What were your favorite childhood toys? Do you still collect them?

Not necessarily Christmas presents, but what were your favorite childhood toys growing up? Do you still collect them?
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  • Books.
    Colouring books.
    Jigsaw puzzles.
    Dolls with paper clothes. We cut them out, including little tabs to fix them on.
    Real dolls. We invented a whole family tree around them, gave them individual voices and did conversations after lights out.

    I still collect books and jigsaw puzzles.
  • A tabletop ice hockey game.
  • Caissa, we had one too and played with it a lot. It was fun to have it replaced with an air hockey game. Lots of hours spent playing.

    I remember spending ages with Spirograph. It was well loved.

    Nowadays, I play Jenga even if its all alone on the coffee table. The really large blocks for picnics and weddings are my favourites. I sort of zone out and don't notice anything else.
  • Model aircraft kits. And yep, I still make (and design) them.
  • ClimacusClimacus Shipmate
    edited December 2024
    Board games. All types.

    Teddy bears. I did combine Monopoly with them at a young age and play it with them, poor creatures. I gave them away.

    A rocking horse my grandmother brought back from Hong Kong (my uncle worked for Cathay and lived there); the first of my nieces to have a child, if they do, will get it.

    Several of those Game & Watch electronic game throughout the years...Donkey Kong, Fire and Balloon Fight.

    A train set my dad put together.
  • Action figures and playsets for me. I still have a bunch. And have collected more in recent years. Back then it was Star Wars and Micronauts—in recent times I’ve gotten very much into the originals that were brought to the US as Micronauts, the Japanese Microman. ❤️
  • My sister and I had Barbie dolls, I used to love dressing them up and doing their hair, but I wasn't an imaginative kid so soon got bored with that, I much preferred reading. My sister has the Barbies now and I think I've kept one that was my first, Stacey Barbie's friend who came in a wonderful multi-coloured one piece bathing suit. If I can I'd like to find another.

    I have also kept (and my sister gave me an additional one), Tearie Dearie, she was a small baby doll in cradle that doubled as a bathtub. She also wore the most fabulous sundress red with tiny white spots and her kickers were white with tiny red spots and lace frills on her bottom. I keep my original in a shelf in my display cupboard with a knitted Noddy and Big Ears and some character dolls from the movie of The Magic Pudding (An Australian classic kids story). My Dad had collected all the characters, but did not have Albert (the pudding) and I managed to find one online and complete the set. I wish Dad was here to see it!

    Dad used to buy us the English girls weekly comics and I have kept those (they are very ratty and I know husband would like me to toss them), my sister has the Annuals and I will over time get an additional set for myself, well for Cheery daughter really as she used to read them when she went to my parents in the school holidays.

    I remember getting a jewellery making kit one Christmas - Mum was always trying to get us into crafts - I kept a couple of brooches I made and had given to my Nanna as Christmas gifts. When she died I asked for them back.

    I had a dragster bike and I sold that about 20 years ago for $20, I wish I were selling it now!! I did sell my toy Singer sewing machine, but kept my Casdon washing machine, that used real water, because I used to let our daughter play with it when I was on holidays from work and had time to supervise. She didn't mind me getting rid of the sewing machine, but wanted to keep the washing machine as she remembers it fondly.

    Compared to the copious amount of stuff that kids have now, we didn't have heaps, but what we had we enjoyed and looked after.
  • the Annuals
    Oh, yes! I recall a variety of them for Christmas for several years.
  • @Climacus, they were a whole world of delight for boys and girls and I'd try to wake up before dawn so I could read both my sister's and my own before anyone else was up and about!
  • Puzzler wrote: »
    Books.
    Colouring books.
    Jigsaw puzzles.
    Dolls with paper clothes. We cut them out, including little tabs to fix them on.
    Real dolls. We invented a whole family tree around them, gave them individual voices and did conversations after lights out.

    I still collect books and jigsaw puzzles.

    I would have been very happy to be your childhood friend. I do still collect books but not puzzles.
  • I loved paper dolls too. Sometimes when we were on holidays Mum would buy a book as they were a good thing to keep us busy while staying with Nanna, and when we were packing up to go home, they didn't take up a whole heap of room in the suitcase. Are they still being made?
  • I loved paper dolls too. Sometimes when we were on holidays Mum would buy a book as they were a good thing to keep us busy while staying with Nanna, and when we were packing up to go home, they didn't take up a whole heap of room in the suitcase. Are they still being made?

