Everyone is making a bigass deal out of these Zhu Zhu pets, the motorized hamsters that became the must-have gift last Christmas. Crappy toy, in my opinion. What can you really do with it? No staying power there. Reading that article got me thinking about my own Favorite Playthings from my childhood (way back before computers and microchips but well after dinosaurs and log cabins). Here's my list of
Top 5 Toys
1. Spirograph
2. Etch-A-Sketch
3. Play Doh
4. Fun Flowers Thingmaker Set
5. Crayola 64 Crayon Box
These toys all had major staying power because they were interactive and produced something. They weren't necessarily--bad word here--educational--but you did more than just wind them up and watch them.
Spirograph: This was the most incredible toy. I'm sure someplace some engineer thought altruistically, "I'm teaching kiddies about parabolas and geometry and sine and cosine" or something mathy like that, but I never thought that. I just picked out a disc, stuck a colored pen in the hole, and started carefully fitting the teeth together of disc and stationary part. It was awesome the way a beautiful snowflakey-looking shape suddenly appeared. I used to sit and do this for hours. Once for Christmas I got a huge pen with about two dozen different colors of ink in its barrel that could be used interchangeably. It made Spirograph 24 times more exciting.
Etch-A-Sketch: Man, this thing also kept me busy forever. I got so I could draw almost anything on it, but my favorite thing was a nice, neat house with windowboxes, front steps, and even a house number. I was always curious about how it worked, but my dad told me, so I never had to break it open. I still love this toy, and both my kids always had one. Truth be told, I think I played with it far more than they ever did.
Play Doh: Let me tell you, I played with this stuff far longer than is probably normal or healthy, and the fact that my little sister is five years younger than I am prolonged my Play Doh Playtime, a fact for which I am immensely grateful. I especially loved that simple extruder toy, The Play Doh Fun Factory. I used to sit and make a ton of pretend baked goods, plates of pretend restaurant entrees and desserts, you name it. I was especially proud of of my Play Doh Fruit Plates.
The Fun Flowers Thingmaker Set: This toy would never fly in this day and age, for it reached temperatures of probably five hundred degrees, used bare metal plates without a safety covering, and the Plastigoop had more poison/toxicity warnings on it than a medical waste facility. Basically, it was a nightmare. But I loved making the rubbery little flowers and faces and leaves and then putting them on florist's wire and...having them. Bunches and Bunches of them. My mother detested cleaning up the oily residue of the Plastigoop from the carpet and table and floor (during one memorable summer, she even forbid me from playing with the Thingmaker on the concrete front porch), but she never seemed even remotely concerned with the dozens of burns I got on my fingers. Moms back then were way less hovery.
64 Crayola Crayon Box: Not only was this The Big Box Of Crayons, it had a built-in crayon sharpener! This was THE BOX OF CRAYONS. I got one of these for Christmas every year because it made My List every year. Sometimes, I got one for my birthday. Holy Crap, I loved this box of crayons. This used to be The Biggest Box They Made. There were days I would take the crayons out and just organize them in the box: you know, put all the greens together, all the oranges together, all the blues together, etc. I knew the names of the colors like the saint names in the prayer of the Eucharist at mass: apricot, burnt sienna, thistle, sepia, bittersweet, magenta, cornflower...ah! What the Crayola people have done to some of these classic colors is shameful. I still find coloring in a good coloring book very therapeutic. Good luck with that, though--finding a good coloring book. Most are shills for cartoon characters. Sad.
Top 5 Toys
1. Spirograph
2. Etch-A-Sketch
3. Play Doh
4. Fun Flowers Thingmaker Set
5. Crayola 64 Crayon Box
These toys all had major staying power because they were interactive and produced something. They weren't necessarily--bad word here--educational--but you did more than just wind them up and watch them.
Spirograph: This was the most incredible toy. I'm sure someplace some engineer thought altruistically, "I'm teaching kiddies about parabolas and geometry and sine and cosine" or something mathy like that, but I never thought that. I just picked out a disc, stuck a colored pen in the hole, and started carefully fitting the teeth together of disc and stationary part. It was awesome the way a beautiful snowflakey-looking shape suddenly appeared. I used to sit and do this for hours. Once for Christmas I got a huge pen with about two dozen different colors of ink in its barrel that could be used interchangeably. It made Spirograph 24 times more exciting.
Etch-A-Sketch: Man, this thing also kept me busy forever. I got so I could draw almost anything on it, but my favorite thing was a nice, neat house with windowboxes, front steps, and even a house number. I was always curious about how it worked, but my dad told me, so I never had to break it open. I still love this toy, and both my kids always had one. Truth be told, I think I played with it far more than they ever did.
Play Doh: Let me tell you, I played with this stuff far longer than is probably normal or healthy, and the fact that my little sister is five years younger than I am prolonged my Play Doh Playtime, a fact for which I am immensely grateful. I especially loved that simple extruder toy, The Play Doh Fun Factory. I used to sit and make a ton of pretend baked goods, plates of pretend restaurant entrees and desserts, you name it. I was especially proud of of my Play Doh Fruit Plates.
