The playthings of my past (Favourite Childhood Toys)

Member Name: rosebud2001

Product:	Favourite Childhood Toys
Date:	17/03/09 (535 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Nostalgia - aah - bliss!

Disadvantages: None!

My childhood spans the mid 60s to the late 70s and my abiding memory of the toys I had in my earliest days was the fact I always got the same toy that my twin sister got, and needless to say once we were a little older, we rebelled against this idea! It also made far more sense as it meant we could double the pool of toys available to us.

DOLLS

The first toy I truly remember was a "life size" blonde doll. My sister and I had one each. She called her doll "Grungza" - clearly she meant to say something else but the name stuck - while mine was called "Susie Green". She was never called just called "Susie" either - I was most particular about that!

We must have got these dolls around the age of two or three because certainly by the time we started school these dolls were considerably smaller than my sister and I and had their hair cut, had pen marks all over them and were basically in a terrible state.

The problem was that they weren't baby dolls - instead we had Tearie Dearie dolls who came with their own crib which also converted to a bath and we took great care of them, pushing them around in our toy prams too. Poor Grungza and Susie just didn't merit such a level of care sadly and were consigned to landfill sometime back in the early 70s.

We also had Amanda Jane dolls and had this amazing "house" set for the dolls - comprising of various square bricks which linked together, you could add stickers and turn the bricks into anything from a cooker to a bed to a sofa, all using very funky colours and designs fashionable in the late 1960s. The set also included some soft furniture which was also very much of the period.

Once my sister and I started school we discovered so-called "teenage" dolls, beginning with Sindy. My sister had a very rigid one who didn't do much beyond sit down with her legs sticking out straight ahead of her, but she did manage to get a bed, kitchen sink and wardrobe for her. I seem to recall Sindy preferred the bed best, with the wardrobe coming a close second.

When I got my Sindy doll she had bending legs and arms but was sadly very flimsy. I was convinced my Sindy was a gymnast and one day whilst she was carrying out a particularly athletic move which involved flying through the air, she landed awkwardly, resulting her legs and arms coming away from the rest of her. I was absolutely distraught but the next day my incredibly patient father had repaired her. However I was under strict instructions to retire her from gymnastics for the foreseeable future.

Pippa was a tiny "teenage" doll, about half the size of Sindy and I got into her because she was cheap - you could get a doll for 49p which was about 2 weeks pocket money for me at the time, and outfits were about 15p. You also got "petals" to save up with every purchase and once you had saved enough you could send away and get a free doll. This was a great way to keep kids buying and my sister and I loved the whole idea of saving petals for another doll or outfit.

DOLLS HOUSE

Now after droning on about my girlie love of dolls I have to mention the dolls house. The one my sister and I shared had actually belonged to our mother and had been made by my grandfather. It was way too small for any of our real dolls but we would use figures you got free in cereal packets (particularly Magic Roundabout figures such as Florence) to "live" in the house.

My grandfather did an incredible job with this house which actually had working light switches but I am sad to say that over the years we ruined it with excessive play and overenthusiastic redecoration attempts!

SPACE HOPPER

This was an icon of my childhood - if you didn't have one, you were considered weird. I absolutely loved this big orange rubber ball with the happy smiley face and being able to jump around until I was worn out on it.

LEGO

Back when I was a child, Lego was very different to how it is now. You would get packs of bricks and have to use your own imagination to make something - imagine! The Lego in our house mainly belonged to my elder brother, but I loved to pinch it and create different kinds of houses. I especially enjoyed creating chimneys using the tiny round pieces, and slotting windows into my creations. Didn't enjoy standing on a stray bit on the floor so much of course!

FELT TIP PENS

People take them for granted now but they were new to the market when I was a child and compared to what you pay today, very expensive. There was something brilliant about being able to use these pens to write, draw, colour in and all the amazing shades they came in. It was a revelation to me to see a purple pen for example!

TOY GUNS AND CAPS

Toy guns are frowned upon these days but when I was a child they were commonplace. I didn't have a gun but my brother did and I absolutely loved it when our dad would bring home a round of caps each as he knew how much we loved to hear the noise they made "shooting" the gun.

We also devised games based around my brother's love of war stories in his "Commando" comics. I recall one where we had to do the most dramatic "death" after being shot. This will no doubt appal many readers but I can assure you that we all grew up as reasonably well rounded individuals with no interest in the use of real guns.

ROCKING HORSE & WENDY HOUSE

We had a Triang metal rocking horse for years in our house and it was well played with. Later on we got a Wendy House and on warm days we would construct this in the garden, get the rocking horse out and pretend to be gypsies in a caravan. I am fairly certain this was inspired by the early 1970s Flake advertisement which featured some model devouring her chocolate on a traditional gypsy caravan. Of course as children we were more interested in the caravan and the chocolate than in the silly girl who ate the chocolate in such a stupid way!


MASTERMIND GAME

Oh how I loved this. It was huge in the mid 70s - I can't even recall the way it was played now but you had to get coloured pegs onto the board in a certain order to win and it was one of the first board games (apart from snakes and ladders!) that I understood and could play well enough to win.

TOY POST OFFICE

When I was a child we rarely went to the Post Office - so it seemed an exciting and interesting place when we did. There was something ever so exciting about the way the counter clerks had rubber stamps for everything and were able to tear stamps off HUGE sheets to put on parcels.

As a result when I got my own toy Post Office set, I was in seventh heaven, tearing off miniature stamps from not quite so huge sheets, sending letters to goodness knows who in my "pretend" handwriting and best of all, being able to use a real rubberstamp on any piece of paper I could get my hands on.

The only problem with toy Post Office sets was they didn't last long - especially the ink pad for the rubberstamps!


Reading this back I see that I had far fewer playthings than my daughter - toys were more expensive when I was a child and you rarely got anything other than on birthdays or Christmas (which probably explains why Pippa and her pocket money prices were such a hit) but I am sure in 30 years time my daughter will be able to draw up a list of her favourite toys just as easily because the memory of them never leaves you.

Summary: A nostalgic look back at the toys I played with when I was a child