    I am happy to report that they are!

    Since you are in Australia...

    https://www.amazon.com.au/s?k=paper+dolls&crid=3KH44O0IQW0FT&sprefix=pap,aps,803&ref=nb_sb_noss_2
  • I can remember sitting behind the door in the kitchen where there was a cupboard where I kept some of my favourite toys. There was a set of little plastic horses that had come from an Airfix kit of a Roman chariot my brother had made and then discarded. I played with them for a long time making up stories about them.

    Nowadays I collect Beswick and Royal Doulton ceramic horses. Long resigned to the fact that I'll never have a "real" one!

  • HuiaHuia Shipmate
    Thanks for that @ChastMastr - the range of paper dolls we could get here when I was a child was nothing like that! Of course that was about 65 years ago, so that's not surprising.

    I would have loved the Madeline dolls as a child because she was my favourite character in a book ever since I was at Playcentre (preschool).
    She was a daring and feisty little girl who wasn't afraid of anything.

    "To the tiger in the zoo, Madeline just said, "pooh pooh.

    " I still have a copy of the original book, I used to know it off by heart, the fact that it rhymed helped.
  • jedijudyjedijudy Heaven Host
    Not a toy, really, but my favorite Christmas gift was a blue Huffy bicycle! Even though there was snow everywhere, I really wanted to take a ride on it that day! In the afternoon, the sun had melted most of the snow on the road, so Dad allowed me to ride to the bottom of the hill where we lived. It was magical!
  • EigonEigon Shipmate
    There was only one year that I woke my mum up extra early on Christmas morning - it was the year I got a doll's house, and I was so excited! It was 2 storey, with a front that slid to one side.
    Later, I read Miss Happiness and Miss Flower by Rumer Godden from the library, and me and my sister made little rag doll "Japanese" dolls to live in the house.
  • My childhood was in the 50s. I was bought present for Christmas but I can't remember most of them. I had annuals and I can recall having a bagatelle game. I never had a train set or a meccano set. I did have a bike and a football but the main thing I played with chums were marbles and cowboys ( Cap guns !!)

    My dad, who was an iron moulder, used to make toy soldiers.
  • MMMMMM Shipmate
    When I was a little girl, probably the end of the 50’s/beginning of the 60’s, my parents bought me a lovely little, real, carpentry set in a lovely fitted wooden case. I did love it, but being the horrible, ungrateful little sod I was, I almost immediately set about losing some bits, damaging others, hitting my brothers with yet others etc. I often think about it now.

    MMM
  • That just sounds like being a child!
  • @MMM I think I saw myself in your description of your lovely carpentry set, and I think LC was spot on, just the type of thing many of us have done at some point!

    @Eigon, I loved Miss Happiness and Miss Flower too and I've only just in the last couple of years, purchased a copy for myself. I was always amazed that the girl could make the doll house with not a lot of assistance from anyone else (maybe I am misremembering the story).
  • I should look into Miss Happiness and Miss Flower. I love Japanese things and also (if not dark/disturbing) the adventures of toys…
  • I don't recall any particular favourite toys from my childhood, but books, always books, were favourite possessions, for Christmas, birthdays and any other celebration.
    Yes, collected until the year we "downsized" when a grand cull took place. I am still trying to un-collect a good portion of the remainder, and have recently found a forgotten hoard of favourites secreted on a mostly overlooked bookcase.

    There were dolls, and a teddy bear, mistreated by my brother, who used him variously as a punchbag and dartboard, The bear was donated to a charity shop during the downsizing, and I do hope he found someone to love him, patched and balding as he was.

    Mostly I remember craft kits. Making of "ornamental" models using plaster of paris and rubber moulds and then painting them to give as gifts to family and friends was popular for a few years, and making sprays of 'flowers' with dry twigs and "Glitterwax " (a craft learned at Brownies) was a favourite, especially pre-Christmas, for more stylish ;) decorations.
    I remember colouring books, paper dolls, Paint by Numbers sets, 'magic' painting books, board games and other similar sit down and stay quiet occupations.
    My brother got the roller skates, and bicycle - but also the trips to A&E from falling off or crashing into things.
    Our toys were definitely chosen according to gender, and we happily complied with the stereotypes!

