LEGO and childhood toys…">On LEGO and childhood toys…

• Posted: January 29, 2008
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• Author: Christina
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• Filed under: about me
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• Tags: blogging, bricks, LEGO, memories, nostalgia, toys

I'm a huge fan of toys in general; like, for someone who has absolutely no desire to have children, I like toys an awful lot. To me, toys are a reminder of the best part of childhood: infinite possibilities. Like all my favorite toys, LEGO represented that.

Yes­ter­day was the 50th Anniver­sary of the LEGO brick (well, the 50th anniver­sary of the guy fil­ing the patent for the LEGO brick). LEGO was one of my Top 5 favorite toys as a kid; hell, even now I love to look at the play­sets. Do they still come with the cat­a­logs like back in the day?

I’m a huge fan of toys in gen­eral; like, for some­one who has absolutely no desire to have chil­dren, I like toys an awful lot. To me, toys are a reminder of the best part of child­hood: infi­nite pos­si­bil­i­ties. Like all my favorite toys, LEGO rep­re­sented that.

Orig­i­nally, this was going to be a brief “Ode to LEGO” entry, but it kind of mor­phed into this, Christina’s Top 5 favorite toys:

1. Fisher-Price Lit­tle Peo­ple — I had so many of the sets, the school­house (two actu­ally), the McDonald’s, the fam­ily home (the old-style and the one they re-did in the early 1990s), Main Street (my favorite), the Swim­ming Pool, the Gas Sta­tion, the Farm, Sesame Street, and I loved them all. They changed the shape of the Lit­tle Peo­ple in the early 1990s (I just checked, it was 1990) and the change, in my opin­ion, was not pos­i­tive. I get that like 1 kid some­where choked on a Lit­tle Peo­ple fig­ure — and really, those things are freak­ing BIG, like, I was the kid who almost had to go to the hos­pi­tal because I put so much mac­a­roni and cheese up my nose (yeah, I thought the noo­dles looked like nos­trils and decided to stuff them up there — I remem­ber this. I also remem­ber hav­ing a hard time breath­ing and my dad hav­ing to use the sucky-tweezers to remove them and my mom being very, very upset) so I don’t really under­stand how they could actu­ally block a tra­chea — but the re-design sucked and ruined the whole line, in my opin­ion. The one’s from the ‘70s and ‘80s (again, I just checked, 1965–1990), they pwned all.

2. Fisher-Price Fun with Food Kitchen set and food sets — Oh how I loved my kitchen set. Like, I fuck­ing loved my kitchen set. I got it for my fourth birth­day, and I knew I was get­ting it — because we gave the old kitchen set to the church char­ity drive. Before my actual birth­day, I walked up the back stairs to the bonus room (which at the time was my dad’s office, before it became the bonus room, before it reverted back to his office) and found the actual box. I remem­ber this explic­itly, and my par­ents do too (they were in shock at the time and are still kind of in awe 21 years later), sit­ting on the top stair, star­ing at the box. Just star­ing at the pic­tures, imag­in­ing all the great stuff I would get to do with that kitchen set. I was a pretty ram­bunc­tious kid at the time, but I was absolutely enter­tained by just STARING at the box, think­ing about every­thing I was going to do.

In addi­tion to the kitchen, which was this cool lit­tle thing with wheels and a side fold­ing table and the oven/stove on one side, the refrigerator/freezer/sink/pantry on the other and stor­age bins on the side, the real awe­som­ness was all the food sets. I don’t know what Fisher-Price is like now, in terms of toy qual­ity, but back then, they were prob­a­bly the best com­pany, out­side of Play-Mobil (a very expen­sive, but very cool toy com­pany who made sets that were kind of hybrids between LEGO and Lit­tle People..not sure if they are still around, we used to have to order them from a cat­a­log or get them at higher-end stores, Toys ‘R Us didn’t carry them very often). And I say that because although the food might not have been the most real­is­tic look­ing (though I did have some food sets that were VERY real­is­tic — like the Pizza Hut set and the fake potato chips that looked freak­ing real), but they had a level of detail and qual­ity that was on another level. I’m talk­ing bout waf­fles that felt sticky (but didn’t make your hands sticky), even a decade after buy­ing them. Milk in baby bot­tles that still hasn’t dried up after twenty-one years. The bril­liance of stor­ing scram­bled eggs inside two of the egg shells and fried eggs in the other two (and hav­ing egg shells that break apart any­way — not just solid plas­tic eggs with­out that fea­ture), like, that stuff was the shit.

