I’m not really a nostalgic person. I’ve got a good memory for people and events and don’t have many physical keepsakes. But last night I got to thinking about a toy I had as a child - a grey fighter jet. So I did what anyone would do these days and started some internet research. I discovered it was a Matchbox Skybuster plane and found the very model I had.
Just ordered one on eBay. I can remember how it felt in my hands, with its swept back wings. And how I did takeoffs and landings in my grandparents’ living room. Looking forward to seeing what it brings up when it arrives. It’ll end up on my bookshelf, but very few people will know its significance.
Anyone else have a long lost toy or artifact that is significant to you? Do you still have it or are you looking for it?
I was (and still am) big into submarines as a kid. Brought one on a trip (likely modeled after the Sturgeon class), but it was missing a forward dive plane and a rear part of the rudder thanks to my harsh play style, so my mom made me throw it away in a hotel room as we were packing to leave, to my weak protestations.
Oh, the big one was “Doggie”, from my preschool days. She once later in my adulthood went into just how often she had to sew the poor thing back together to keep it from falling apart. Likely thrown away during a move when I was 7.
“Frank Baby” was my childhood blanket. I have no idea where the name came from. It started as a blanket big enough to cover little 4 year old me, over the years it got ratty around the edges, so my mom would cut the frayed bits off and put a new ribbon edge on, always with a loop on one corner to make it easy to hold onto. It eventually ended up about 1 foot square. No clue where it is now, probably in my folks attic.
My brother had a teddy bear that went through similar repairs. The bear of Theseus, so to speak. A couple of years ago my mom did a new rehab and gave it to him for Christmas. He was 50 at the time.
When I was in second grade, my gift at Christmastime was a GE portable transistor radio. It wasn’t a cheap little pocket radio. It was larger and a good one. It took a huge battery. I took that radio with me everywhere. It changed my life. It started my love affair with RADIO, which later became my profession.
It was replaced and thrown out probably 50 years ago. I found one at an antiques store a while back and was tempted to buy it, but it was black plastic, and mine was white, so it wouldn’t have been the same.
A few years back, I bought a book off eBay that I loved as a small kid but haven’t seen since, The Little Man Dressed In Red. My sibs loved it, too, but it’s mine, mine, you hear me?
Mine was a cast metal (cheap pot metal) rocket ship about 5" long. It had two recessed rollers on the top that allowed you to put it on a string and let it slide down when you lifted the end of the string. There was a small turret at the front with two gun barrels. The sides had little portholes and a hatch. It looked a lot like a Buck Rogers space ship that would land on its side (rather than on its tail). At the time I had it, any paint (if it ever had any) was gone.
One reason it sticks in my mind is that my sibs and I would “lose” it fairly frequently…and then it would just show up. Clean out a closet? Here it is! Digging in the sandbox? It’s back! When it showed up, I would play with it continuously for days…until it disappeared again.
I have looked for one of these many times over the last 20 or 30 years, but I haven’t even come close. I’d pay quite a bit to have one sitting on my shelf now.
A three-blade plastic boomerang caled “Hi-Yo,” made by Ohio Art. (Hmmm. . . Hi-Yo, O-Hi-O?). I think they’ve shown up on ebay occasionally, but no idea how the plastic might have held up after 50+ years.
I’ve mentioned this in similar threads before: a compressed air propelled glider from the mid-60s Sears Wish Book. I’ve had my eye out for one for years but I don’t think there are any still around.
In 1976, a couple of months before I turned 5, my family’s apartment building burned down. At the scene, someone from the Red Cross gave me a teddy bear: possessing little creativity when it came to naming stuffed animals, I dubbed him simply “Teddy.”
48 years later I still have Teddy, currently stored in a plastic container on a shelf in one of my closets. There are one or two other things I’ve kept since childhood simply for the nostalgia, which are likely in the same storage container, but Teddy is the one I’d be upset about losing.
Two come to mind for me, both I re-bought as an adult (though the ones I first had are probably still at my parent’s house).
As a kid, I could do both of these very quickly. When I found them again a while back, I was happy to learn that I hadn’t lost the muscle memory. That round one I could, and still can, solve in about 45 seconds. When I got them, my daughter was probably 6 years old she can do them pretty fast as well.
The 1969 Mattel Hot Wheels Mongoose And Snake Drag Race Set. All the other editions throughout the years were titled “Snake And Mongoose” but for me, if it ain’t “Mongoose And Snake” it’s a fake.
When I was around six years old (1974) I had a favorite story book that I would read over and over. I had forgotten its title, and over the last couple of years I did lots of Google searches in an effort to find it. A couple months ago I finally found it, and purchased it.
When I was in grade school I loved, like most boys of that era loved, Legos. For me, and for most of my buddies, the holy grail Lego set was the Black Seas Barracuda pirate ship. It was one of the most expensive sets available, and a coveted Pirate set to boot. The chances of me ever obtaining one were somewhere between nil and zilch. My parents, who never splurged on anything, surprised me one year at Christmas by gifting me that very set. I was ecstatic. It was my prized possession for many years until as an older teenager who had discovered cars and girls I found I had little use for Legos and sold my entire collection to some neighborhood kid for peanuts.
Those sets go for ~400 on eBay today but I doubt I'll every buy another. A replacement isn't *mine*: it isn't the one my parents bought me (which must have been quite painful for them), it isn't the one that sat on my windowsill for 5 or 6 years, it isn't the one I got to brag to my buddies about. It's just a random set that I would be paying too much for. Lego now makes a huge Titanic replica and for a few hundred more I’d splurge on that before getting the pirate ship.
I still have Woofer. My mother put him away for me, when I was about 12 (I hung on to early childhood longer than I was supposed to); put him away very carefully in a box in a blanket chest. He’s still in there; I check on him from time to time. He has indeed been sewed back together quite a bit. With him is an almost equally worn cat, alike enough that it’s clear they were a pair – but I don’t remember her, though I must have loved all the fur off her, also. Minds are strange.
There was a ‘board game’ called Privateer. I had a first edition, canvas printed play space, wood silkscreened tokens, brass treasure. A Classis. Was a HUGE HIT with everyone in college.
Lost it in a move.
They did a second run, everything plastic. Sucks SO BAD!
