What are you favourite childhood toys and books?

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What are you favourite childhood toys and books?

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Started 3 months ago by clutterbug22
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clutterbug22
Member

My kids watched 'Toy Story' today - that Disney-Pixar classic on NOT uncluttering favourite toys and games! Mr Potato Head was one of the characters, of which I still have, along with a 1960's Scalextric set with cigar shaped racing cars, a 1960's Twister game (not actually used that much) and a Metal Puzzles set. We used to have a 'MouseTrap' game from the 1970's, which the kids loved, until dh got rid of it last year because some of the pieces were missing and then we visited my mum 3 weeks later and found the missing pieces at her house, typical!

I've still got some Ladybird books, 'How to sew' and 'Things to make and do', oh the things you could make with a couple of tin cans and a piece of string, (was meant to be Walkie-Talkie system!) We've still got some little Observer books and quite a few Enid Blyton books - Brer Rabbit adventures, Famous 5 etc.

What are your childhood toys, games or books that you still enjoy or don't want to declutter?

Posted 3 months ago #
Jennifer
Member

So many books! And my Cabbage Patch dolls, and a couple of Barbies, and some Strawberry Shortcake figurines, the Mickey's Rocket Ride thing that we only brought out at Christmas... I don't use any of these things and have no kids or nieces and nephews, but I am reluctant to part with much of it. Really must tackle those two bins and at least get down to one.

Posted 3 months ago #
Astreja
Member

When I was very small, I had a little green push-pedal car with "Lightning" written on the side of it.

Later on I got a toy drum kit (inspired by Ringo Starr to ask for that), a Secret Sam Spy Kit (big fan of Illya Kuryakin from The Man From U.N.C.L.E.), a chemistry set, and a transistor radio.

Also had a few homemade goodies like a set of high jumping standards so my friends and I could practice jumping over stuff in between the weekly neighbourhood track meets.

Posted 3 months ago #
irishbell
Member

The see dick and Jane series of books, the bobsey twins, happy hollisters, goofus and gallant in the Highlights magazine!
Barbies, chatty Cathy doll, tiny tears doll,betsy wetsy doll, tinker toys, lincoln logs and pick up sticks.

Posted 3 months ago #
snosie
Member

i have my teddy bear, Jessie, in bed every night with me! (well she get shunned when I have a partner, which I don't at the moment!) And I have one book 'Each peach pear plum' which I love. There was also a book on goblins that I was scared of, that disappeared, but I wish I could re read it in adulthood to see if it was still scary (dad thought the pictures were scary!)

Posted 3 months ago #
grey
Member

if the toys/books i saved are a true indication of my favorites - the berestain bear collection, dr. suess books, my cabbage patch doll (my "Sissy" - she was my favorite toy from toddlerhood until i was "too old" for dolls), mr. potato head, legos, and lincoln logs. i had a lot of loved toys, but these were the absolute favorites that have survived many purges.

Posted 3 months ago #
Another Deb
Member

I was a Bobbsey Twins fan as well, Irishbell. In 5th grade my mom bought a set of World Book encyclopedias that also came with Childcraft books, which were themed with science, fantasy, craft, nature and history. I loved the entire World Book world. I read all the encyclopedias cover to cover during summers and devoured the Childcraft books.

Toy-wise, we loved the Barbies, Matchbox cars, Lincoln logs and a set of plastic interlocking blocks that were from my dad's era, way before Lego.

Posted 3 months ago #
Ella
Member

I had very few toys and didn't keep any of them. I was a reader and a lone adventurer. When I wasn't outside exploring, I was inside with my nose in a book.
I actually believed I was the first person to ever think of reading under the covers with a flashlight. I've saved many of my favorite books:
- Charlotte's Web
- Stuart Little
- The Phantom Tollbooth
- Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
- All the Oz books... I wanted to be Ozma with her wonderful magical friends.
- The Jungle Book... I wanted to be Mowgli, running naked through the green jungle and then curling up to rest between the paws of the giant black panther.
- And I devoured all the Andrew Lang books of collected fairy tales (The Red Fairy Book, The Blue, and so on). My father died when I was a baby and my mother remarried in haste to a man who turned out to be a brute. The only way I got through childhood was by believing that my real father had fallen under an enchantment, and my mother and I were being held captive by the evil ogre.
That's how I came to understand the transcendent power of books.

