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Toys of Christmas Past
“No one ever forgets a toy that made him or her supremely happy as a child, even if that toy is replaced by one like it that is much nicer.” — Stephen King
“‘Tis the season,” so they say, so now I offer up something light, silly, and hopefully a little fun. Because I am Mr. Fun! All my friends say so, right? Right? (Nobody here except us crickets, man.) Ahem. Well, be that as it may, I got caught up in a conversation the other day about the toys we had as kids. Sure, it’s not an uncommon conversation, but whenever they start, it quickly evokes the same feelings of competitive envy I had when I was nine, when everyone would go back to school and compare notes on who got what for Christmas.
So here’s what I propose, if you’re game: go hit your search engine of choice, and load up the comments with pictures and remembrances of your favorite toys from your childhood (ages 1 to 92). If the post fizzles out early, well then, you’re all humbugs.
Here’s just handful of a few of mine, to get things started. Wanna play? Post as many as you’d like, after all, he who dies with the most toys, wins.
And the runner-up:
Oh if you want to talk broken …
I got a set of these one year. They were the most awesome plastic building toys I ever received save my original Lego Castle set. They might beat Legos save one thing: Those puppies broke often. Supposedly they were conceived by a man upset that Tinker Toys were too fragile. I know this because this was my dad’s rant every time we produced year another broken end.
I sooo very much wanted that one.
BB guns, and my cousins who lived less than a mile in a rural area also received them on the same Christmas. Daisy Winchester lever action BB guns, no batteries required. Lots of fun, and no one shot their eye out, or someone else’s eye out. Which was another Christmas miracle, if you know what I mean.
I know the feeling, this is the one that got away:
I remember drooling over it in the big Sears and Montgomery Ward Christmas catalogs. My Mom hinted that maybe it was a bit too expensive, and way too big, and maybe I should put something else on my Christmas list that year…
I wanted the Skystriker jet too.
Over at Chicago Boyz, we were just discussing the reported phenomenon of young surgeons who lack the manual skills of earlier generations…it was also noted that many kids in scouting today lack the manual dexterity to tie knots, etc.
Two causes were suggested: one, the replacement of physical-world play by screen-based play, and two, the elimination of teaching cursive.
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/58590.html
How about lack of pocket knives? With the cutting and whittling you’ll do with one of those, you either learn fine control or cut yourself over and over.
Here’s a great toy story: this guy built a model of the SR-71 reconnaissance plane when he was 10 years old…didn’t get it quite right, threw it away…and, 29 years later, flew the real thing.
http://maggiesfarm.anotherdotcom.com/archives/7821-Major-Brian-Shul-I-loved-that-jet.html
Some very good writing.
I learned cursive and it did nothing for my dexterity. But working with tools and legos and such were great aids.
EB, what’s the object of this one? I don’t think I’ve ever seen that before. At first I thought it was this:
Your satire aside (which is good) I wonder if you grew up too quickly or whether most of us baby boomers and beyond didn’t grow up fast enough.
Your experience seems to track with my own parents childhood given that they grew up during the Great Depression and World War II.
They did not experience this kind of crass commercialism growing up, but they did buy the stuff for us when they were adults. Probably a mistake.
#triggered
FWIW, I reacted the same way when Babar’s mother was killed by a hunter 😢
But you could make up any kinds of adventures with that. The themed ones tend to box in a kid’s creativity.
I was just punching an inflatable santa yesterday, but the neighbors told me to get off their lawn.
I, too, believed she was an agent of the Empire.
Thunderbirds?
Yep! I was probably about 4.
Cursive sucks when you’re left-handed. My teachers insisted my letters should slant to the right like the rest of the class, it wasn’t until years later when I switched to slanting left that I could finally write comfortably without my hand cramping and smudging the ink with my palm.
Spoiler alert!!!!!!
;-)
Same dentist who killed Bambi’s mom.
Some of my childhood favorites (along with that inflatable Bozo guy, which we also had) . . . .
. . . all of which clearly indicate 1) my approximate age and 2) the fact that even as a kid, my tastes were a little eclectic.
My parents were not big on toys, or at least that is my recollection. I was always dreaming of the cool stuff other kids got and had.
I had one very precious toy, a huge heavy Tonka tractor with a missing steering wheel. I played with that for years. It was a refuge in dark days.
That’s a toy?
Ah, Kel, those are great. Well, except maybe that Crissy doll thing. ;-) I never understood the fascination with the Lemon-twist gizmo, though. But I did have a set of these things to walk around in (I had a pogo stick too, but never mastered it):
I had the jet, and the helicopter too (now you’re making me feel spoiled). I wanted a place for them to land!
I ended up building my own aircraft carrier out of shoe boxes, cardboard, and lots of masking tape.
Heh. I left him and my other transformers on the pipe of a wood-burning stove one night (it was large enough to serve as a shelf), and my mother proceeded to light it. We all woke up to several thoroughly melted transformers.
At the time, I considered it the worst day of my life.
I did get an Omega Supreme the next Christmas, but I would’ve preferred to keep the ones I had.
My handwriting was so bad that my high school teachers ordered me to stop writing in cursive.