Take That, F.A.O.Schwartz

[filkertom]

Cardboard Box enshrined in Toy Hall of Fame

So, what were your favorite toys as a kid? (G.I. Joe, Major Matt Mason, Thingmaker and Incredible Edibles, the Zero M spy stuff, and an incredibly dangerous but way-too-cool medieval castle made of painted sheet metal on a plastic base.) And what are your favorite toys as an adult, not counting computers? (Da Huskie Bear, my Warrior Babe action figure from The Road Warrior, Summer Fun Cthulhu, and Scary Tales Alice.)

Comments

[kightp.livejournal.com]

As a kid: Tinker Toys and Lincoln Logs (the real wooden kind) and those tiny plastic figurines we called "little people." I had the farm sets and my brother had hundreds of green Army men, and we merged the sets into entire miniature worlds to populate our Lincoln Log and Tinker Toy architecture.

As an adult: Scrabble, mostly. And I confess a weakness for Macdonald's Happy Meal figurines that I get second-hand from a friend who has six kids; she periodically cleans out their stock of HM toys and lets me pick through them for the cool ones (for instance, the Cruella DeVille figure that sits on my computer speaker at work, a sort of plastic office goddess).

Oh - and almost anything from Archie McPhee. Especially Devil Duckies.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

I should've mentioned building toys: Tinkertoys and Lego not so much, Lincoln Logs and Girder & Panel sets and Erector a lot. But my greatest fondness was for GI Joe.

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

Anything mechanical or stuff that let me build imitations of mechanical things. LEGO, Tinkertoy, and robots robots robots!

Surprisingly, I had no interest in dinosaurs, Star Wars, or 99% of the 80s cartoon tie-ins of the period (action figures, vehicles and sets. Unless they were robots, of course). My brothers collected all kinds of things, but I was pretty focused on the ol' machinery-imitated-in-plastic.

As an adult... um, no change, really. Hooray for robots!

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

See above. ;)

[vixyish.livejournal.com]

I had an entire dresser drawer full of legos, and another entire dresser drawer full of Barbies and barbie clothes. (I forget what was in the top drawer. I still have the dresser.)

Tinkertoys, and these clear plastic colored building toys that I don't know the name of. The Play-Dough Fuzzy Pumper Barber Shop.

Most of all: my dollhouses-- I always had a passion for miniatures-- and my books.

[vixyish.livejournal.com]

Oh, and stuffed animals. I had an alarming amount. And jigsaw puzzles. Also an alarming amount. And word games.

I forgot to do the as an adult part. Hm. The internet!

Puzzles, both jigsaw and word. Logic puzzles especially; those ones that Conceptis calls pic-a-pix and games calls paint-by-numbers and someone else calls oekaki.

Scrabble. Mostly I play online, but I secretly long for one of the deluxe classic sets with wooden everything.

Currently addicted to Grow Games, especially "Tonti", which is like whac-a-mole on serious, serious drugs.

Musical instruments; even though I don't know how to play anything, I still like to touch and play with them all. Music stores make me go "ooooooooooooohhhhhh!"

Office supplies. I am a total officemousey geek. Office supply stores make me swoon and it's hard to get out without buying anything. I'll buy stickers and stationery and any amount of things I know I'm never going to use. Just to have. I am a strange little creature.

Art supplies. Pretty much the same...

And my books. Shiny shiny books!

[vixyish.livejournal.com]

er sorry, I missed the "not counting computers" part, but I think I answered enough else to make up for it. :)

A couple years ago, I had a sudden and inexplicable urge to have a Raggedy Ann doll. It showed up on a website somewhere, I forget, and I just suddenly longed for one. So, being a grown-up now with my own disposable income, I bought one. I spent a lot of that year hugging her. :) She lives on my desk now, right next to Thoreau the frog (so named because the French for bullfrog is grenouille toreau and a little squishy cow from my first MOObash (don't ask) and looking across at Kitsune the fox and Neko the kitten and a little stuffed beanie fox who hasn't got a name yet.

So um... I guess stuffed animals, too. :)

[bald-ruminant.livejournal.com]

As a kid: G.I. Joe, whatever toy sword I happened to have that week, Lego kits, a little bow with suction cup arrows, and any stick that happened to be lying around and gun, sword, or quarterstaff-like in shape. I'll count the Atari 2600 as being close enough to a computer to not list it.

Now: tool kits, game books, hundreds of miniatures (most of them waiting for me to find time to paint them) and my massive collection of dice. The rest of my toys are computers.

[mg4h.livejournal.com]

My dad's Erector set. They were old-skool - metal, slightly rusted in places just from the water vapor in the air, over 40 years old at the time, as well. The only "instructions" they came with were very detailed drawings of a finished product - no intermediate steps, no hints as to what went where. I learned to make things from looking at those pictures, and got them right 100% of the time. I think it freaked Mom out a bit the first few times, then she just accepted it :)

Second to that was my lego blocks, especially the hospital I had. I dunno why, but I liked putting that thing together, over and over again.

I had other things - Star Wars and He-Man figures, a playskool medieval castle, weeble wobbles - but those were the two I'd pull out all the time to play with.

[ddrussianinja.livejournal.com]

As a kid I loved my assorted action figures. Power Rangers, Batman, Spiderman, etc.

Now my favorite toys are my suped up modded XBox, my lappy, and my D&D stuff

Can I play?

[gypsy1969.livejournal.com]

The box is a perfect addition to the toy hall of fame. I’ve visited the toy museum in Niagra, New York, but I’d like to visit others.

As I child I coveted my brothers' Major Matt Mason action set. I was so jealous that they got that and I didn't. I played with their building toys as well. My favorite toys were my dolls, my books, and my craft sets. Today I still collect SF/F type Barbies and a few other dolls. I still collect books and still have lots of arts/crafts stuff. I also collect wooden toy reproductions of toys from the 1800’s and before for reenacting.

