The Toys that Define Us

This reposting of Retro-Spective's entries (I'm working backward) is actually inspiring me to add to some of them, especially this one. Only the first paragraph was originally posted. And while I said I'd do the reposting slowly, and while I tend to be fairly patient, I do have this need to get things done streak in me, so I hope to get everything over here by tonight or tomorrow so I can cross it off my To Do list.

I finally wised up and realized I could Google for the toy that's been driving me crazy for years. When I was a little girl, I had a diver who floated up from the bottom of a tub of water via baking soda power. I've hunted antique stores high and low for one of these divers and the best I got was "Yeah, I remember those. No, we don't have any." But here are a bunch, and I don't recall which one I had, though I do recall my diver had a single tank on his back. The site looks like a lot of fun for my fellow baby boomers looking for a bit of playful nostalgia.

So of course, that has me thinking about favorite toys. I loved my Slinky, metal, of course. It made the greatest noise going down the brick steps of the stoop in the front of our house and on the tiled stairs leading down to the basement. I had a plastic (reds and blacks, as I recall) Jacob's Ladder, though I didn't know what it was called back then. There was Silly Putty and Jacks and Pick-Up Stix, too, but I also found household items fun to play with, especially my parents' collection of glass swizzle sticks. I hope my father still has them; they're probably collectors' items now.

I had a pink Spalding ball of course, to play stoop ball and punch ball with (punch ball was a challenge because we used manhole covers and car bumpers for bases and it wasn't unusual for third base to drive off in the middle of a game). See Streetplay for info.

I had dolls, too, Tiny Tears and Chatty Cathy, and of course, Barbies. I had the black haired, ponytail Barbie with the black and white swimsuit and blond Ken with actual fuzzy hair in a crewcut. They were the old type, the type that should never have gone swimming in chlorinated water. But I took them into the pool with me and their fingers eventually eroded enough to fall off. I had blonde Midge and redheaded Alan (he of the plastic hair), and Barbie's sister, Skipper, too, and Midge and Alan still adorn my shelves. Skipper apparently skipped during our move back in '69.

And I had a little homemaker set, with a stove that had a crank. And when you turned the crank, sparks would shoot out of the "burners." I'm thinking that this toy would never pass muster by today's standards, but back when I was 5, this was pretty uh, hot stuff.

Feeling:

memories
toys