A few months ago my fiancee took out her old Playmobil pirate island and barbie dolls for her cousins at a family reunion. This made me think of the great toys we used to have. No rant against modern toys although I do think they are way less inspiring than what we used to play with in the 80’s. Just because kids like us used to have no X-box or 300+ channels on TV and we still had a more than great time …
Here some toys that filled my day-to-day activities and I must be forgetting some. Cowboy and indian are high on the list as well, together with my rubber canoe and bow (without the string after careful consideration by my parents) & arrow. Football would be the consistent sauce binding all other ingredients together. And that wooden car garage my dad made with a real light bulb inside. Here’s to great toys which, when I close my eyes, I can still smell, feel and hear.
The smell of Play-Doh and the way you weren’t supposed to mix colors. The awe you felt when looking into that Viewmaster. The great feeling of marbles in your pockets which made this screeching sound when pressed against each other. The fun of rewinding cassette tapes trying to find a song and the weirdness of all those songs on a tiny piece of celluloid. ‘For he’s a jolly good fellow‘ blasting from my Fisher Price tape recorder with that huge ‘eject’ button on the side. Playmobil and Lego, so different yet so the same. Super Wheels which would change color in hot water. And of course the electric train my dad put up on a tbale in the hallway and which he enjoyed at least as much as I did.
