Last week Keith, from The Nostalgic Italian, was nice enough to invite me to take part of a forum he was running and relive a few fine childhood memories in the process! He asked us to pick “The Toy Of Your Life” and it seemed most of us have at least one that pops into our head and calls up moments of fond reminiscing.
Growing up in the ’70s, I see I had some things in common with people who’ve already contributed. I think most of us grew up in decent homes, but weren’t Richie Rich clones nor spoiled. I had a good number of toys to play with when young, but my closet wasn’t busting at the seams and I sure was taught young that I couldn’t get anything I wanted just by throwing a tantrum. Typically, outside of a few small dollar-store style toys, if I wanted something major, I’d ask for it and if lucky, it might appear on my birthday or under the Christmas tree. That helped teach me patience, and to save up my little allowance to buy things I really wanted months away from those times. For me, that was largely records, but at times it might be a special toy.
Paul’s Soccer (Football) game was new to me, but reminded me of a table hockey game I had for years – about a yard-long hockey “rink” with little players who slid around when you moved the metal pulls they attached to and would “shoot” the little puck, or try to block it. Like Paul’s game, it came with players in two uniforms (Toronto and Montreal I believe) but you could interchange them and there were other sets of players in other team uniforms available. Eventually I think I had 12 teams, which if memory serves, might have been the entire NHL back then. I liked it, and would sometimes play my older brother (who liked to win – a lot) or even my mother, but it wasn’t my favorite by any means nor something I could do by myself to keep me occupied when alone. The same goes for the several board games like “Monopoly” and “Careers” I had… I liked the latter one more, it seemed more creative and interesting and gave your player choices as to what they wanted to do – go to college? Get into environmentalism? Try to become famous? It was upto you.
Christian already wrote about small cars like Hot Wheels and Matchoxes, and I had quite a few of those and really liked them… in fact I wrote about the Hot Wheels once before! They were something that I had a lot of fun with and valued for years, but they still wouldn’t necessarily take my “favorite” title. When I thought about it, there was only one real option for me – Lego.
I imagine nowadays everyone is familiar with Lego. It’s a multi-million dollar industry across varoius ends of commerce, including of course movies. You can now buy Lego kits to build realistic-looking flowers and much of their product line is now branded – Star Wars for example. It actually dates back to 1949, when a Danish carpenter came up with the idea of interlocking blocks (with the little “studs” on top that lock into the “tubes” underneath to make them sturdy when connected. He called it “Leg godt”, or “play good” which got shortened to the familiar brand name when patented in 1958. It was inducted into the Toy Hall of Fame (yes, there is such a thing – part of the Museum of Play in Rochester, which sounds a fun place to visit) – in 1998. But back when I was a kid, it was a rather different kind of thing, and I dare say, better.
That’s because while you could get some actual “kits” to build specific things (I seem to remember having this little firehouse kit, or at least the vehicles shown)
Mostly, it was just sold in big boxes of mixed blocks. There were white ones, red ones, probably some black ones too. Some were rounded so you could build a turret or cylindrical building if you wanted. Plus there were little doors, windows, blue ceiling shingles… all still connected with the blocks, plus a few less 3-d interlocking features like little trees, or wheel sets. Instead of following an Ikea furniture-like instruction sheet to build the kit to specification, we just used our imaginations and build what we felt like. To me that is a much more creative and ultimately satisfying toy, as much as I did like building a few scale models of real trucks in later years and have them look like the picture on the box.
I had a very large box of mixed blocks and house accessories like windows, and a case that had extra ones from smaller kits I’d been given. I mostly loved building little houses with it. The blurry picture at the top shows me (on right) at probably three or four years old, with my older brother and some of our Lego creations. You can vaguely make out a little white house with blue roof I’d built, in front of me. And as an added bonus, don’t miss that early-’70s orange wall color! I had hours of fun building the houses, making each one look a little different. Sometimes I’d even draw a sort of floorplan for a house – bedroom here, living room there, door here – on paper and try to build one with Lego. When done, I’d maybe keep it on my desk or a table for awhile, then carefully take it apart and build something new. Every once in awhile, for a change, I’d take the base board that I usually built the individual house on and would stack up blocks into little skyscrapers and create a sort of city skyline, viewed from afar. And the wheels allowed me to change it up and build little cars or vans from my imagination too.
It was a great way to spend a rainy or snowy afternoon, building houses, or little castles or whatever I fancied, having something to show for it and then, best of all, it was reusable. Of course, I guess any really incredible creations could have been preserved, but the basis of the toy snapping together and coming apart meant you could use the same set endlessly…which perhaps was why they turned to more specialized kits later. From a commercial standpoint, a toy you only have to buy the child once and they keep using perhaps limits the market potential a little.
It’s a cliché but it’s also true – it was a simpler time. And, I say, for a kid growing up, a better time. I look back on those Lego creations, and Hot Wheels and model trucks with a lot of affection. I can hardly imagine today’s six year old in 50 years looking back fondly on playing a video game for hours or texting the kid next door all night. Thanks Keith for reminding us of this!
Everydave Life 