Retro Pocket Toys

Everybody had one. A flat plastic case with water sealed inside, a rubber button on the front, and a handful of coloured rings drifting around a tank that never quite did what you wanted. You pressed the button, a puff of air went up through the water, and the rings went everywhere except onto the pegs.

Retro Pocket Toys is four of them in one drawer.

RING TOSS — five rings, five pegs. A ring has to go over the top of a peg and slide down it, which is exactly as difficult as you remember.

HOOPS — six balls through a hoop and into the rack behind it.

TIC-TAC-TOE — nine posts in a grid. Three counters in a line wins it. You only have five.

LEAPFROG — four counters, four lily pads, one each.

REAL WATER, NOT AN ANIMATION

The tank is simulated from the actual properties of the object. Water at room temperature. Pieces moulded in a plastic slightly denser than it, which is why they sink slowly rather than floating or dropping like stones. Rings, balls and counters fall at different rates because their shapes carry different amounts of drag, and the whole body of water turns over in a slow circulation that keeps working for seconds after you have let go of the button.

A BUTTON YOU HAVE TO WORK

Hold it and the jet builds. Keep holding and the puff runs out, the way a bellows does. Let go and it dies away — and if you touch it again before it reaches nothing, it climbs straight back from where it got to. Short taps, long holds and quick pumping all do different things, and learning which one a shot needs is most of the game.

TILT IT

Lean the phone and the water leans with it. It is a weak current on purpose: enough to walk a hovering ring sideways onto a peg, never enough to be a better way to play than the button.

IT FEELS LIKE AN OBJECT

Haptics that follow the water rather than firing once. A moulded case with a crooked printed sticker and countersunk screws. Bubbles, drifting light on the back wall, and a pocket of trapped air riding along the top of the tank.

TRY EVERYTHING, THEN KEEP ONE

Every toy is open for five plays. When those are spent you keep whichever one you liked best — free, permanently, no strings — or unlock all four with a single purchase.

No subscription. No advertising. No account. Nothing collected, ever: there is no analytics in this app at all.

Not affiliated with, or endorsed by any toy maker. Inspired by the water games of the era rather than by any particular one.