What was your favorite toy growing up.
I thought we would take a break from all the politics and have a little fun.
What was your favorite toy growing up?
We were only kids once, so lets think back to all the fun we had playing with the toy we loved the most.
Mine was Crayons. I loved to color and look at all the pretty colors in the packs. I would put them from light to dark, and by color groups. I would buy all kinds of coloring books too!
So tell us what you liked as a child.
I have to admit, I still like coloring...
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My Favorite toy was a doll that my Parents gave me for Christmas when I was merely 3 y/o. That doll stayed with me all my life, and took on various modes of clothing and hair-dos over the years. When I learned to sew on a machine, the first things I learned to sew were doll clothes for my doll.
At this point in time, I have passed that doll down to my Granddaughter with all the assortments of accessories; shoes, hats, handbags, capes, jewelry and clothes that I either made or bought for the doll over the years. She will one day pass it on to her children. It's just a plain wooden doll, but, it has lasted through a flood, several moves, being attacked by various cats that wanted to play with it, and is still in good condition. The only thing that I had to do to it over all the years was to replace the heavy duty rubber bands that held the head, arms and legs in place and allowed them to move. Everything else is just as I got it.
"Arabella" is her name, and she was there for me through thick and thin, and was my light in the darkness many times in my life. It is a part of me that I am most happy to share with those who come after me, and hope they find as much enjoyment with her, and treasure her, as I have in my life.
Wow, beautiful, especially that you were able to pass it on.
When we moved from Texas to Calif and were down-sizing things for the move, I had thought about giving the doll away. But, I just could not bring myself to part with it. It has been with me for most of my life, so I decided that we would just grow old together. (grin)
Good choice, the dolls spirit is connected to you and, to your family, she would have been lonely without you.
Arabella is a much better name than Chucky.
Or, Robert.
A cane pole...I grew up in the country with a lot of lakes. rivers. creeks and ponds. Fishing was our greatest pass time. Those were the days.
I note the comment naming a bicycle - it was an important item to have for many reasons but mostly I used it for transportation, and did not "play" with it, although the scooter I built from a wooden orange crate, a 4-wheel expandable skate and two 2X4s was a little more than transportation, it was fun. However neither of those would really qualify in my definition of a "toy". I think perhaps the little DinkyToy cars I had were toys that I enjoyed most playing with when I was a kid.
I have to say it was my group of stuffed animals. They were my friends. As the youngest of 6 and someone the whole family thought of as strange I spent a lot of time on my own. I used to line them up and play school or we were on a raft floating down the Mississippi. I had a lot of adventures with my 'friends'. I still have the a few of them. One bear just turned 53 - the another is 52. I was never lonely in the room of stuffed animals.
I had a couple of stuffed animals as well. Pete and Repeat. One was a stuffed bear, it was Pete. The other was a stuffed lamb that was missing one ear. It was Repeat, as it had a small button inside that when you pressed on it the lamb would Baaah, and keep doing that until you pressed the button again. Thus, the name. We also had dogs and cats, and they were my playmates as well. They were my comfort and my joy.
A magnifying glass to start fires with. Broken thermometers were another of my favorite toys.
You remind me of my brother. He loved to play with firecrackers.
Did you like a "Bag 'O Glass" too, Dean
Hey, don't be knocking firecrackers, they were a lot of fun.
Yep, my friends and I played with the mercury. It explains a lot.
What? Mercury makes people ADORABLE??!? I thought it just poisoned shit n' all.
Yeah ... I never felt bad about breaking a thermometer in the bathroom sink. Used our fingers to push it around and watch the beads join each other for a minute.
We collected and broke open so many thermometers in the basement that you could smell it when you walked downstairs. But that's not quite the same as ingesting it.
Paper dolls.
A stick.
You could do all kinds of things with a stick. Young poplar trees grew straight as and arrow and you could get them in any size you wanted. You could make a bat or a pole vault out of them. I use to make several bats out of them and eat bat represented a person. I used the bats to hit rocks as far as I could. I would hit those rocks so much that eventually I would have to retire it, because it would get chewed up and become useless. It was competition for me. Of course the bat that represented me almost always could hit the rocks the farthest.
