Favorite Toys

[queenb]

I just had a horrible thought brought on by posting in this thread earlier.

When I was really little, I remember having a red stuffed monkey I named Boo-Boo that I had with me constantly. I was so young that I don't ever remember NOT having Boo-Boo, so I must have been about 4 or 5 when this happened. My mom and Dad were about to take us on some kind of family outing, which we hardly ever got to do. My parents didn't let us take our toys when we went somewhere, so when it was time to leave I guess I forgot about Boo-Boo and left him sitting on our porch steps.
Well, we were gone all day, and by the time we got home It had begun pouring down rain by the buckets full. When we were nearly home, I remembered Boo-Boo and started to worry. So when we got home, I rushed over to the steps...but... Boo-Boo was so old that that torrential rain had DISSOLVED him into just a pile of red fur shreds and stuffing...and his little plastic face was just lying there..
I was a wreck for days. Of course my Mom and Dad got me a new stuffed buddy, and of course I hated it, although I didn't tell them that.

[Paulie]

Oh, geez! What a terribly tragic story! I used to flat-out fret about whether I'd left toys outside when I was a child. I'd lay in bed, listening to the rain or (much more likely, given that we lived in northern Wyoming at the time) the wind, and I'd just run a mental inventory of all my toys to make sure they were all inside. I think my brother's Land Speeder blew away in one storm. That didn't start the worrying for me; it just validated it.

I feel so bad for Boo-Boo!

[Glitternerfball]

LOVED my little ponies, big time - still have the few 'special ones' that you had to order, like the first boy pony, the bride pony, my first tooth pony is somewhere.

Also loved the Speak and say, speak and math (still have that one). Actually, for my speak and say - that brings back a story I grew up poor in AZ, and my mother actually sold blood so I could get that toy, and then when we moved to NY her foster brother oh so kindly said we could sleep in the garage becasue he didn't want us to dirty the house (we were the Joads inreverse) and his daughter stole it! She had made a big stink about how it was the only one she didn't have and then lo and behold, she had it and I didn't.

Reminds me, I have to get my speak and math back, I had leant it to a 4th grader who needed help with his math.

[Muduh]

I have always wanted Mrs Beasley. My sister got one and I was so envious. Now I'm glad she got one. She was mid 50's at the time. She died at 57. I still want one and I'm now 65. The new ones are not as cute as the old ones were. I would probably spend my allowance (or Social Security check) for a month for one in good condition. I found my son's Zippy a while back. He looks good but his banana's paint is peeling. (Go ahead and laugh, I am). My older son could probably retire and live well if he still had all his original GI Joes. He never kept anything. When he was through with it, out it went. If anyone else is old enough to remember the Dick and Jane readers we used in first grade, I bought a set at Barnes and Noble the other day. They are exactly as I remember and are in a little book satchel thing. I'm going to read them to my grandkid. May just read them to myself a few times too.

[veejer]

What a great thread!! I haven't read it all the way through yet, but I'll jump in with mine. I'm the youngest of three girls, oldest and I were tomboys, and the middle one a girlie-girl. My poor mom used to say "I have three daughters, but only one girl." Needless to say I had very few dolls, but my favorite was probably Chatty-Baby. I used to drive people nuts with it. I also had "Little Kiddles" that I really liked. The boy across the street had G.I. Joes and I liked playing with those. I remember us filling his mom's laundry tub almost to overflowing and dropping his Apollo return module into the "Pacific". This was the late 60s.

I really liked stuffed animals though, and my absolute all-time favorite was a non-Disney Winnie the Pooh. I loved the fur right off of him. My mom darned and patched him so many times, that finally my grandma, who could knit anything, modified some baby patterns and made him a little outfit, pants, top, sweater and socks. He had quite a few adventures, like falling into a river in Vermont and rapidly disappearing downstream before the girlie-girl sister caught up with him. She was my hero for quite a while after that.

I liked playing with boxes and making playhouses with old blankets and the clotheslines. We had three parallel lines from the house to the garage, so could get quite elaborate with multiple rooms.

I've always enjoyed games, board, card, logic....just about anything, and still do. Aggravation - getting to bop people back home was a favorite activity of mine.

Unklescott and Paulie have mentioned Clue and that was a favorite too. When I first played it I was really young as my sisters were 7 and 5 years older than me, and I didn't know that "Prof" was an abbreviation of "Professor", so I called him "Proof Plum". My sisters have never let me live that one down. Clue is just about my son's favorite game and his sister enjoys it too, and they overcame the need for three players in a different way from Paulie. I don't quite understand it, but they have combined it with Life, and created a game they call "Clife".

[Paulie]

My brother and I always called him "Prof Plum," even though we knew it stood for Professor. We still do, in fact. It sounds funnier.

We loved the game of Life, too. Our goal was always to cram our car with as many kids as possible, until they were spilling out the sides. I no longer have that goal.

[Daddio]

Daddio-my bro's played with GI Joe's too. They were the rough and tumbled boyfriends for Barbies.

If you happened to hold on to any of them, they are extremely valuable nowadays if they are in good shape and all.

Regrettably they are looooong gone. I think we gave them all to a neigbhor kid or something.

If I think of all the things I had as a kids that we either gave away or threw out in the trash - I could probably retire.

* My GI Joes and all their gear
* My baseball card collection
* My beer can collection
* My sisters Barbies and gear (late 50's/early 60's models)

Ah well, every parent on this site has likely given away or tossed away something of their kids that will likely be valuable one day too.

[veejer]

I liked some rather geeky games as well. Wff n Proof, a logic game; Stocks and Bonds, one of those big bookshelf games; Rail Baron, which I just got an old copy of from ebay. I'm going to introduce it to my kids this summer. When I was about 11, a neighbor girl and I played a single game of Monopoly one whole summer. We combined the money, houses, and hotels from two sets, and there were no limits to how many you could build.

SOMA cubes, Space Tilt, and Etch-a-Sketch. Although with my EAS, I usually just scratched away all of the powder so I could watch the mechanism at work. My mom must have threatened me with my life to keep me from disassembling it.

[veejer]

Ah well, every parent on this site has likely given away or tossed away something of their kids that will likely be valuable one day too.

My MIL got rid of my husband's model trains!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[combatcutie]

Not sure if this has already been mentioned, but Cabbage Patch Kids. The very first ones. I used to carry mine every where with me.