Week 7: Toys. What was your favorite childhood toy? Is it still being made in some form today?
It goes against everything in me to only choose one thing. I have no idea why I’m like that, but I am. So I’ll just make a brief mention of the other toys I loved. My Little Pony. There I said it. I had more My Little Ponies than I did Barbies. I had Barbies too though, and my Momma made their clothes. How awesome was she? I also loved, loved, loved C.U.T.I.E. figurines. If you do a google image search you can find them but I have a link that does better. There was another toy I loved, they were little clear, plastic princesses I think but no one remembers their names. It reminds me of when I was trying to remember the name of a cartoon I watched as a kid. All I could remember was the little girl in the yellow dress flies out the window with a koala bear. My momma was stuck on David the Gnome. She sure loved David the Gnome. HA. It was called Noozles by the way.
Back onto the subject, I’m here to talk about my number one love. They were called Little People and they were made by Fisher Price. I loved these things. I loved them to death. I even talked about them way back in Childhood Car memories week. This one is made out of wood, and it was bought off eBay probably around 10 years ago. I don’t know what happened to my Little People. Most likely they were given to a family friend who had little girls, much like my Barbie collection. The set I had were plastic. If you want to read about the complete history of these (I’m the only one right? haha), there’s a great write up of their evolution here: link. On that page, the ones I’m familiar with are at the bottom of the History page. I had a million of them though and I had all kinds of accessories. It was my most played with toy and it’s the one I associate with my childhood.
My favorite thing to do was make families, and have them go about their day to day. I’d pick up the kids with the school bus and I’d drop them off all over the house on the “bus route”. It’s probably why I’ve switched to The Sims 2 as I got older. Same concept, just on a computer!
Sadly, Little People are no longer how I remember them. A quick trip to the Fisher Price website will show you how they’ve changed. Visiting the website made me want to go out to the shed and dig out the school bus and house (also from that eBay purchase) I know are in there somewhere. It could be fun to compare them right?
Little People today. Picture from Fisher Price website
52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy & History is a weekly series thought up by Amy Coffin and hosted by GeneaBloggers. It encourages genealogy bloggers to share their own memories and history, so that we don’t forget that one day, our own stories will be important to future generations.
My daughter had lots of little people and many sets. Most of hers are in my attic waiting for her to get married and have children. Maybe your mother saved yours.
I’ve asked my Mom and she doesn’t remember either, but that’s alright! I think the idea behind them is what I loved so much. Just making up their lives in my head was the funnest part. haha
I loved Fisher Price Little People. You can step back in time here:
http://www.fisher-price.com/pages/v6/us/littlepeople/timeline.asp
Our daughters loved their Fisher Price figures. We took some with us to Europe in 1977 and the FP toys kept them amused throughout the very looong 24 hour flight as well as during train trips etc. My grandchildren love them too -they were among the kids’ toys I kept because they enjoyed them so much, as did you. Thanks for blogging about them.
Thanks for that link Amy! Now I see the ones I played with were from the 60s and 70s. So I wonder where my Mom got them? I’ll have to ask her about it.
That’s so great to hear Pauleen! I always thought I was an oddball for playing with them because none of my friends did. My Mom used to set me up in the back of our station wagon for trips from Maryland to Ohio! She said it was the best way to travel with a young kid.