BS: What was your favourite toy?

Subject: BS: What was your favourite toy?
From: Polite Guest
Date: 04 Jun 08 - 05:28 PM

Do you still have it/them?

I still have my Trolls, Paddington Bear and Aunt Lucy.

Subject: RE: BS: What was your favourite toy?
From: GUEST,Chief Chaos
Date: 04 Jun 08 - 05:36 PM

Without a doubt my Big Wheel!
And no, it was ground to dust long ago.
I wish they made an adult version.

Subject: RE: BS: What was your favourite toy?
From: bobad
Date: 04 Jun 08 - 05:39 PM

My ding-a-ling.

Subject: RE: BS: What was your favourite toy?
From: Becca72
Date: 04 Jun 08 - 06:21 PM

I loved Barbies and I still have a trashbag full stored away. I also really love my Zippy doll...stuffed monkey with plastic face, hands and feet. He had a banana in one hand that would stick in his mouth. I still have him, too. Well, I still have my 2nd Zippy.. the first one was placed just a tad too close to the fireplace one day and got a bit charred.

Subject: RE: BS: What was your favourite toy?
From: artbrooks
Date: 04 Jun 08 - 06:30 PM

It went zip! when it moved and bop! when it stopped
And whirrr! when it stood still.
I've never seen such a marvelous toy
And I think that I never will.

Subject: RE: BS: What was your favourite toy?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 04 Jun 08 - 06:32 PM

Mom gave away all our beanbag frogs, without anybody's permission, while I was away at college. All of us minded terribly. We had whole families of them, all but one (Aunt Sandy) made by Mom...

Subject: RE: BS: What was your favourite toy?
From: Bee
Date: 04 Jun 08 - 07:05 PM

Unfortunately disappeared when i was about five: my painted tin 'Four and Twenty Blackbirds' crank musical pie. It had five or six slots in the top, and at the appropriate moment in the song, tin blackbirds popped up out of the slots. You could crank it as slow or fast as you liked. I was utterly fascinated with that toy.

Subject: RE: BS: What was your favourite toy?
From: frogprince
Date: 04 Jun 08 - 07:14 PM

I had a wind-up caterpillar tractor, with a sheetmetal shell. It was hefty, powerful, had a two-speed shift, and ran quite a while on a good winding. It would pull a little trailer full of stuff like toy building blocks up a fairly steep slope. It lasted for quite a few years, until some "governing" mechanism gave out so that the spring would unwind too fast, without much power. I don't know that you can get a windup toy anywhere near that good anywhere now.

Subject: RE: BS: What was your favourite toy?
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 04 Jun 08 - 07:17 PM

Lincoln Logs. The old kind made of nice aromatic wood (cedar?), not the ones they're selling nowadays that smell like nothing.

Subject: RE: BS: What was your favourite toy?
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 04 Jun 08 - 07:19 PM

Lego

Subject: RE: BS: What was your favourite toy?
From: kendall
Date: 04 Jun 08 - 07:25 PM

A replica of a model T Ford in cast iron. One of my cousins stole it but I never knew which one. It was probably the pathological liar.
He ended up doing time for stealing the real thing years later.
After he got kicked out of the Army, he did time for bigamy.

Subject: RE: BS: What was your favourite toy?
From: Bobert
Date: 04 Jun 08 - 07:30 PM

1964 AC Cobra... all 1850 pounds of it...

Wish I still had it...

Subject: RE: BS: What was your favourite toy?
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 04 Jun 08 - 08:26 PM

Susie

another pic of Susie

Both outfits were made years later - red outfit a few years after I started work wewn I started dressing dolls in period costume, & blue one was made from a toddler's dress a few years ago.