  • Some of the gifts I received were, I guess, specifically chosen with a view to be used on Sundays. My parents had strict views on what was, or was not, acceptable to be played with on Sundays. Reading, colouring etc was encouraged, physical activity eg ball games, was not. Mostly it worked well as there wasn’t much spare time on a Sunday, but I recall one awful Christmas which fell on a Sunday and board games, which were traditionally part of our Christmas afternoons, were on the forbidden list.
    A bit of a tangent and probably irrelevant today, but it is interesting how Sundays have evolved, in my lifetime certainly.
  • Sundays have certainly changed a heap! I had a schoolfriend who was not allowed to join in sport on a Sunday, which coming from a lapsed faith family, was astounding to me!

    @Puzzler my family toys were fairly gendered too - dolls, craft, household items like an iron and a washing machine. Never the much desired miniature Hill hoist clothesline though!

    One gift we gave our daughter was a marble-works. It came in two boxes and could be configured in a variety of ways to make a marble track, quite a large one. Kids of all ages loved to play with it and we've kept it as a not to be gotten rid of item, because of it's wide appeal. I don't think it was something I would have been given as a child.
  • I gave a marble-run, age-related, to each of my grandchildren one Christmas. They loved building and using them. ( I think my daughter has kept one. She has kept or acquired a number of toys from her and their childhood. ) My granddaughter much preferred cars, trains, construction kits to dolls. Her brother liked planning layouts especially airports. She is now doing an engineering degree apprenticeship with BMW. Her brother is seriously considering environmental planning as a career.
  • To add to my tabletop ice hockey game above, I remember one year when I received 4 Hardy Boys books. At that age, I could read one in 3 hours (180 pages, 20 chapters each). I had them all completed before returning to school in January.
  • At age 10 or 11, I was given a printing set: a wooden block with ledges onto which rubber-backed letters were positioned with tweezers and then pressed upon an ink-pad and from there onto any paper surface. Many of my favourite books were thus decorated with my name and address on the front end-papers. Now we would call it "personalizing" them.
  • My grandfather gave me an O-scale Hornby clockwork train set about 70 years ago. Since then through a transition via Rokal TT scale to European and Japanese N scale, I have owned model trains. Even today, Mrs BA added to my collection with a new Kato model train and a model tram.
  • EigonEigon Shipmate
    @cgichard We had one of those printing sets! John Bull, I think. We had a lot of fun with that (and ink everywhere!).

    @Barnabas_Aus We had a clockwork train set that we used to set up with our Scalectrix all over the floor. I still haven't forgiven mum for giving it away one year - to a collection for poor children, or orphans or something similar - because she'd decided we'd "grown out of it". Because she didn't ask us, we still had the key that wound up the steam engine hidden in my sister's jewellery box, so the poor kids that got it wouldn't have been able to use it anyway.
  • When I was a teenager one of my best gifts was a handheld mixer, which I thought was strange at the time. However, when I received my Aunt's gift it was clear a plan was coming together. My Aunt had given me a crepe maker, which was like an electric frypan, but rather than pouring the mixture into it to cook, you dipped the pan into the mix and then tipped it back and it stood on little legs while the crepe cooked, once it was cooked you could drop the crepe off onto a plate.

    It wasn't strictly a toy, more a kitchen appliance, but it worked for 30+ years and I assume the element inside it must have died. I loved my gifts that year and if I could ever get another crepe maker the same I'd replace it tomorrow!
  • Eigon wrote: »
    We had one of those printing sets! John Bull, I think. We had a lot of fun with that (and ink everywhere!).
    I had forgotten about he John Bull printing press!
    I had one of them, too.
  • I can't believe that I forgot to post about my very favourite doll. I think she was for Christmas when I was 7 or 8. She was a walking and talking doll. The walking part was a nuisance because if you sat the dolls on a chair it spoilt the walking mechanism (how silly). However, I absolutely loved that she had a button in her tummy to press to get her to talk. I loved the phrases she would say - I am hungry Mummy, Do you like my party dress? Lets go for a walk, Shall we do the dusting? Let's go in the garden. I kept her for years but at some point the mechanism stopped working, my now husband eventually got her talking again, I knew he was a keeper.