Also you could get a larger poplar tree and make a pole vault. I made tracks in the woods with long jumps, pole vaulting, high jump and just basic races around the track. All the children or at least friends around my age who lived anywhere near would come and participate in the games. It's was amazing how high we could jump back then and how fast and long we could run.
Tops and Yo-Yos.
We use to find some cords that were strong enough, at least for awhile, climb up a big tree out on a limb and make a Tarzan type swing. I remember on big old pine tree near the chicken house. We would jump off the chicken house and swing what seemed forever at that time until the power cord or whatever swung its last time before breaking.
I read your comment and it sounded so much like my childhood. I grew up with 4 brothers in a small neighborhood full of boys. There was only one girl my age so needless to say I was a tomboy. We made many things out of trees also. Our own fishing poles, slingshots and my brother even made a bow and arrow set that worked surprisingly well. We used to build "cabins" too and everytime the olympics rolled around we would set up our own high jumps etc... to test our skills. lol
One stick was OK two sticks and you were the tops.
With two sticks, a peace of newspaper and some strung you had a kite.
lol
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Hell this was so long ago and we had so many toys I really dont remember having a favorite. If I did I'm sure I wore it out or broke it. lol
My Easy Bake, Brite Lite where ok. I liked playing games though and being outdoors.
My first thought was a basketball and a football, since those were realistically the most important things I owned as a kid (by my mind anyway) outside of my bike and my .22. None of that really qualifies despite them representing the bulk of my free time as a kid though.
So....probably my Star Wars era Star Wars toys.
I was a big Star Wars fan, and still am. I have all sorts of toys from the first trilogy of the Star Wars movies. I also have the Bronze addition of the first trilogy with the computer generated added enhancements. That is really interesting. I enjoyed the subsequent movies as well, but, did not buy quite as many toys as with the first three.
I'm pretty sure I have a Millenium Falcon flying around here somewhere still.
I enjoyed all of the movies to various degrees, but I really love the concept and the world that was developed for the movies and subsequent books, cartoons, etc....
LOTR is definitely my personal favorite as far as fantasy/sci-fi goes. Less so as a child than as an adult though.
"I'm pretty sure I have a Millenium Falcon flying around here somewhere still."
I have the Death Star that spins and opens up to show the inside as it spins. I also have one of the Millennium Falcon as well. R2D2, C3PO, Chewbacca, Darth Vader, an Ewok, Jabba, and of course Princess Leia, plus a few others that I can't think of the name of right at this moment. There were about 20 all total. Most of them are still in their wrappers. But, a few I just had to play with. (grin)
" Yes, I was not a child collecting those, felt like one though... It was fun."
I wasn't a child either, but, being a kid at heart, it was indeed fun.
Nice. I wish I had the foresight to not open and destroy the bulk of them lol.
My balls, of course. Didn't really matter which one. Baseball, basketball or football.😉
My understanding is the best balls come in pairs.
Dear Friend Kathleen/Butterfie: Anything I could use to build things.
Lincoln logs for toy home construction.
Kits to make model ships, airplanes and cars.
Our grandchildren come from the Builder Bob TV series generation.
We took our son to a semi local trolley museum.
We got him an engineer's cap.
After that came the Lionel train sets.
Our daughter was a cabbage patch doll enthusiast.
Play is an important part of youth growth and development.
Great topic.
Peace, Abundant Blessings and Toot Toot!
Enoch.
YoYo. I could do all the tricks (Walk The Dog, Around The World, Rock The Baby, Loop de Loop) and came in 3rd place in a yo-yo contest in the neighborhood.
Another one would be baseball cards. Me and my brothers would separate our baseball cards into teams and spread them out on the floor and play games using a pair of dice.
A rolled "two" (snake eyes) was a home run, a three was a triple, a four was a double, a five was a single , and a six was a walk. The other numbers were outs. eleven was a strikeout and boxcars , 12, was a double play. We used the baseball cards as a lineup and made a whiole league out of it with statistics, etc.
I can remember my brothers flipping for baseball cards with their friends. Did you ever do that?
we traded them. don't remember flipping for them, but it's possible
I wasn't really into toys as a kid. I had more fun constructing things myself using mostly cardboard boxes and things I would find laying around. But I did have one that I did love....a water wiggle.
