I still have my Star Wars trading cards. I never got the complete set that showed the movie poster on the back as a puzzle you would put together, but I still have them.
I still have my Mattel handheld games (the ones with the little red light blips that you had to move around. The ones I still have are the original Football, Basketball, and BattleStar Galactica.
Not a toy, but I still have a few of the old record albums I had as a kid. One of my favorites was the album, “Funky Favorites” produced by Ronco records.
In my mom’s house there are several play cases of mostly Matchbox cars (all you Hot Wheels people are so very gauche ). They are being kept safe from my son, who just isn’t into them the way I was. And I don’t want them destroyed just yet. Or lost. Crammed in various boxes in my house are probably some Star Wars cards, some Charlie’s Angels cards and maybe some other crap. I was hard on toys so a lot them didn’t survive and a lot got thrown out or given away.
When I was 12, probably too old to be playing with dolls (but I was anyway), my school was having a raffle. The second prize was a hand made Raggedy Anne dolls that was about 18 inches tall. Every day, I’d walk down the hall for lunch, and there would be the doll on display, and every day, I wanted it more and more. My family didn’t have two nickles to rub together, so I was under no illusion that we’d buy all the raffle tickets and I’d win this doll, but it didn’t keep me from wanting it any less.
Finally, the evening of the raffle rolled around, and my mom who volunteered a lot at school, worked the event while my younger brother and I stayed at home with my dad. (This was before my parents divorced and my dad disappeared to Texas for awhile, but I digress.) I remember staying up “late” (until 8:30) for my mom to arrive home, hoping, but knowing that things like winning a doll that I really wanted wasn’t going to happen.
Sure enough, my mom arrived home. In her arms was (no kidding) the Raggedy Anne doll. I played with her for the next couple of years, until her cloth skin was stained and worn, and her thread smile and nose unraveled and her yarn hair covered head grew nearly bald.
I left home at 16 and took Raggedy Anne, and still she lives with me today, up in a storage container in the attic. Every now and then, I drag her out, just to say hello.
Die Cast Metal Robot Toys from 70’s anime Daimos and Star Zinger (which I believe was released in the 80’s in North America as Spaceketeers. Also another Robot toy called “BF Battle Fever” a live action mecha show of which I have never even seen a single episode.
I have a nappy Koala bear that I got for my very first Christmas. I have a picture where I’m laying next to it and it’s bigger than I am.
I also have a plastic lizard that my mom bought from Pic’N’Save or Yellow Front when I was three or four years old. I named it Nikki Mustard, tied a long string of dental floss around it’s neck and “walked” it everywhere for months. I remember one older lady flipping out in the grocery store when it scuttled past her. Man, I loved that thing. It might still have the Tootsie Pop wrapper that I crumpled up and stuffed down it’s gullet so that it sounded like it was chewing when I pressed on its belly.
I was rough on my Matchbox/Hotwheels, but I retrived them after my parents died. I gave them to my oldest.
Just this weekend, I saw my youngest playing with a pastel-green matchbox lincoln continental that I know had been mine. I’m still not sure where all the VW mini-busses from Hotwheels went*.
*In 1972, Shell would give out Hotwheels cars with a full tank of gas. My area got an extra-ordinary supply of Hotwheels green VW busses with plastic surf-boards that fit into the sides…
Another first-teddy-person! He didn’t have a name for many years, until a babysitter saw a resemblance between him and a former Beatle, and suggested Paw McCartney. Mr. Rilch also has Footie; don’t know the origin of that name.
I have three of my four Jody dolls. I also have my sister’s Judy Littlechap. She has the plaid-skirt-and-vest ensemble you’ll see in the third photo.
Not a toy, but Mr. Rilch and I, as kids, had the same Peanuts towels and dog dish with bone-shaped soaps. I had the sheets, he had the curtains. Anyway, of all this, his towel survives. “Everybody wants to be one of the gang.”
In my house, I have my teddy bear (type: panda, name: Big Ted) and my Puzzletown, which is a great toy where you make buildings out of puzzle pieces, and it’s populated by Richard Scarry characters, about the same size as the FP Little People.
). They are being kept safe from my son, who just isn’t into them the way I was. And I don’t want them destroyed just yet. Or lost. Crammed in various boxes in my house are probably some Star Wars cards, some Charlie’s Angels cards and maybe some other crap. I was hard on toys so a lot them didn’t survive and a lot got thrown out or given away.