What was your favorite toy?

Your Dad was probably one of the first recyclers, ehBeth. You should be proud.

Okay...living in Seattle, during the summer the hydroplane races are a really big thing, so if you we a kid, it was almost required that you take playing cards and clothespin them to your bike in a way that they went ppppfffffftttttt as your wheels went around and they caught in the spokes....It was also required that you have a very simple hydroplane made of a piece of a flat board (cut kind of in the shape of a hydroplane) with a tail stuck out of the top back of it, to pull behind your bike with an attached rope...

Maybe you had to live in Seattle...

Matrix, we used the playing cards in the spokes on Long Island, too, and we didn't even know what a hydroplane was (if, in fact, they'd been invented when I was a little kid). Just liked the noise, I guess.

same in Memphis, Tenn - motor cycle was what we pretended. Dad always said it would wear ut the spokes!

Yeah, I know the playing card thing is kind of universal, but the hydroplane part...I guess you just kind of had to live around here. I did find this article which mentions the little hydros a bit:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/pacificnw/2001/0722/cover.html

"Every local station used to broadcast the finals. Pit crews were exclusive clubs. Kids hung around the pits peering at the boats and begging for buttons. They dragged little wooden hydroplanes, painted and named for their favorites, behind their bikes and raced them across parking strips and lots."

My favorite toy was my plush stuffed animal alligator named "Gertrude". (Despite the name, he was a boy- don't read anything freudian into that) He was missing one nostril 'cause my sister pulled it off. I slept with many stuffed animals thru the years, but Gertrude was with me the longest.
My parents one day decided I was too old too sleep with toy animals and without my knowledge or permission "donated" him to a church garage sale along with the rest of my stuffed menagerie.

I often wonder what happened to him. Sorry Gertrude! I miss you!

We didn't have a lot of toys when I was really little so I guess my favorite plaything would have to have been my brother.

The first object that I remember being totally in love with was a Poloroid Swinger camera. I took that camera everywhere and took photos of everything - I nearly bankrupted my family on film! I still have a few of those photos....

I can even still remember the advertising jingle:

Meet the Swinger, Poloroid Swinger
Meet the Swinger, Poloroid Swigner
Swing it up
It says "Yes"
Get the shot
Pull it out
Zip it off

boomerang, you're just like a friend of mine whose greatest toy -at 11- was a mimeograph.
He's a journalist, of course.

(and, of course, you had to remember the jingle)

Mmmmmm memeograph - my very favorite smell.

I would have loved that boy, fbaezer.

Hot wheels - I was crazy abt them (they were called Dinky cars back then) - I had abt 100 and were the only toy I liked playing with. Guess that explains why I am still a car freak..

~~I was so poor growing up, that if I had not been a boy, I would have had nothing to play with~~ :wink:

My favorites were the tin litho toys. Especially the smaller flat
looking cars. Used to catch lightening bugs, mash the glow out
of them, then I had headlights and tail lights on the cars.
I collect tin lithos today. Love the wind-ups.

mimeograph, gestetner

how i loved the smell of the gestetner

Well, all the guys use to tease me because I liked to play with, uh, gee, how do I say this, well, uh, anyway, gosh, okay - I liked to play with the little girls. The only difference now is that its the big girl (notice singular) I like to play with.

:wink:

All sorts of wonderful memories here, how lovely!
I did the playing cards in the spokes as well....however, they were baseball cards...how bad do I feel about that now? ugh..silly!

If we were only wise enough to have saved that which would one day be valuable...but on the other hand, if we'd all saved our baseball cards or whatever, then there would be an overabundance of them and they wouldn't be nearly as valuable. So our really using our toys actually helped to create the market for them years later.

I actually know someone who always gave their kid two of each toy -- one to play with and one to put away in the original box for future value. Haven't been in contact with this person in years -- wonder what ever happened.

My grandmother threw out all of my old stuff while i was overseas--including the baseball i had which was autographed by the world-series winning 1954 Giants . . .

Now, that really hurts.

I wonder how many $60 baseball cards I put in my bike spokes

Slinkys were my favorite and still are. I can play with them for hours still and never get bored or sick of watching them.