On LEGO and childhood 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.
3. 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.
4. 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
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.
5. 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!
4 people have left comments
Caleb Chang said:
I think when we stop loving toys, we grow old - kinda like how the boy in The Polar Express could no longer hear the ringing of the Christmas Bells. I'm getting dang sentimental, so I'll stop.
Just promise me, from one toy lover to another, never stop loving toys. Promise.
Steve Weaver said:
Christina,
I had an even older McDonalds one. Like late 70's early 80's, I dunno. Now where did I put it. (Off to go look.)
Mostly Lisa said:
juicy post!
1. i just found the mother load of fisher price little people in the basement of my mum's house. i like the dog the best, although mine has seen better days. it's right ear was chewed off by my dog when i was little and i kid you not, not 4 hours after i reconnected with my favourite little fisher price friend, my cat was found attacking the right ear.
2. my rich friend had the kitchen. i hated her for it and refused to partake in any role playing games like "i'll be the mommy. You be the baby". even then i was a jealous, stick-in-the mud.
3. The Lego airplane set was my fav. i was obsessed with airplanes and fighter planes. i wanted to be a pilot until i got distracted by figure skating and started skipping math and physics in lieu of sneaking off to skate. boo! i regretted this decision nearly every single day of university, especially the day i had to defend the fracking statistics i used in my thesis from the mathmatical heckling of a Physics professor. mathmatical isn't even a word. see if i care!
4. barbies stayed in their boxes. i already had self-esteem problems at that age.
5. I bought an original Saga system from Sears. oh yes. it was more aesthetically pleasing, but it had no games and people mocked me. uh. again with the bitterness... i finally caved and got the Super NES. but i gave it to this boy i had a huuuuge crush on in gr 10 and he never gave it back!!!!
why is this trip into memory lane making me so bitter? *breathe like the doctor told you*
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