I don't have much left of my childhood - I was the oldest of 4 with 2 sisters - apart from 2 books & an aluminium doll's house chair & the tiny doll I dressed in scraps of lace who sits on the chair.

sandra

Subject: RE: BS: What was your favourite toy?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 04 Jun 08 - 08:49 PM

The thing that gave me most pleasure was contemplating my Roy Roger's record . It had Red and Gold Regal Zonophone label on shiny black shellac and moved at 78 rpm.

I put it on a chair and my Mum sat on it. i was inconsolable.

Subject: RE: BS: What was your favourite toy?
From: Jeri
Date: 04 Jun 08 - 08:54 PM

I had trolls, those ugly little dolls with the multi-colored hair. There are at least a couple somewhere in my basement. My mother sewed multiple outfits for them after I'd grown out of Barbies and the Barbies didn't need any more clothing. Mom would make me a dress, then make one for Barbie out of the same material. The shoes never matched, but I didn'tn make Barbie wear shoes, as I avoided them whenever possible.

They couldn't have been my favorite, but it's hard to remember. I had a little stuffed (with sawdust!) corduroy horse that my mother told me was put in my crib shortly after I was born by a great aunt who died before I knowingly met her. The face had worn off or never was there, but I remember feeling like it should have one, so I drew a smile on. I loved that little horse.

There were a few items I had that I knew were just objects, but felt were real in some way. Eyes came off, seams ripped and other kids mistreated them, and I cried. I guess I was a weird little kid (go figure), but there are still some things I own that I'm attached to. My mountain dulcimer and the first fiddle I owned (the one that Rick borrowed) for a couple.

It's funny. Everyone who ever loved me when I was a kid is gone, but I still have that little corduroy horse.

Subject: RE: BS: What was your favourite toy?
From: GUEST
Date: 04 Jun 08 - 09:06 PM

A cork gun.

Subject: RE: BS: What was your favourite toy?
From: Rapparee
Date: 04 Jun 08 - 09:30 PM

My .30-30. I got it when I was 5 and used it to hunt animals so we'd have something to eat besides nuts and berries.

Subject: RE: BS: What was your favourite toy?
From: maire-aine
Date: 04 Jun 08 - 11:03 PM

I had a lot of fun with Mr. Potato-head. I wasn't very interested in dolls. Does my bicycle count?

M

Subject: RE: BS: What was your favourite toy?
From: katlaughing
Date: 04 Jun 08 - 11:21 PM

Jeri, I still have a little black cocker spaniel (like my grandma's real one) and a red rooster I was told was given to me when I was born.

I can't think of one only. There were different ones depending on how old I was. My six-shooter cap gun was always a fav. I wore out the fake amber plastic sides on the handle. Also I had a metal submarine which could be wound up in the bathtub that I loved. My earliest toy was a wind-up musical tin Easter egg. It's really beat up and doesn't work anymore. Like THIS only mine is green. Various dolls which also really got worn out. I still have my Tammy doll (the first one shown.) She was less expensive and less *twiggy* than Barbie. My sisters made a bunch of clothes and accessories for her the Christmas I got her. Beach towel, tiny curlers for her hair, purses and shoes to match, etc. Really neat, tiny stuff. I still have all of it and her.

Subject: RE: BS: What was your favourite toy?
From: TRUBRIT
Date: 05 Jun 08 - 12:34 AM

I had a stuffed panda bear called - brilliantly I confess - Panda!!! I slept with that bear every night of my life until I inadvertantly left him in a flat in London I was vacating. Inconsolable hardly covers it....

And i had an old tennis racket -- I used to spend hours knocking balls against the shed wall pretending I was at Wimbledon -- such pleasure...

Subject: RE: BS: What was your favourite toy?
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 05 Jun 08 - 02:38 AM

Dirty Wow Wow & other love stories - a tribute to the threadbare companions of childhood, by Cheryl & Jeffrey Katz

Unfortunately they don't have a pic of my teddy as my mother burnt him when I was 12.

sandra

Subject: RE: BS: What was your favourite toy?
From: Polite Guest
Date: 05 Jun 08 - 03:46 AM

I had a little wind-up musical box that played 'London Bridge Is Falling Down' took it everywhere with me.   It fell to pieces only a few years back. I still have my Wendy Boston teddies, Treacle, Honey and Bess.