    When my daughter was a bit older than I was at the doll's first Christmas, I passed her onto my daughter, who did not look after her and drew on her face with texta. She was kind of not salvaegable as her legs were also broken, so she went to the dustbin.

    However, after many years of searching the colourful online shop, I found a replacement. Same brand, same long hair and same phrases. I was so excited, that I found her!

    At present she is in my wardrobe, to be passed onto my great niece and I have taken the batteries out so they don't leak and spoil her. I did offer her to my daughter, but she says that she feels so bad about not looking after my original, that she couldn't bear to have the replacement looking at her all the time.

    This doll never had a name, but she brought me so many hours of happy playtime and even thinking about her now makes my heart swell!
  • EigonEigon Shipmate
    I walked past the Red Cross shop this morning - and turned right round again and went in.
    I'd glimpsed a toy on an inside shelf, and I am now the proud owner of a 12" tall Virgil Tracy, pilot of Thunderbird 2!
    I was taking my milk bottles back to the shop - I put them in a wicker wine bottle carrier - and I stood him up in there. When I went into the chemist's, the lady behind the counter recognised him instantly, and remembered the names of all his brothers and which Thunderbird they flew!
  • Thunderbird 2 was my favourite. Don't ask me why, I don't know. I never had a toy one though.

    My favourite toy when I was very small was a blue plastic cat with green glass eyes. I have absolutely no idea what happened to it, but I daresay my mother quietly binned it when she thought I was too old for it.
  • My favorite at six was a cowgirl outfit, vest, skirt, and western hat. It included a pair of matching cap guns and a tin badge. I spent hours outside looking for cattle rustlers in the East Coast city where I lived.
  • I used to have Hornby-Dublo trains when I was a boy.

    Now I have larger and far more accurate 7mm scale ones. (I build most of the wagons myself.)

    This is not unlike going from watercolour painting of colouring books with dirt-cheap bushes to working on canvas in oils with expensive sable brushes. It's the same hobby in essence but very different.

    Similarly, I used to scrawl simple and naive stories in notebooks almost as soon as I could write. Now I do full-length historical novels on a laptop. I suppose one might argue that a seed grows into a plant.
  • ClimacusClimacus Shipmate
    edited December 2024
    Eigon wrote: »
    Scalectrix
    Oh! Fond memories indeed. Loved setting up the track and racing those cars.

    Much cheaper, but I had a loop-de-loop Hot Wheels track I loved (may have been a birthday gift, rather than Christmas).
    Sighthound wrote: »
    Now I have larger and far more accurate 7mm scale ones. (I build most of the wagons myself.)
    Enjoy!

    I recall electronic Battleship with fondness...games, usually board games, were a regular feature of my growing up.

    My parents (mum particularly, probably given her difficult childhood) saw Christmas (still do) as a time to splurge on loved ones. Gifts well outside ordinary spending were given at Christmas.
  • ChastMastr wrote: »
    Not necessarily Christmas presents, but what were your favorite childhood toys growing up? Do you still collect them?

    I wouldn't ever say that I "collected" my toys. I played with them.

    Favorites? Well, there were a couple of stuffed animals that came everywhere with me, that I had since birth. They're still in my parents' house.

    We played a lot of board games in my family. Scrabble was one of my favorites. I still enjoy it.

    I had the usual array of lego and meccano and airfix models over the years, but nothing that particularly sticks out.
  • @Graven Image I too had a cowgirl outfit and I loved it, particularly the vest. I don't know why but sewn into the waistband of the skirt almost by the hips, were two silly flaps with the name of a famous cowgirl printed on them. To my 6-7 year old brain I thought they were ridiculous and I used to try to tuck them (with varying success) into the waistband. I thought they were unnecessary and spoilt the look of the skirt which I think had fringing around the hem and the vest had fringing too. Very stylish.

