Toys!

I was surfing around the internet last night and came upon a website listing the 36 toys in the National Toy Hall of Fame. As I browsed the pictures, I realized that as a child, between my siblings and I, we had 34 of the 36 toys shown, only missing a rocking horse (I can't ever remember having one) and the last one didn't count only on a technicality--I had a red wagon, but I'm fairly certain it wasn't an official Radio Flyer. Everything else on the list found it's way into our bright orange wooden toybox at some point in history.

Now that the Christmas season is upon us, and one can't help feeling a little nostalgic every now and then, and it was fun thinking of all those cool toys I had when I was a kid. The funny thing is, my parents had mastered the first rule of good customer service with us kids-- Under-promising and over-delivering. Every Christmas season they'd always tell us how poor we were and that we shouldn't expect anything for Christmas--for some reason times were always hard, according to them (having six kids might've had something to do with it), but every Christmas we always seemed to have a truckload of presents under the tree, usually included was the one main thing that we each wanted.

I was never disappointed with my haul on Christmas morning except the one year I did all kinds of poking around and being sneaky, and I figured out every single one of the gifts I had under the tree before I ever opened them. Once that happened, Christmas morning was a huge letdown--I had no surprises at all when I opened all of my gifts. Even though I got plenty of good stuff (it was the year of the Rubiks Cube), I was still disappointed. Having learned that lesson the hard way, ever since then I can't even be tempted when somebody (usually one of my sisters) starts the usual December taunts of I know what you're getting for Christmas... And it drives them nuts that I won't take the bait. I'm content to wait until the 25th and be completely surprised with everything. That outlook is most satisfying, and works very well in the occasional lean years. You'll rarely, if ever, catch me poking around under the tree.

Anyhow, that link provided much entertainment as I looked at all of the pictures, and it made me wish I still had some of those toys. I would *love* to have a big Lionel train layout, or a huge crate full of Lincoln Logs to play with. And even to this day I still love the stress-reducing tedium of putting together jigsaw puzzles. There aren't many rainy days here in Vegas, but jigsaw puzzles are the perfect rainy-day activity, if you don't have a good book handy.

It makes me think that today's kids are missing out--all they have are video games. Seriously, thirty years from now, are people going to be the least bit nostalgic about Madden 2007, Call of Duty, or Final Fantasy? Doubt it.

But that list is far from complete. Between Reverend Dave and I, and even our sister Nancy, we had some great toys when we were kids that never made the list. Remember any of the following?

• The Wheel-O
• Spirograph - Nobody ever mastered that long cigar shaped one
• Thundershift 500 - More fun than electric slot cars
• TCR Race Track - Slot cars without slots--you could actually change lanes!
• The Green Machine (Reverend Dave had that, while I had a more traditional Big Wheel--and we both have the same outlook on our 'toys' as adults--He prefers the modern sleekness of Glocks while I prefer the classic look of the 1911)
• Lite Bright - I was never artistic enough to make anything remotely cool
• Matchbox and Hot Wheels cars
• Green Plastic Army Men - Dad never liked stepping on them with his bare feet
• Silly Putty
• Barrel of Monkeys
• Evel Knievel Stunt Bike - The GREATEST toy in the history of mankind
• Gnip Gnop
• Socker Boppers
• Hungry Hungry Hippos
• Rockem Sockem Robots
• Nerf Football
  
• Toss Across
• Weeble Wobbles
• The Fisher-Price Airplane - Back in college when I was pledging for Alpha Eta Rho, I had to drag one of these around with me all day between classes. Nope, couldn't carry it, had to drag it, with that unique sound it made. Good Times!
• Shrinky Dinks
• Battleship - Always a classic
• Rubik's Cube - The must-have gift during 8th grade
• Operation -- The funny bone, the breadbasket, Adam's Apple... How many parts can you name?
• Hippety Hop
• The Verti-bird - This was cool until I broke it. The day after Christmas...
• Mousetrap
• Testors and Revelle model cars and airplanes (I was way more into airplanes, although pretty much the earliest memory I have is of me sitting on my dad's lap while we spent several evenings building a huge USS Missouri battleship. The smell of brush-on plastic cement makes me remember that)

I could probably go on forever, but just off the top of my head, that's what I can remember. But the coolest toy I ever had, besides the Evel Knievel Stunt Cycle, was a huge plastic aircraft carrier that had a couple of rubber airplanes--F4U Corsairs (this was in the days of Black Sheep Squadron on tv) and a working catapult. You'd arm the rubber band on the catapult, set the plane on it, and then pull the handle and it would run down the deck and launch the airplanes about 20 feet. Man, what a cool toy that was. I loved it. I always favored airplanes, so that was a helluva toy. And of course, it was three feet long and the biggest present under the tree, so I was obviously my parent's favorite kid that year. Heh.

My tastes have changed a bit over the years, and although I now prefer to have rum and cigars under the Christmas tree, this would be pretty cool to have.

Mikey