When I was 35 my, then small, daughter brought Bess into the room where I was sitting with my brother, then 38, and the sudden 'atmosphere' could have been cut with a knife. "She was my bear, you know. Mum gave her to you when you were born, but she was mine." Suddenly a whole lifetime of resentment from him fell into place. I offered him Bess back again, but he wouldn't take her. How different might our sibling relationship have been, and still be, if Bess had remained his bear. In reading some of the posts above, it seems that many parents, seemingly mothers, make heartbreaking mistakes in 'disposing' of their children's toys, with no thought or understanding about how much it hurts them. Important lessons to be learned.


Hey, bobert, I was forbidden to play with my ding-a-ling. ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: What was your favourite toy?
From: Folk Form # 1
Date: 05 Jun 08 - 05:58 AM

I had a teddy bear called Teddy, but one day I watched a film about Joan Of Arc so I burnt him as a heretic.

Subject: RE: BS: What was your favourite toy?
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 05 Jun 08 - 06:03 AM

And a mamod traction engine. I've not got that one any more but I got another a couple of Xmases ago and also bought a Wilesco one.

Subject: RE: BS: What was your favourite toy?
From: Grab
Date: 05 Jun 08 - 07:30 AM

I guess by "toy" we have to limit this to stuff owned below the age of 18, otherwise recently-acquired musical instruments will take the thread over!

My Topper dinghy, probably, although I'm not sure I'd call it a toy. My folks sold it when I left home, which was OK by me - I was a bit too big for it by then anyway, and I didn't have anywhere to sail.

Also my collection of Warhammer figures - metal fantasy and SF figures. I loved building and painting them. Creativity-wise, guitar replaced those at the age of 19 though, so they sat in the loft at my folks' place for years, then in our loft for some more years. I finally sold them to a kid nearby for not very much money at all - I could have got much more for them on eBay, but I thought I'd rather sell them to someone who'd get some real enjoyment out of them. When I started digging everything out of the boxes, the lad actually lost the power of speech for about a minute, he was so overwhelmed with how much stuff there was! :-)

Graham.

Subject: RE: BS: What was your favourite toy?
From: Rapparee
Date: 05 Jun 08 - 08:12 AM

Actually, Sammy. A stuffed doll my Father brought back from the Philippines and gave me when I was less than a year old. I wore him out and my g-g-aunt created a new face for him out of an old stocking and some judicious embroidery. Sammy's disappeared somewhere (he's probably a burnt-out lush caging drinks in seedy bars), but my brother still has his stuffed horse, Butchy Goldy.

Subject: RE: BS: What was your favourite toy?
From: katlaughing
Date: 05 Jun 08 - 08:13 AM

My teeny-tiny blue and white tea set. My grandson and I use it now for tea parties.

Subject: RE: BS: What was your favourite toy?
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 05 Jun 08 - 10:02 AM

what a lovely thread.

more contributions, please.

sandra

Subject: RE: BS: What was your favourite toy?
From: Mrs.Duck
Date: 05 Jun 08 - 02:38 PM

What do you mean WAS? Teddy is still upstairs. Of course he no longer has any hair as I thought I'd shave him when I was about 4 and later my brothers dog chewed half his face off so he had to have a new nose and eye which doesn't match the other. He is a steiff but my mother removed the button in case I choked but I'd never get rid of him anyway :0)

Subject: RE: BS: What was your favourite toy?
From: RangerSteve
Date: 05 Jun 08 - 02:51 PM

I had a Flash Gordon rocketship, made of metal, about 1 1/2 feet long, with a friction wheel that shot sparks out of the tail end.

