Where would I be without my toys? I have a Kindle, an iPad, an iPhone and way too many other gadgets and gizmos to keep me deluded and distracted.
But I’m really thinking about the toys of my childhood. I loved Lego. By the time I was 9 or 10, I had vast amounts of the stuff and would spend countless hours building ever more elaborate structures. (I was certain that, like my grandfather and uncle, I would become an architect… until I discovered that you had to be good at things like math and drawing!)
My other passion was model cars. I had – honestly – hundreds of them. If any of them got scratched or beaten-up, they were instantly downgraded to “demolition derby duty.” I still have a small collection of model cars – from vintage to modern – that sit along the top of my bookcases at home. Every time I visit a new country, I always bring home a car or a bus to add to my collection. They still make me smile.
Did/do you have a favorite toy?
{ 27 comments… read them below or add one }
I had all girls’ type toys at home. There was a little table with four chairs for us four girls, and my father had put a ‘transfer’ picture on the back of each. “Mine” had a monarch butterfly picture on it, which I thought was the best one! We had a tea-set and pretended to have parties. And I had a wooden doll’s cot and a cane doll’s pram. I think that aunties must have given me those though, without realising I never had a doll! I used to use my soft toys and put them to bed with the old baby’s clothes on.
One of my cousins had a huge selection of cars, and even better, there was a bend in the stream on my uncle’s farm that had lots of shingle on it. We used to make whole towns full of roads and would use the cars on them. Then the West Coast rain would come and wash all the roads away, so we would have to build another town!
It is funny what you say about architects needing to be good at stuff. I shared a flat at university with an architecture student and to this day think that, for a group of such eclectically talented individuals, we really undervalue what they do for us.
I can’t really remember having a favourite toy as such, although I do remember always needing a new football as the old one would get punctured or lost – or kept by the neighbour when it went into his garden
Bear grudges? Me? Never 
My favorite toys weren’t toys, but office supplies. The town had neighboring town had Wagner’s Stationery, a little mom & pop business that smelled deliciously of pencil shavings and was full of the most interesting things, like little eraser wheels with a brush on one end for whisking away the rubbings. I would choose that over a toy store any day. As an adult I love Staples, but it can’t hold a candle to the Wagner’s of my memory.
My year old son loves Lego, too.
8 year old!
Oh. Whew!
I had the girl toys including a doll house that I received for Christmas when I was five – we had very little money and my parents didn’t get anything. I still have that doll house because it represents the sacrifice of my parents’ love.
My favourite toys weren’t girl toys. I played with the boys down the street and one of them had building logs that I really liked so years later I bought them for my children so I could continue to play!
When I was about six years of age I remember being off school with some unnamed bug , confined to bed, thoroughly bored when my Dad brought in a box and said, “Here, this should brighten you up. ”
It was called Etch a Sketch . a mechanical drawing pad, the likes of which seem positively stone age now.
There’s a link here to it here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etch_A_Sketch
I always remember it with great fondness even though I didn’t produce any masterpieces on it.
I liked Etch-a-Sketch, but I was never very good at the nuances of it. But there was always the option to shake it out and start over, which was nice.
Did you see the animated video circulating about the history of Lego? It was nice! I can’t find the link tho
I loved Lego, too. One Christmas I asked a bucket of Lego from Santa.
I also loved a set of miniature clay pots and I’d play make believe cooking. I’d “cook” leaves from our garden. I miss those days!
Perhaps because I seem to be older than most of you, but my choice of toys we more of the type of building them. I was an avid Airfix collector, building anything from Spitfires, Lancasters to Messerschmitts and Stukas….. and not forgetting the Navy and the tank corps too of course!! Long gone days. But I still get a thrill from doing things with my hands even todayand that has stretched out to include cooking. What your choice of toys does to you!! And anyway, I’m happy my daughter is married to an Army Captain now. Keeps the toy-link alive I suppose. And can occasionally get to ride in something BIG too!! Take care.
I guess I was born to be a medical nerd: My favorite toys were a microscope and a chemistry set, while the Barbies and other dolls sat ignored. But with me it was more about activities: I started taking ballet classes, and got very serious with them, and ultimately did end up with a professional ballet career. The health-related stuff got put on hold after I retired from the stage and went back to college (42 is way too young to be retired!) Tried nursing school, wasn’t crazy about it, but ended up becoming a physical therapist. All that science play as a kid came flooding back as I was taking the basic sciences in undergrad. Loved it!
I adored paper dolls. I still do! I also had a “Little Kiddles” doll. I recently found one like it on e-bay. I didn’t buy it, but it brought back fond memories.
Lincoln logs…
And Tinkertoys!
Tim, those are the logs to which I was referring earlier but couldn’t remember the name – absolutely loved playing with them.