Posted 3 months ago #
suzjazz
Member

Ella, I shared (and still share) your love of books, and some of your favorite childhood books are my favorites also--I read all the Oz books, but took them out of the library, so I don't own any. However, Alice and Through the Looking Glass I still have. A complete set of Beatrix Potter books that my mother got for me when I was five years old. Most of Louisa May Alcott (antique book editions) and Anne of Green Gables (I have a 1919 edition) I also have the Andrew Lang Fairy books, Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little. My mom collected antique books, and she also bought me beautiful new children's books when I was young. Many were published in England: the E. Nesbitt series and the books of C.S. Lewis. I also loved Laura Ingalls Wilder. I have most of these boxed up and stored since I don't have enough bookcase space. I can't seem to part with them because of sentimental value. I gave away some a couple of years ago, but I always feel sad giving away books. I also have dolls and stuffed animals from childhood that I can't part with. If only I had a big house with a huge attic to store this stuff for my grandchildren.

Posted 3 months ago #
Astreja
Member

Forgot to mention in my response above that I didn't actually keep any of my childhood toys. There was one other toy I had that I would like to get again, a little red and white plastic computer called a Digicomp-1. The original manufacturer doesn't make them anymore, but a fan created a kit which I might order someday.

Posted 3 months ago #
celebkiriedhel
Member

I was way more interested in books as a child rather than toys. Although I do still have a small container of stuffed toys that I pull out for my small friends when they visit. The only ones I really am attached to are the raggedy ann that my aunt made for me, and my frog that my brother (decd) made for me. But there are a couple of teddy bears in there.

I still have a shelf of children's books that I STILL read! (I'm just a big kid at heart) from my childhood. It was one of the things that didn't get thrown out when I downsized my books. Ther are Jungle Doctor books, Narnia, Winnie the Pooh, and other children's classics. But I have to say my main favourite of children's books is Dr Suess!

Posted 3 months ago #
whyawhelk
Member

The things I've saved are the Dr. Seuss and Berenstain books, Harriet the Spy, The Phantom Tollbooth and the Winnie the Poohs. The toys: My Cabbage Patch dolls and clothes and legos, my son's playing with the legos now, my daughter will be getting the Cabbage Patch dolls sometime soon. Also a lot of Barbie things, mainly because my mum and dad made a lot for me, beds and bedlinens and clothes and the like. In fact, every time my mum comes over these days, she brings me another box of stuff from my childhood, she recently brought my HO train set, which is now in my son's room. I hope she runs out of boxes soon.

Posted 3 months ago #
ninakk
Member

My dad is the only one not to read in the family, so there's been a huge focus on books. While cleaning out grandma's place, we went through our own boxes there, too, and I remembered them to be many more, but once we divide them on three households - sister's, mine and parents' - it's won't be that bad. They are in storage now due to none of us having very large apartments and there are some other things such as a spinning wheel and other old stuff. The books are in surprisingly good condition still and we didn't have extreme amounts of plastic toys, but the ones we had were Fisher Price, Playmobile, Lego and such. I guess they were gifted over a long enough time period for us not to get very attached to just one or two pieces, but we really played with all of them fairly equally. The wooden ones are turning out to be my favourites these days, though; Brio etc.

Posted 3 months ago #
liag
Member

I love toys but recall more from my kids' childhoods than my own. From theirs I loved the Creative Playthings line--now defunct, sadly-- especially little wooden things such as a wind-up music box. They also loved Shrinky-Dinks. From my own, just Magic Slates, a Bonnie Braids doll (not a fave, but a memory)and a small, magenta, cardboard suitcase I used to stuff with everything from doll clothes to peanuts.

Posted 3 months ago #
mskris
Member

I, too, was a reader: Heidi, Little Women, Winnie the Pooh are books I've kept. I also have the teddy bear that was given to my sister on her first birthday (it's now 64 yrs old) and was passed down to each child. I have my sister's Little Miss Revlon doll circa 1958. I have a box of dolls from around the world that someday (!) I'll have a display case for, and I kept 2 dolls from my childhood (Chricket, whose hair "grows," and a baby doll). That's pretty much all.

Posted 3 months ago #
DivorcedMotherOf3
Member

I learned to read when I was 3, and devoured books by the dozens each month. Trixie Belden, Nancy Drew, Swallows and Amazons, all of Louisa May Alcott, all the Anne of Green Gables books and associated series, Laura Ingalls Wilder, The Hobbit and the rest of Tolkien, Wind in the Willows, all of Stevenson,Watership Down, Animal Farm, Asimov, Heinlein, everything ever written by A.A. Milne (including the mystery novel he wrote for his father, who loved who-dun-it tales)...