Subject: RE: BS: What was your favourite toy?
From: PoppaGator
Date: 05 Jun 08 - 04:03 PM

We were so poor when I was a kid, if I wasn't a boy I wouldn't have had anything to play with...

Subject: RE: BS: What was your favourite toy?
From: CarolC
Date: 05 Jun 08 - 04:18 PM

The great outdoors. Trees and big rocks especially. And dirt. I loved digging in the dirt. And the inlet of the Narragansett Bay we lived on till I was almost 10. No man-made toy could compare to those things.

Subject: RE: BS: What was your favourite toy?
From: katlaughing
Date: 05 Jun 08 - 04:19 PM

LMAO!! Oh, Poppa!

Subject: RE: BS: What was your favourite toy?
From: Bee
Date: 05 Jun 08 - 04:20 PM

Bad Poppagator! Swat!

Polite Guest is right about some parents not thinking clearly on the toy issue. I grieved for years about the panda bear (with real panda markings!) that diappeared from my toy basket. Mom didn't tell me for years that she'd secretly thrown it out because it smelled really mouldy and had that linty stuffing that's packed so tight it doesn't wash well - she had tried.

In a way, I missed my parents grown-up toys as much as my own. My Dad had a little accordion or squeeze box - it was tiny - until I was five. he sold it along with a lot of our things before we moved to Florida for a year. I remember him handsome and laughing while playing silly tunes on it for us. My Mom had a piano, which she played several times a week, until I was around eleven, when it was sold for $100 worth of grocery money. They both got joy out of those things, and it hurt me that they had to give them up for the sake of a few dollars. I felt guilty, especially about the piano.

Subject: RE: BS: What was your favourite toy?
From: topical tom
Date: 05 Jun 08 - 05:53 PM

My favourite was a six-shot repeating cap pistol. I also loved a squirt pistol with which I used to shoot our ugly rooster(He would run and attack your leg at the slightest provocation!)Oh yeah, forgot to mention-I lived on a farm as a youngster.I soon tired of the cap pistol, though, and I and my cousins used to set off the caps with a hammer.
Ah, the simple pleasures of a bygone time!

Subject: RE: BS: What was your favourite toy?
From: Phot
Date: 05 Jun 08 - 06:05 PM

I had two dustbins(Trash cans) full of Lego until I was 16, when my Mum gave it away to my best mate, damm that stuff is fun! Then I had my Landrover 110, I let her go to a good friend as he could do the resto work that I didn't have time to do. Now I have the Discovery, and she's going nowhere......Apart from the resto bays at the works motor club at the end of the year!

I'd still like some more Lego and an O gauge railway layout though....

Wassail!! Chris

Subject: RE: BS: What was your favourite toy?
From: Polite Guest
Date: 05 Jun 08 - 06:12 PM

Hey Chris, :-)

From Lego to Landrover,

"The difference between men and boys is the size of their toys"

Subject: RE: BS: What was your favourite toy?
From: Greengal
Date: 05 Jun 08 - 06:58 PM

This is a fun thread. I didn't have a lot of fancy dolls as a kid, but I remember playing with little red and white brick things to build a house; was that Leggos ?(or maybe a made in Japan knock off). I also had a lot of little horses, the kind you painted yourself with a kit, and then I also had a lot of very little ones (I think you could buy 20 in a bag for a dollar- lol). They were small but you could make imaginary herds out of them, and pretend you were a princess, and that they were all galloping over the mountains to take you to a treasured kingdom where you would meet your magic prince, who played Beatles song on the guitar of course, and where all the trees were gigantic ice cream cones.

(blush)

Subject: RE: BS: What was your favourite toy?
From: katlaughing
Date: 05 Jun 08 - 07:00 PM

Bee, I know what you mean. My mom gave away my rocking horse without even asking me and I was still young enough to be really attached. Has to have been before I was 8 because we moved that winter. She gave it to friends who had foster children. I am sure they needed it more than I, but I wish she'd explained and/or asked.:-)

Subject: RE: BS: What was your favourite toy?
From: kendall
Date: 05 Jun 08 - 07:56 PM

Having been born in the middle of the great depression, I was lucky to get enough to eat, let alone something to play with.