They’re the best…
My toys were Tiny Tears (a baby doll) and ironing board and iron! My favourite ” toy” I actually bought as a gift for my Dad, when we were having a conversation one day and he said he could remember having a rocking horse as a child but not a teddy bear. As his birthday was approaching I bought him one accompanied by this poem:
A Teddy Tale
“This teddy bear was bought because you said you can’t recall
ever having owned one; when you were a small boy.
You mustadmit it makes a change from aftershave and socks!
So please don’t think I’m silly or wasting money too
it’s justbecause I want you to have a bear that belongs to you.
Because you’re not “any old daddy”, your mine and special too
because I love you very much and think the world of you.
You are always in my thoughts; your loving serenity
your calm and quiet manner; your humble modesty.
So please don’t give this teddy to my nephew or nieces
for if Matthew is anything to go by, it will only end up in pieces.
For here in rhyme is what I think of you dear Dad,
My biased, prejudiced opinion, the best dad a daughter could have”.
My Dad’s eyes filled up with tears when he received this and he said it was one of the most sentimental things he ever had been given. He carried the poem around in his wallet until the day he died. I speak to him every day.
This brought tears to my eyes.
Thank you for sharing this beautiful story.
Thank goodness, I thought that I was the only one with a collection of model cars revived from childhood. I figure my old Matchbox cars and trucks are rusting away in some cabinet in my mother’s home, but I have fallen into the temptation of again collecting diecast cars, planes, warships and mechas (jJpanese anime-style robots) of various scales and sizes. Electronic gadgets galore! I spend more time browsing in the toy section of Target than my kids. Still I try to remember that these are just “stuff”, and I remind myself that I should be able to walk away from them with nary a backward glance at a moment’s notice. Still, good clean fun, no?
My favorite toys were Little Teddy, G. I. Joes, and a hole in the ground.
Little Teddy was a little Teddy bear my aunt gave me after a visit to her house had me stuck in an oxygen tent at the hospital for three days. She had cleaned furiously for our visit, and all the household chemicals in the air, together with the dog allergens, set off my asthma in the worst way. I only had two toys in the tent – Little Teddy and a helicopter whose blade hit the tail every time it turned. I tried to enjoy the helicopter, since it was from my dad, but Little Teddy became my favorite stuffed animal of all.
As for G. I. Joes and the hole in the ground, every summer for three or four years, my friends and I would dig a hole in a particular spot in my friend’s yard. We’d get about three feet down before we stopped, and then we’d use it as a sort of adventure land for our G. I. Joes, of which I had a couple dozen. We’d make little huts for them, roads, barricades, whatever came to mind. The digging and the building were the fun part. The G. I. Joes mostly just completed the scene and set the specs for the huts.
Two toys. One, a baby doll that I could take into the bath tub, as well as cuddle with at night. Not having her a bedtime was NOT. AN. OPTION.
The other is a small stuffed dog that became my companion during a brief hospital stay. She still sits on my dresser, and has been back to the hospital a couple of times since then — including for the birth of my two daughters.
Both of whom were more than adequate replacements for the above mentioned baby doll.
I don’t remember being attached to any toy except my Easy Bake Oven. I wanted a toy kitchen desperately. And pencils, crayons and paper. I really was a kid who lived in my imagination so I would empy out closets and set up libraries (serious book lover meets control freak!) and empty the pantry to set up a grocery. You would have expected I would become a store owner. Since I was the 6th of 7 kids, there was always something to do but I don’t have a vivid memory except my easy bake oven where my sister got me to bake every packet she could on Christmas Day. (One of our favorite stories).
We couldn’t afford many toys when I was a child, but I think I’m making up for it now as an adult! I absolutely love those sorts of toys they use in Waldorf (or Steiner) schools and preschools: beautiful dolls and other toys made of natural materials, like wood, cotton, wool or silk, often hand-made, and designed to encourage open-ended imaginative play. When I buy them, my excuse is that they are for my future grandchildren, or to be used in the creche where I do voluntary work, but really, I just love them anyway! My sister gave me a bookmark on which it says, “One childhood is not enough”. My sister knows me well!
A deck of cards (especially with a pretty picture on them). It was the one toy that you could take anywhere and play with others or play by yourself . My favorite memories was playing rummy with my Mother and finally winning against her.
My stuffed animals! My best friends and the characters in all my childhood narratives.
The odd lengths of wood combined with a big bin of old sheets and rag rugs that my sibs and I and our friends used to build towns from. Chalk to draw on the driveway, trikes to ride around as “cars”, wagons for buses (which in our rural town didn’t exist).
Do books count? One of the first pictures my parents have of me is sitting next to my dad on the couch. He is reading the newspaper and I am “reading” a book. When I was a teen and complained that there was nothing “good” to read in the house my father handed me a copy of his Norton’s and told me to read one of the Canterbury Tales in old english and I just kept going. I guess it is no surprise that I majored in Lit as an undergrad.
The wonder and appeal of a well stocked library has been a life long treat and wonderful gift worthy of thanking God for