We were usually outside from sun up to sun down. Riding our bikes, making ramps to jump, playing pick up games, fishing, or making something out of wood. On the rare occasion that we were stuck in the house I would do the coloring and Barbie thing, or we would play a board game.
I did have two very special toys though. Both bought by my mother. A Shirley temple doll she insisted looked just like me. I think it was because of the curly hair that I still haven't been able to tame and a pink teddy bear that I just had to have. Unfortunately Shirley was never the same after my brother gave her a hair cut but I still have the bear.
Frisbee
I tried catching a frisbe once. It hit me on the bridge of my nose which made me ending up with raccoon eyes the next day.
1961 Kissy Doll
Toys were a rarity...this doll was my dream come true.
I loved those types of games and 3-D puzzles too. And Legos or any other building materials, (although I never did get the full sized erector set, I think my folks were afraid what I might build.)
So, other than a box of crayons that I had, every other toy I had was second hand. That being said, I was still glad to have them. My bike was my favorite, easy bake oven, my catcher's mitt, my chemistry set (now would be outlawed as dangerous, LOL!), and my microscope and my telescope. I guess I was a science geek as a kid. Oh I almost forgot.. my oil color set... I still paint
I got my first horse at age 4. Her name was White Hat, an Appaloosa, white with black spots [my dad did not believe in ponies] .. by time I was 5, I had mastered the small pasture ...by time I was in first grade the largest pasture was mastered - at 8 years old I was turned loose on 60+ acres of river bottom.
... White Hat was not really a toy, but I spent my entire childhood on horse back, it was a daily event, going out to play meant that I was off on my horse.......... there was one girl down the road that was a year younger than I was, but as long as she was will me - we could venture farther than our parents lands ... it was a fantasy for most girls, yet it was the world that I grew up in : )
I am just glad toys from my childhood were simple and not the millions of chineese toys flooding the market now.
My bike was probably #1. I have three kids and none of them can ride. It just baffles me.
But other than the bike, I think my favorite was Hot Wheels. I ran track all over my room from the floor to tops of bookshelves, with loops and jumps all over the place.
Great idea!
My parents weren't wealthy, and I didn't have many new toys as a kid, but ...
My favorite "new" toys as a child?
BB Gun. All the kids in my neighbor hood had them. We would go into the woods at the end of the block and have a "war" every once in a while. Most serious injury were some cuts and scrapes and some welts.
My favorite toys always seemed to be the ones which were removed from the market because they were so hazardous, like Jarts.
Are Jarts yard darts?
My first hand-me-down car from my parents had a big dent in the hood courtesy of my younger sister.
How we didn't get killed, I'll never know. We used to throw them over the house with the other players on the other side, watching for them to land. Dad caught us at that one day and took them away. It was too late for the car, though.
We sharpened our Jarts on a grinder so they stuck in the ground better......they'd even penetrate a tree trunk.
I also had a blow gun with homemade darts using steel wire......we'd shoot those over the neighbor's garage and into his back yard. And then one day he came to our door holding a big bag full of darts he picked up before mowing the lawn. I think I got into trouble for that one too.
I really didn't have a favorite toy. Of course I loved getting presents at Christmas and birthdays etc. The initial excitement would wane in a day or two.
We stayed mostly outdoors doing different activities.
I will say that probably my most useful was my bike or skateboard, to get around.
Indoors: Building-type toys like model planes and ships, Legos, Lincoln Logs, etc.
Outdoors: My bike, fishing pole, and BB gun.
We all have our favorite toys
And that's both the girls and the boys
It's so fun to play
We could play every day
But then we would make too much noise.
Sorry Bfies, Buzz got me started on limericks!
Matchbox cars. I'd build cities and roads at the base of a tree outback of my house.
My sisters (we'd pretend we were Charlies Angels on missions).
My two feet - I grew up in the country. I'd pack some food up and go exploring and wouldn't get home until late afternoon- almost dinner time. That's probably where my love of hiking developed. I still hike as much as I can and I prefer walking to taking a taxi or shuttle when I travel to cities.
Same here. We rented a big farm when I was growing up, and I'd head out there for hours. Mom finally gave up worrying about me.