    I noticed a couple of nice dollies coming up in an auction lot next week and I might go and check them out at the weekend, if Cheery husband wants to come for a look too there are cars and train stuff too, so should make for a good browse, if not for adding to my collection!
  • Corgi Toys. I don't collect them anymore, but I still have most of them, including a James Bond DB5 with all the gadgets still working.
  • Climacus wrote: »
    Eigon wrote: »
    Scalectrix
    Oh! Fond memories indeed. Loved setting up the track and racing those cars..
    I had one of the very first sets, it had metal cars and a gimbal underneath for guidance. Control was very hit-and-miss. I slowly built up the set and accessories with newer stuff over the years.

    Two memories: the incredibly fiddly clips needed to hold the early track together, and its particular smell (it was rubber; plastic came later).

  • EigonEigon Shipmate
    I didn't collect them as a child, but I now have a small collection of Star Wars figures, and I was very pleased to add an X-wing fighter to the collection last week!
  • @Graven Image I too had a cowgirl outfit and I loved it, particularly the vest. I don't know why but sewn into the waistband of the skirt almost by the hips, were two silly flaps with the name of a famous cowgirl printed on them. To my 6-7 year old brain I thought they were ridiculous and I used to try to tuck them (with varying success) into the waistband. I thought they were unnecessary and spoilt the look of the skirt which I think had fringing around the hem and the vest had fringing too. Very stylish.

    I noticed a couple of nice dollies coming up in an auction lot next week and I might go and check them out at the weekend, if Cheery husband wants to come for a look too there are cars and train stuff too, so should make for a good browse, if not for adding to my collection!
    ing
    Mine also had fringing; perhaps we had the same, but mine had no labels.
  • TubbsTubbs Admin Emeritus, Epiphanies Host
    My OH collected Star Wars toys as a child but gave most of them away in his teenage years. He now collects Star Wars Lego from the classic films. We don't have ornaments and trinkets. We have Lego. So.Much.Lego.
  • I hear you @Tubbs, much the same at our place. Cheery son has a steam engine that was my Dad's and my nephew has the meccano, but for both of them Lego is definitely the thing. Husband has a small collection of Lego botannicals and architecture and son has a haunted house as well as tome Back to the Future and Ghostbusters sets, but it is the superheroes and the Mario sets are the current loves. Our house is certainly a shrine to the god of plastic!
  • ChastMastrChastMastr Shipmate
    edited January 22
    I am very happy to report that Super7 is doing Micronauts toys now! :open_mouth:

    https://www.ign.com/articles/micronauts-returns-in-new-collaboration-between-hasbro-and-super7

    Original ad from the mid-1970s...

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20p45xt_ZDw

    There's a whole history of the Micronauts going back to the original G.I. Joe, believe it or not...
  • I'm thrilled to report a new doll to add to my collection. Many years ago I received a china doll for Christmas from Santa. I remember being a teenager at the time and she was the only surprise in my stocking. Eventually in one of our house moves she got broken and I was sad, but stoic about it.

    I found an almost identical doll just after Christmas and Cheery husband bought her for me. She came in box from the US, packed really beautifully and she is identical to my previous one. Looking at her I felt that I was 16 again and not almost 60. I have a lovely cream cushion that my mother in law embroidered for me and because her dress is a brown floral, she looks beautiful sitting on the old chair with an olive green velvet seat and the cream cushion behind her in our spare bedroom. She has brightened my day substantially!
  • ClimacusClimacus Shipmate
    I had one of the very first sets, it had metal cars and a gimbal underneath for guidance. Control was very hit-and-miss. I slowly built up the set and accessories with newer stuff over the years.

    Two memories: the incredibly fiddly clips needed to hold the early track together, and its particular smell (it was rubber; plastic came later).
    Interesting re the rubber! And you taught me a new word: gimbal.
  • I haven’t made an Airfix kit since about 1994.

    I’m suddenly building a Flower Class corvette.
  • That sounds great @betjemaniac. I'm not a model builder or good with anything that requires fine motor skills. On the horror of being a child of a crafty Mum, we did them all in the 70's plaster moulds, copper work, macrame, Artex/Hobbytex, floral arrangements, which was about the only thing I enjoyed!!

    I keep resisting the urge to buy vintage toys as I do love the look of them, but Cheery husband moans about lack of space in our (not small) house
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