Lite-Brite

One of my favorite toys growing up. To this day I like collecting vintage lighting fixtures like soft drink clocks or signs probably because of this toy. They came with designs that you could use to create different cartoons and clowns but I never used those. I liked to create my own masterpieces.

This toy allowed you to be creative in a very different way. It brought out the artistic side in you. You could design different things and it would light up your room in the dark with colors. Lite-Brite was invented by Joseph M. Burck, a senior designer at Chicago toy and game design company Marvin Glass and Associates. The company licensed Lite-Brite to Hasbro, which officially launched it in 1967. It became a staple toy in the 1970s. 

Of course…when I got older I would make crude messages on the Lite Brite for friends. Lite-Brite is recognized as one of the greatest toys of all time by the Toy Hall of Fame. It has become part of our pop culture. 

Lite Brite commercial from the 1970s. Did you have one growing up? 

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Author: Badfinger (Max)

Power Pop fan, Baseball, Beatles, Alternative music, old movies, and tv show fan. Also anything to do with pop culture in the 60s and 70s... I'm also a songwriter, bass and guitar player. Not the slightest bit interested in politics at all.

48 thoughts on “Lite-Brite”

  3. Pingback: Lite-Brite – MobsterTiger

  6. Lol…aaahhh, I can still hear that song in my head. ‘Lite Bright making thi-iiiings with liiii-iights’…what a song. Never played with it or knew anyone who that also. But what a classic 70’s commercial jingle that it was.

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  7. Those are very cool toys. I never had one, for some reason, but always kind of wanted one when I was of grade school age. I didn’t even know they came with instructions on how to make a creepy clown – I just assumed you made up your own designs

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    1. We did all sorts of designs on it. You know obbverse…a few years ago I posted Saturday Morning kids shows. What I didn’t realize is…there was an age range to those shows…and many people didn’t know them that were older or younger than I was…. Same as certain toys as well…they all don’t encompass everyone…except the timeless ones like bicycles or something like that.

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      1. Here in New York when I was a kid, Saturday morning cartoons would end around 10 or 11 am, and the local station that aired the cartoons would immediately segue into old, poorly dubbed kung fu movies, which in retrospect were shockingly violent. Definitely not appropriate for kids.

        My brother and I would watch them, then spend the next few hours mimicking the kung fu and the mismatched audio dialog.

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      2. That is a great story…yep…I’m in Nashville and ours ended at noon. They would play the poorly dubbed Kung Fu movies as well. Thats where I found Bruce Lee.

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  10. I certainly remember the catchy jingle, but I never had one, nor did I play with one. The only somewhat similar thing I had was a blue plastic pegboard that had little plastic squares, rectangles and triangles that you could press in to make pictures and designs. They looked almost like tiny LEGO. Don’t know if it even had a name.

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    1. They did look like round legos, you are right. From this toy…it led me to collect soda clocks and anything that lit up.

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    1. It was really fun for me…I liked the different designs…I credit it for me collecting soda clocks later on that light up…I like anything that lights up almost. That probably came from this game.

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  13. My company had a product called BrightView which was essentially lipstick on a pig for our legacy applications. Some of us called it “Lite-Brite.” I borrowedthe line from the Three Stooges’s “Dizzy Doctors”:

    BrightView! BrightView! Makes old software new! We’ll sell a million copies! Woo woowoowoowoo woowoo!

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    2. I never had one, but pretty much every other kid in my neighborhood had them, and they were all old and missing half the colored pegs. We had to be very creative with what was left.

      Lite Brite was like Etch A Sketch, Constructor Sets and Atari consoles: toys from the last generation that were handed down from older brothers and sisters.

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