How cool was my kitchen set? This is how cool. The most pop­u­lar girl at my mid­dle school was my best friend when I was in the 5th grade (she was in the 7th grade and a cheer­leader and VERY cool). She would come over to my house, not to play Super Nin­tendo or to do gym­nas­tics — but to play with my kitchen set that I still had in my closet because no one wanted to put it up in the attic (huge pain). Like, I was 11 and really not inter­ested — but this pretty, pop­u­lar older girl wanted to play with it. Of course, when the red­neck girls from across the street went too far with my hand­cuffs from Wash­ing­ton D.C. (I think one of the girls acci­den­tally flushed the key down the toi­let or some­thing, not sure, never found out) and we had to go to the fire sta­tion to get them taken off of her (we were play­ing this game where some­one was hand­cuffed and had to fol­low another person’s orders — yeah, I know, I know — we were tween girls before the word tween existed), Jen­nifer kind of stopped hang­ing out with me. And of course this hap­pened the day before 6th grade. Fuck­ing Sab­rina and Brit­ney. GRR.

1. LEGO — and now we get to the rea­son for this entry. LEGO and its anniver­sary. I have to say, my kitchen set and Lit­tle Peo­ple might have a stronger place in my heart in terms of all-time love (I actu­ally don’t know which of those I loved more, Lit­tle Peo­ple or Fun with Food), but LEGO is right up there. My older sis­ter had a pretty sub­stan­tial LEGO col­lec­tion, but they were mostly just bricks, not the playsets.

My mom stopped work­ing after she became preg­nant with my sis­ter. She ended up stay­ing home for 14 years. Before her hia­tus, she was an edi­tor, but in 1989, when was six, she went back to school to get her Mas­ters in school coun­sel­ing. That sum­mer, right after I fin­ished kinder­garten, she was going to school more often and would take me with her from time to time when she needed to study at the UGA library. Before we would go, I would get a Happy Meal from McDonald’s and at the time, they were run­ning a LEGO pro­mo­tion where you got one of like six or seven dif­fer­ent LEGO kits. I would also get a pack of all straw­berry Star­bursts and usu­ally some sort of soft drink. Then, while my mom poured over the stacks, I would build and rebuild my LEGO set, not only from the direc­tions, but into a mil­lion dif­fer­ent other things. It got to the point I could make a heli­copter in my sleep. But that was what truly trig­gered my love for LEGO.

The town sets were always my favorites. I had a few pirate sets and they were fun — but the castle’s never did any­thing for me. Bor­ing. It always both­ered me that there wasn’t a more girl-friendly set, aside from the Duplo fam­ily blocks. Then in 1993, LEGO intro­duced the Par­adisa Col­lec­tion. Finally, real LEGO sets but with a girl aes­thetic. I had almost the entire col­lec­tion, but my favorite set was def­i­nitely Pool­side Par­adise. It was this great house straight out of LA Law or some­thing with a black con­vert­ible, but­ler, pool out front. Awe­some. In 2000, when LEGO intro­duced the Steven Spiel­berg Moviemaker set, I was in love. I was 18 frig­ging years old when it was released (Christ­mas of 2000, I believe) and I wanted it des­per­ately. We sold it at Best Buy (where I worked), but it was like $200 ($150 employee price I think, maybe $100, can’t remem­ber) but it was too much to jus­tify for a toy. Then, when I grad­u­ated from high school, my friend Erik gave it to me for grad­u­a­tion (don’t laugh at that link, it’s from my old jour­nal — and I wrote that when I was EIGHTEEN. I’m now 25. I’m already regret­ting link­ing to my LJ. What­ever.). It’s still prob­a­bly one of the best gifts any­one has ever given me.

This girl I was friends with in 9th and 10th grade, God, can’t remem­ber her name — any­way, her older brother Michael had their entire bonus room ded­i­cated to a city made of LEGO. Like, he recre­ated the city of Atlanta in LEGO. When he grad­u­ated from high school, he dis­as­sem­bled the city. It was sad. But it was awe­some. Michael some­thing — you rocked. Wish I could remem­ber your sister’s name. Laura? Jen­nifer? Beth? I really have no idea.