[ludzu-alus.livejournal.com]

As a kid - my Light Bright. And Matchbox cars. And my microscope kit - I can still remember the first time I dissected a grasshopper!! (Yes, I was an odd one..) Books. An insane number of books - ranging from My Friend Flicka (Mary O'Hara) to Xanth (Piers Anthony) to The Masters of Flux and Anchor (Jack L. Chalker) series. My spirograph - but that was only after years of drawing with a needle-pointed compass! Anything crafty, but especially beads.

Now? I still make jewelry (much better now!). And Reading!!!!! Photography. Using Apophysis to make fractals.

[kengr]

Well, I liked my Legos, and the Girder & Panel sets. But a *lot* of my stuff was "found toys". For example, I had an entire "space fleet" made up of the plastic containers that syringes come in (thanks to a friendly corpsman at the base hospital). Complete with some pink flying saucers (a particular type of hair curler :-)

My toys

[pickledcritter.livejournal.com]

As a kid: The 8" MEGO Star Trek figures w/the Enterprise playset; Evel Knievel Stunt Cycle (with the hand-cranked launcher); Stretch Armstrong; LEGOs and Erector sets; J. J. Armes (Raise your hand if you remember that one - and why I just made a terrible pun...). However, my all-time favorite toy was my Six Million Dollar Man figure and the Bionic Transport Repair Station - I think the figure and the station were some of the coolest toys ever made. Then came video games...I didn't play with too many toys after tht

As an adult: Until they got lost in a recent move - the Teenage Mutant Ninja Tutle Star Trek editions; Yo-Yos; Rubk's Cube

Re: My toys

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

I do remember J. J. Armes. And he's still out there (http://www.thrillingdetective.com/eyes/armes.html).

[starsongky.livejournal.com]

Kid: Barbies, lots of Barbies. And yes, Weebles will too stay down - if you play with them in the bathtub long enough. The old ones weren't water-tight, it would leak in and eventually they'd sink to the bottom.

Adult: A.G.Bear, a sound activated Teddy that garbled whatever it hears and sends it back out as "bear talk" (growls). She was brand new in 1985, my first-ever Christmas gift from my husband. Yes, I'm almost 39 and still sleep with her.

[starsongky.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, an adult "toy" I should have added - my yarn and knitting needles. I've always got at least one project with me. And lots of Tarot decks, if those count.

[youngcurmudgeon.livejournal.com]

As a kid: My sister and I had an impressive array of feminist Barbies (they bundled up and went on environmental expeditions) and political Beanie Babies (they had class warfare and ... well, fashion shows). I also loved those three-dimensional puzzles, and puzzles in general. And stuffed animals all over the place.

I don't think I'm grown-up enough to say what my favorite adult toys are, but lately I've gotten addicted to those Su Do Ku things as well as my daily attempt at a crossword. (That's why I don't read the New York Times in print -- too depressing.)

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Not so much "don't e-mail me here" issues as "this address is broken, use that address" issues. filkertom at yahoo dot com is just fine.

If you haven't already, you might want to check out any of a number of HP groups on LJ, the most... nonpartisan being daily_snitch_, which is an announcement group. The user info section should tell you how to submit this to 'em. The Leaky Cauldron (http://www.the-leaky-cauldron.org/) is also useful, although they've had some controversy over the summer (boiling down to who's Hermione going to end up with romantically, Ron or Harry. The people who run the site, who root for Ron/Hermione, dissed the Harry/Hermione people as being "delusional").

Not midnight. 6:30 show in Harper Woods with Anne. And, sure, you can interview me, but why? [bemused]

[youngcurmudgeon.livejournal.com]

I've posted to a couple HP groups, but thanks for the heads-up on Daily Snitch.

Wasn't it the Mugglenet guy who used the d-word in that interview? I just remember mourning the death of "Won-Won."

I'm trying to get a sampling of fans of all ages, shapes and houses. E-mail's on its way -- thanks so much!

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Apologies -- you're right, it was Mugglenet.

Favorite toys

[celticferret.livejournal.com]

My favorite toys as an adult are stuffed ferrets and otters. I like the scoozie ferret best. It runs on batteries and talks. It's quite silly.

KG

[kayshapero]

FWIW, one toy I gave my daughter when she was a rugrat was a large cardboard carton with a hole cut in one side. She had MORE fun with that thing...

As a kid? The household oven (when YOU bake the cookies, you get to decide what kind, and also get first crack at them! :)). OK, toys actually meant AS toys: my stick-horse, various toy horses of other kinds, a Mattel Vac-u-form, scissors, Legos, Tinkertoys, Lincoln Logs, my microscope.

As an adult? Vicky's Goth Cthulhu and Shoggoth plushies. I'm not sure which of us the beanie octopus that lives on top of my computer belongs to. Do my kalimba, keyboard, and collection of pennywhistles, ocarinas and whatnot count? My large red plushie salamander (makes a nice pillow). The Winslow (see if anybody gets this one - it lives on my TV).

[ladysprite.livejournal.com]

Hm. As a kid, I loved my LiteBrite, and the floppy doll my mom crocheted for me, but my absolute favorite things to play with were brown paper grocery bags. I cut them and glued them and stapled them into just about everything - masks, hats, doll swings, kites that didn't fly, bizarre constructs that I didn't quite have a purpose for....

Now? I still have the floppy doll, and she's still one of my favorites. She shares her position of honor with my stuffed Totoro, and a little stuffed teddy bear named Olaf Button-nose that umbran and I rescued from the gutter on a rainy day. Jigsaw puzzles are a particular favorite too, but I'm not sure whether they count as toys.