Home-Made Toys for Girls and Boys by A. Neely Hall
About A. Neely Hall (PDF file)
