Sadieandleo

March 28th, 2008

Toys of my childhood and why sometimes I just want to sit down and start playing.

I have these vivid almost palpable memories of sitting on that terrible green carpet in our good living room on Horseshoe Dr in Derry playing my collection of Golden Books, one after another and I remember this one distinctly:

it was the only time we were allowed to touch the turn table. I think my sister found my Mom’s Beatles records when we grew up a bit and there was a little bit of tension in the family over that disappearance for a while. Music is meant to be had not to be hidden away in some sleeve forever. Anyhow, I had this huge box of Little Golden Books & Records and I loved them all.

Barbie was my best friend for many years.

I never really “played” Barbies, I was really more into her grooming and presentation. I loved making up my own outfits and not the prescribed offering the box came with. Hair, shoes, accessories, it was all just for my Barbies to look good, really no other goal in mind. And I had it all, at least I thought I did. Barbie car, but not some crappy pink car, no I had the rare yellow remote controlled Corvette with red stripes. Heard it’s thousands now. It was worth more to me then anyways and those memories are priceless. I still have tons of Barbies in boxes and I’m going to let my daughter play with them, it’ll be a relief finally to let them out of their cardboard boxes after decades.

They’re not toys, they’re action figurines/historical statues. What ever you want to tell your dork-self, I played with Star Wars toys a lot! I think when it came to toys, save Barbies, I was really more like a boy.

And I had no competition in this area of play, my sister didn’t discover or admit to liking Star Wars until many years later… maybe she’ll stop in and clarify for me. My fave was the little Yoda and I still have it to this day. It’s a lucky charm of sorts and a really cool thing to have.

I was a Lego Master, I guess it was the next best thing to being a Jedi Master.

And when I talk about sitting down and wanting to play these days, Legos always pop into my brain first.

Of course this isn’t a definitive listing of all of the toys I loved as a child, just the skimming the surface here. The next two may strike you as a bit odd, and maybe a little past my time of “toys” but remember I got to do kid-dom again since my brother is 5 years younger than me and I spent a lot of time with him.

He-Man and the Masters of the Universe

Seriously, we had them all. I was off the hook too, for playing with “boys” toys because of Matty. And we played and played usually until one of us annoyed the other and someone threw Battle Cat or Man-E-Faces (bulky characters) and someone started to get mad/cry and then I got yelled at for being older and not setting an example… blah blah blah… I loved that Snake Mountain with the microphone that made you sound scary.

TMNT and I’m not talking the movie that just came out. I’m talking when Corey Feldman was the voice of Michaelangelo. Hot damn, I loved the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Sometimes they dated Barbie, sometimes they did ass kicking karate. Leonardo was my favorite, the introspective, smarty type:

There were a billion more toys that I loved as a kid and the really obscure ones sometimes make it to the surface, but this collection, well, I’d get in a sand box for them.