Subject: RE: BS: What was your favourite toy?
From: Ed T
Date: 05 Jun 08 - 07:58 PM

I enjopyed my sons programable robot from the 80's
You could program many turns ahead. And it was low tech.

In fact, I enjoyed some of my kids toys as much as those I had when I was a kid.

As a kid I took dents out of tin cans, pretending I was a auto repair guy. I also made airplanes (they kind of looked like them) out of clothes pins:)

Subject: RE: BS: What was your favourite toy?
From: Bee
Date: 05 Jun 08 - 08:18 PM

Anyone have Tinker Toys, wooden discs with holes in them and thin dowels to connect them? They were my brothers toys, but I think I played with them more.

Subject: RE: BS: What was your favourite toy?
From: Charley Noble
Date: 05 Jun 08 - 08:59 PM

My mother made us stuffed animals, cloth stuffed with kapok. I had a flounder named "Finney" and my brother had a spotted salamander called "Otto." The stuffed animals were redefined later as "cloth sculpture" but we didn't care.

Finney went with me to the hospital when I had my appendix removed.

If you check my mother's website you may find some examples of her cloth sculpture: click here for website

Actually I couldn't find any images there and I best consult with my brother who maintains the website and make sure that "St. George and the Dragon" are represented.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: BS: What was your favourite toy?
From: peregrina
Date: 05 Jun 08 - 09:07 PM

Jacks. The big old fashioned heavy shiny metal kind. Lovely to play with with a favourite superball (the kind with a marbly swirl inside: do they still exist?).

A tiny china tea-set usually wrapped in a tissue paper.

Houses made of cardboard fridge or washer boxes.

Bee: yes, I remember tinker toys...

Subject: RE: BS: What was your favourite toy?
From: frogprince
Date: 05 Jun 08 - 09:30 PM

We had tinker toys; my sister hurled the can at me, and a scar from the metal rim was visible on my forehead for many years. We didn't have "Lincoln" logs, we had "American" logs, which looked like they had been hewn square. We must have worn out at least several cap pistols, as I remember having different styles over the years.

Subject: RE: BS: What was your favourite toy?
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 06 Jun 08 - 01:36 AM

typo in Charley's link fixed

Subject: RE: BS: What was your favourite toy?
From: Polite Guest
Date: 06 Jun 08 - 06:26 AM

Thanks, Sandra.

Those are beautiful paintings by your mother, Charley. Wow! :-)

Subject: RE: BS: What was your favourite toy?
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 06 Jun 08 - 06:39 AM

60007 - Sir Nigel Gresley by Hornby, one oval of 3 rail track and a couple of carriages, wonderful. I wish I kept it because it would be worth a few hundred £ now.

Subject: RE: BS: What was your favourite toy?
From: Greengal
Date: 06 Jun 08 - 02:39 PM

Ed, I was quite touched by your story about how you made those creative 'toys' - I bet you grew up to be quite a handy and productive gentleman.

Bee, I played with those tinker toys too. My neighbor's son, who was considered 'rich' in those days (dad was a plumber lol) occasionally let us play with his stuff, usually around Christmas. ONCE in a rare while he let us play with his Lionel train set, which was terrific. Mostly I liked arranging the little houses and trees around the tracks.

Another toy I liked was those little things where you moved numbers or letters around - tiles in a square- to make them go in order. Must have been the pre-curser to Rubik's cube.