The Fun Flowers Thingmaker Set: This toy would never fly in this day and age, for it reached temperatures of probably five hundred degrees, used bare metal plates without a safety covering, and the Plastigoop had more poison/toxicity warnings on it than a medical waste facility. Basically, it was a nightmare. But I loved making the rubbery little flowers and faces and leaves and then putting them on florist's wire and...having them. Bunches and Bunches of them. My mother detested cleaning up the oily residue of the Plastigoop from the carpet and table and floor (during one memorable summer, she even forbid me from playing with the Thingmaker on the concrete front porch), but she never seemed even remotely concerned with the dozens of burns I got on my fingers. Moms back then were way less hovery.
64 Crayola Crayon Box: Not only was this The Big Box Of Crayons, it had a built-in crayon sharpener! This was THE BOX OF CRAYONS. I got one of these for Christmas every year because it made My List every year. Sometimes, I got one for my birthday. Holy Crap, I loved this box of crayons. This used to be The Biggest Box They Made. There were days I would take the crayons out and just organize them in the box: you know, put all the greens together, all the oranges together, all the blues together, etc. I knew the names of the colors like the saint names in the prayer of the Eucharist at mass: apricot, burnt sienna, thistle, sepia, bittersweet, magenta, cornflower...ah! What the Crayola people have done to some of these classic colors is shameful. I still find coloring in a good coloring book very therapeutic. Good luck with that, though--finding a good coloring book. Most are shills for cartoon characters. Sad.
You know what's next, Stuff readers: your turn to take that stroll down Memory Lane and identify your favorite childhood toys. Let's see what you toss into the playpen.
9 comments:
The staying power is proven with these toys because they all still exist. You can go out right now and get a spirograph, Etch-a-Sketch and all the Play Doh to fulfull your fake food dreams. You can still buy the 64 Crayola box with the built in sharpener in the classic colors. Fun Flowers are a thing of the past but Creepy Crawlers are the exact same material, on the same dangerous metal plates with the same oily sticky crap. This is obviously aimed at boys, but online you can find the girl version which is called Dolly Maker.
Nance, you had and still have, excellent taste in toys. My favorite was my box of marbles. I loved to arrange them by color, by size, group them into families and just run my hands over them. I still have all of them.
I had a spirograph that I loved too! That was such a fun toy! You could make the coolest looking pictures...aahhh.
I liked playing with an etch-a-sketch but I'm not sure that I ever actually had one. Micah likes to play with one too becuase my mom STILL has one at her house that she plays with :)
A couple of my most memorable toys? I had a Strawberry Shortcake doll that would puff out strawberry scented air when you squeezed her belly. But looking back, the doll itself was not what I loved so much. It was the fact that my dog HATED this doll and got completely freaked out if you puffed the air into her face. So I spent countless hours chasing that poor Saki dog all over with Strawberry Shortcake.
I also loved my chalk board. I loved to pretend I was a teacher. I would teach to my cat, she was an awful student, never answered any questions.
Oh, the Holly Hobby oven that first belonged to my sister was fantasic! Although I never had any of the little cakes you were supposed to bake in it, all I can ever remember was trying to heat up water. Sometimes I would sneak some flour and sugar hoping the barely heated mixture would turn into something delicious. Yum!
Nina--I had a chalkboard, too, a great big one on a stand. My sister Susan and I played school constantly. And I bought her an EasyBake Oven for Christmas one year with my paper route money. We both loved playing with that. Finally, my mom let us start baking pizzas and cakes and stuff in the real oven. I don't remember the Holly Hobbie oven, but it sounds like the EasyBake. GO GET MICAH AN ETCH A SKETCH! That way, you both can play with it at home!
J.--You are kidding! They still have Creepy Crawlies Thingmaker? And it still is the dangerousest thing ever? GO GET ONE IMMEDIATELY FOR YOUR CHILDREN AND FORCE THEM TO PLAY WITH IT. LOL. Do you know how many icky spots and stains were on my mom's carpet from that goop? Sigh. But talk about fun. I also still stare longingly at Super Elastic Bubble Plastic. Do you remember that? Squirt out a dollop, put it on the end of the straw, and blow out these plastic balloons WHICH WERE GOOD FOR NOTHING WHATSOEVER. And that stuff smelled like Sharpie Marker. But I loved to do that. Man.
J. again--I loved marbles. Never learned how to play any game with them, but my dad gave his childhood set to my brother, and they were gorgeous. He had huge shooters that were so pretty. I loved to clink them together in my hands. I bet you could put yours in a lovely shadow box frame or little tabletop and display them.
Oh yeah, I loved my Slinky too. The metal one, not the plastic one. However, I never could get it to go all the way down the stairs....
The Boy still has his Creepy Crawlers that we got him at a disturbingly young age. The smell of that cooking plastic is what really got to me more than the mess it made. He hasn't dusted it off in awhile, but the potential is always there.
I never was interested in learning to play the game even though many tried to teach me how to shoot. I don't think I would want to lock them away from myself in a frame or table. Sometimes I still like to dump them all out and walk on them.
You can still find those disgusting plastic bubbles too at dollar stores. You always have the same reaction with that: Oh, that's neat. Oh...what now?
Nina--I always THOUGHT I loved Slinky, but once I had one, I never really did much with it. It's really a purposeless toy, once you think about it. And it NEVER EVER walked down steps like it showed in the commercial.
J.--I had forgotten about the smell of that stuff. My poor mother...!
I was all about video games. Isn't that sad?
Mikey--well, *I* think it's sad, but I'm Old School. But the beauty of the toys I mentioned is that you can still go get them and start playing with them now.
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