We called them click-clacks. They were an interesting novelty but really not much fun once you got the hang of them
To each their own. I guess we were just easily amused, then, or maybe just poor and creative: we used to use one in each hand and double-dutch the things as fast as we could, among a ton of other tricks. It pretty much became our version of mumblety-peg (OP, there’s another one for you): my cousin used to win all the time because she was able to get two pair going on one hand (we all figured it was a girl-thing; none of us boys could do it).