1. Barbie/Action fig­ures — I’ll lump these two together because I played with them the exact same way. I loved Bar­bie. Hell, I still love Bar­bie. Here’s a secret for all you guys out there — and it is the absolute truth, whether they admit it or not — the only thing girls past the age of 8 do with their Bar­bies is make them have sex. Period. Bar­bie porno is the only thing we do. Because of my older sis­ter, my Bar­bie After Dark play­time started pretty early, but I can unequiv­o­cally say that it was the only thing girls past a cer­tain age (8 seems appro­pri­ate) do. Every­one always loved to play Bar­bie with me because
2. A) I had a TON of Ken dolls. Whereas most girls had one or two, I had like 10 or 11. Dr. Ken. Hawai­ian Fun Ken. Beach shop Ken. Rocker Ken. Totally Hair Ken (also known as Gay Ken). Dude, Barbie’s cousin’s boyfriend. Dylan McKay, Bran­don Walsh and Zach Mor­ris Ken dolls (well, Zach was a Bar­bie knock-off by Tiger). It goes on.
3. B) Because I watched lots of soap operas and had a really good knack for writ­ing dra­matic sto­ry­lines, I was always able to come up with the most juicy story plots. I wouldn’t rip off The Young and the Rest­less straight-up, I mean, I would, but it would be com­bined with The Bold and the Beau­ti­ful, Mel­rose Place and some screwed up stuff from my own imag­i­na­tion. I truly think Bar­bie was what taught me the fun­da­men­tals of story con­struc­tion — espe­cially melo­drama — because I would want to cre­ate the most interesting/torrid stuff possible.
As for action fig­ures, well, I have always loved them. He-Man and Master’s of the Uni­verse. Bat­man (the DC Comics series from Toy­Biz and the Dark Knight series and other movie based fig­ures), Super­man, Lex Luthor, Mr. Feeze, Joker and Joker’s Hench­men, etc. I was majorly, majorly obsessed with the Ninja Tur­tles in sec­ond grade. Like I loved them and every­thing about them. I had the toys, the play­sets, the rarer action fig­ures, you name it.

The rea­son I lump them in with Bar­bie, how­ever, is because as a girl, I played with the same way. They didn’t get as out of con­trol Ski­na­max — but the plot­lines were often more about Bat­man and Super­man fight­ing over Won­der Woman (who was in love with Joker, because she found evil attrac­tive), than about sav­ing the world. I had lots of so-called, “boy” toys — but I played with them in a very female way.

Oh, for my sister’s 30th birth­day last year — I bought her two Heart Fam­ily dolls off of eBay. The Heart Fam­ily was Mattel’s attempt to give Bar­bie an extended mar­ket. They were Barbie’s cousins or some­thing and it was a mom, a dad and two twin chil­dren. I was totally in love with Mr. Heart. Any­hoo, I man­aged to find two unopened Heart Fam­ily Goes to Dis­ney dolls (mom and dad, each with kid) and she loved it. It was the best gift ever.

1. The Nin­tendo Enter­tain­ment Sys­tem — As much as I have always loved elec­tron­ics, most of my favorite toys were NOT elec­tron­i­cally based. At all. In fact, the NES/SNES is the only “toy” I can think of that I loved even nearly as much as the oth­ers. Why? Well elec­tronic toys tend to play at you, not with you. Which is why video games are dif­fer­ent. We got the NES for Christ­mas in 1988. I had just turned 6. Man did I love that thing instantly. The real turn­ing point though, was a year later, when Super Mario Bros. 3 was released. That game changed my life. It made video games impor­tant and some­thing that I knew I would always love.

When my mom was get­ting her Ed.S in 1992/1993, I occu­pied myself those sum­mers by rent­ing a shit­load of videos from the video store and also a shit­load of video games. That not only gave me a very, very high base-level film edu­ca­tion (I feel con­fi­dent say­ing that I had more knowl­edge of film/directors/cinematography/criticism at 16 or 17 than most peo­ple who grad­u­ate from col­lege with degrees in Film — I loved it and thus began absorb­ing every­thing about it from the age of 9 or 10 on), it also gave me my foun­da­tion for video games. I played so many games, I got to see what made a game work and what made a game suck — beyond graph­ics. I got an SNES Christ­mas of 1993 and that was prob­a­bly my favorite sys­tem ever. I got the Nin­tendo 64 in 1996, 8 days before Christ­mas, and though that sys­tem was pretty much respon­si­ble for Nintendo’s pre-Wii down­fall, I loved it. I’ve also had the PlaySta­tion, the Dream­cast, the PS2, X-Box, Game Cube and now a 360 and Wii. Oh, and an orig­i­nal Game Boy, a Game Boy Color, a Game Boy Advance (replaced by the fold­able GBA) — no DS, because I have no need — but I think it’s very, very cool.

My very first job was at The Elec­tron­ics Bou­tique, which is not where most 16 year old girls want to work. Espe­cially not hot 16 year old girls (yeah, I’ll be con­ceited — I finally got cute around the spring of 1999), but for me, it was my first choice. That or Toys ‘R Us. But EB was in the mall. It won. Work­ing at a video game store when you love games is amaz­ing. It’s like the first few years I worked at Best Buy, before the bull­shit and drama and pol­i­tics ate my soul. You get to be around stuff you love. As your job. All of that went back to that NES.

OK — so if you are still read­ing and not ter­ri­bly bored, chime in with your favorite child­hood toys! Or write a longer entry on your own blog and trackback!

Out!

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