Oh , and now I just remembered two other toys I loved- one was when you took a magnet and 'drew' a beard on a man with magnetized filings. Another was that standard draw with a no lead pencil and then if you lift the sheet, the drawing would disappear. Anyone remember them? I realize as I am writing this, that I didn't care so much for the 'girly' stuff (tho I still wish I could have had a Barbie Doll) but more the artsy stuff. Which I still do today.And those simple 'creative' toys we bought or made probably did far more for our inventiveness than all the video games today.

Subject: RE: BS: What was your favourite toy?
From: Gurney
Date: 06 Jun 08 - 08:26 PM

As a boy, Meccano, a family handdown with all the paint rubbed off and the clockwork motors knackered, and an electric train set that my Dad brought back from Germany when he was demobbed. Oh, and a scooter that was made in Belgium onto tyres my Mum sent over.
They could get no tyres at all then, and made wheels to fit english ones. Any size.

Nowadays, a cut-off saw and an arc-welder. Such a pleasure after a hacksaw and bolts.

Subject: RE: BS: What was your favourite toy?
From: Charley Noble
Date: 06 Jun 08 - 09:19 PM

Thanks, Sandra, for correcting the link to my mother's website. She's still actively painting pictures at her farm on Georgetown Island, Maine, at the age of 90.

Another "toy" she and my father presented us with was a castle, jig-sawed out of scraps of wood, painted silver, with some of the rooms even wallpapered with images of tapestries. There were towers and battlements, and a flying buttress. My brother and I lost little time devising catapults so we could knock the defenders off the walls. There was many a noisy battle conducted on and about that castle, and little respect shown for messengers with their pleas for peace!

Charley Noble

Subject: RE: BS: What was your favourite toy?
From: AllisonA(Animaterra)
Date: 07 Jun 08 - 08:20 AM

I still have my Sasha doll

Subject: RE: BS: What was your favourite toy?
From: Greg B
Date: 07 Jun 08 - 09:54 PM

I don't know that it was my favorite, but one time my parents
brought me back from vacation one of those puppets that sit
on a platform--- they're spring-loaded. It was a little wooden
bovine replete with spots and wire horns.

I was about eight.

I promptly named him, since he was wood, after a cartoon character:

I proclaimed him to be named "Woody Cow-Pecker."

At the time, I had no clue about why my mother and father and
maternal grandparents lapsed into uncontrollable hysterics. Lost
it entirely, while I sat there wondering what in the hell I'd said
that was so funny.

You know--- I still have the thing.

Subject: RE: BS: What was your favourite toy?
From: RangerSteve
Date: 08 Jun 08 - 08:54 AM

Greengal, the toy with the metal filings that you moved around with the magnet to put facial hair on the picture was "Wooly Willy". The other one, that you drew the picture and then lifted it to make it dissappear was a "Magic Slate". They kept me occupied during a lot of long car rides.

Subject: RE: BS: What was your favourite toy?
From: gnu
Date: 08 Jun 08 - 02:10 PM

Red Ryder BB gun. The model without the compass in the stock. That there is fer sissies what can find their way home on accounta the birds ate the bread crumbs. I think my Bro has it now.

Subject: RE: BS: What was your favourite toy?
From: Bill D
Date: 08 Jun 08 - 04:11 PM

When I was about 7, my grandmother gave me a $2 bill for my birthday.

I bought TinkerToys (almost exactly like that pic...)

Subject: RE: BS: What was your favourite toy?
From: GUEST,islandgirl
Date: 09 Jun 08 - 01:20 AM

Bee - Of course I played with Tinker Toys. They still sell it - Vermont Country Store (you can order it on-line). Of course it's way more expensive than it was when we had it

Subject: RE: BS: What was your favourite toy?
From: RangerSteve
Date: 09 Jun 08 - 08:12 AM

We had these airplanes that were basically wings attached to plastic tubes, you put them on another tube, and launched them like a pea-shooter. Great fun until they all ended up on the roof of our house. The first strong wind took them away forever. And those balsa wood planes with the rubber-band operated propellers - also very short lived, as balsa is the most breakable substance around.