My parents decided books were the debbil when I was about 19. They piled them all in a heap in the driveway and burned them - almost 2 decades of an enormous, irreplaceable collection I and my sibs loved immensely. You don't know horror until you see Pooh and Piglet, Ratty and Badger, Max from Where the Wild Things Are and Pat the Bunny go up in a tower of black smoke. That was just... wow. Still makes me go white hot with rage!

A few books I would love to get my hands on from early childhood and onward reading to my 8 siblings are the Jenny Linsky series (about the little black cat with the red scarf) and the Wonderful World of Aunt Tuddy (currently costs around $80 for a fair condition copy). I just bought all of the Frances books by Russell and Lilian Hoban for my son(except the poetry volume which is again astronomical), and am planning on Mrs. Piggle Wiggle as soon as he is old enough. I also loved this series called Redwall, but it has been supplanted by Harry Potter, LOL

Posted 3 months ago #
lottielot
Member

Too many books to name, many of them are in the kids' collections now, though some I bought secondhand having remembered about them but the books having been lost in the mists of time...I recently gave away a huge amount of picture books and I'm trying hard not to think about them...I only gave away things that will still be in print when my grandkids turn up though, like Dr Seuss, Mog etc. They will be around forever, I can buy them again :)
Older kids books: the Phantom Tollbooth, Harriet the Spy, anything by Noel Streatfield, anything by LM Montgomery, anything by Astrid Lindgren, anything by Erich Kastner, I forget the rest but I have a massive thing for all kids' books for all ages, I used to read 10 library books a week as soon as I could read in my head. I love to find books for ds1, he likes some things I used to but also different stuff. I'm currently reading a sample of Fablehaven to see if he'll enjoy it. We're both huge fans of Frank Cottrell Boyce, his book Framed is about the only kids book I've read twice as an adult. Ds2 and I read the whole series of Little House books, we both loved them. I had to buy them all secondhand on Amazon as our library had none of them and there were no new box sets that I could find in print, so I tracked them down one by one for him, made it more exciting! We're currently reading the most gorgeous version of the Brothers Grimm fairy tales you've ever seen, Mr Men books (love em!), Slinki Malinki books and books about snow as it just snowed here.
No toys though, we had a Fisher Price dolls house and a safari set and that's all I can remember my brother and I playing with. I love playing with my kids' Lego now though :)

Posted 3 months ago #
lottielot
Member

DMo3: wow, I had all of your books too! That is evil about the book burning :(
I have a set of Jenny Linski books! I bought them as a compilation, not that expensive either, ds2 loves them. Let me find out where I got it from...
The other one's I forgot: not from my childhood bit classics I discovered for my kids: Madeline books (fantastic rhyming, very silly and lovely pictures) and Eloise, hilarious spoilt little girl who lives in the Waldorf.

Posted 3 months ago #
chacha1
Member

As kids my sister & I both liked building toys - Lego, blocks, erector set, lincoln logs, you name it. Neither of us kept any childhood toys, although I *would* still have my Stieff lion if my mom hadn't decluttered it behind my back! ... as we got older we played a lot of really inappropriate games with Barbie & Ken and G.I. Joe. LOL. We also did a really silly thing with model horses, we anthropomorphized the crap out of them, built them little houses and made them fancy blankets etc.

Books? Nancy Drew of course, and anything with dogs and horses. Too many to count ... we were both positively voracious readers.

Posted 3 months ago #
djk
Member

Bonfire of the vanities.
What a tragedy, DMo3.

I read obsessively from a young age. Now my normal pace is about...let me go look at my book journal--
Ok I looked at 2010 because that's when I restarted the habit of recording what I read.
In 2010 I read 85 books.

I also read all of LM Montgomery, Enid Blyton, Laura Ingalls, Nancy Drew, and Trixie Belden.
When I was very small there were two books I adored especially. One I can probably quote word for word still because it rhymed, the other featured going for a ride in a motorcar painted British Racing Green and there was gorgeous scenery and a detour. No matter how many times my mother read it to me I panicked about the last-minute required change of plan. Very stressful.
Hello, Dr Freud, welcome to early indications of my personality.

Posted 3 months ago #

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