Some neighbors pastured their horses there, and told us to ride whenever we wanted, so I either rode or walked all over that farm all summer.
Christmas in the 60's: My sister wanted pearl earrings. I wanted a microscope. A couple of years later, my sister wanted a pearl sweater clip. I wanted a telescope. While I thoroughly enjoyed playing Chinese Checkers as well [my favorite board game back then] with my folks and siblings, my microscope and telescope gave me and Dad and me such great quality time. Summers were spent with the family laying on blankets in the backyard with my Dad pointing out constellations and summer stars. Of course with my sister being six years older and my big brother being nine years older, we rarely wanted the same types of things.
Great article!
Building with Legos. Back then, it was only the town and space sets.
This was my favorite model.
I wish I had a model of the Space Battleship Yamato (from the titular anime series, or Starblazers in America).
This one is for sale.
Freakin' sweet!
Any idea how big it is, or how complex it is to build? It looks rather small, but still cool.
It's only 9.98 so I don't think its that big, probably about 12 inches from bow to stern.
That sounds about right. I used to build model planes in my youth as a hobby.
Well, Walmart isn't that far to go and, the add says that's were it's at. Enjoy.
Thanks. I had no idea Walmart carried it.
I had the "Flying Sub" model, you could take the top off and see the inside works. When I look at your model, I get the word "Seaview" I think that was its name.
Yes, the sub in the show was called the Seaview, I kept it white on the outside and, painted all the things inside the different colors they were in the show, it took me several episodes to get all the colors.
I was lucky, it had a tiny decal that went on the display panel which replaced the "what color" problem with the "get that micro-thin piece of crap centered correctly before it gets too dry" problem.
If I recall right the "SeaView" had lots of big multi-colored light panels and if you have all those details it must be something to see.
It was but, somewhere in our moves around Miami I lost it, someone got a real treasure at some point down there.
I got a pair of needle nose tweezers to take care of that problem.
Back in the 1950's western guns & holsters were very popular. That was my favorite toy. The gun was heavy, usually with what looked like pearl handles and fired caps. I can barely remember now, putting the gun in the face of a dog (a collie) and firing off the caps. That dog bit my leg, the owner came out to put him/her off. I had the scar for years. It's the scar I remember most. Iv'e hated dogs ever since and I know it was my fault.
Matchbox cars, followed by Hot Wheels cars. Started my love affair with all things automotive, which at this point, I can say, is a lifelong obsession with me! This all started when I was a wee one and the washer would break (reguarly) we'd have to go with mom to the laundrymat and my grandmother would come meet us and have coffee with mom, then we would go to the little gift shop next door and she'd buy each of us a matchbox car.........
Loved Matchbox. I was big into the construction equipment. It was so cool that they came in their own special little box.
I still have that yellow dump truck
My bike. Barbies. Baseball glove. Telescope.
cheap toy cars mostly because I would always go with my dad to the store and browse and he would always but me a pocketful of new cheap cars .Browsing was something me and my dad did together until he died. I could hardly walk thru the store we went to after his death because I always expected to see him walking down the aisles. He has been gone almost 30 years now and I still miss him terribly.
One set of toys I did see anyone mention and we're one of my favorites were little green army men .
My youngest son had hundreds of them. I could buy a big package of them at a very cheap price.
My oldest son would take his "frucks" and cars and line them up on the stairway.
LOL, we seem to have something in common here, my oldest son Brandon use to call his trucks "Frucks" when he was young too.
My son would line them up on the living room carpet, then crash another truck into them. The target line had to be perfectly straight, with all the cars in the right order, whatever the heck that was. I really wish he were nearly that OCD about his bedroom these days.
I had a stretch amrstrong, which my brother decided to tie between a tree and his truck. Armstrong stretched a lot....but alas, he didn't survive. Operation was a fun game. My siblings are all much older than I am, so I didn't play with them much. When I was little I had a train that you could sit on and ride inside the house. Never have seen anything like it in many many years. It was a blast, but it took up a LOT of room and it was constantly being tripped over. When I was seven, I found one of my sisters......"toys" under her bed. I showed it to my mom, who laughed, gave no explanation and told me to put it back, and not talk about it again.