I fell down the rabbit hole on Pinterest recently, and found myself reminiscing over some of the toys I played with – or longed for – when I was a young ‘un.
I’d love to share them here but am reluctant due to potential copyright issues, however I have included the links so you can to check them out for yourself.
Although if you too were a child in the seventies, you will probably be able to picture them clearly in your mind anyway!
Some of the Best Toys from my Childhood
Lego: These days Lego is still popular, and there are even complete ranges (pink bricks!) created specifically with little girls in mind.
However this wasn’t the case in the seventies, and as a girl, I never had any Lego to call my own.
My brother arrived when I was in Year 4 – and by the time *he* was old enough to have a decent Lego collection, I was probably too old. Not that it stopped me! I loved making doll houses and things out of it.
Chrissy, Velvet and Cinnamon: These dolls were magical – you could pull their hair to make it long, then twist a knob on their backs to make it shorter again. I felt like all my Christmases had come at once when I received Cinnamon from Santa one year; to my parents’ amusement, I called her Cinnamon Bun (or maybe they just put me up to it).
Then again, I did have a bit of a history of calling my dolls some pretty strange names … there was Petulia Asthma (I didn’t understand that asthma was a disease!); Maiden Bear (so called because it had a little frayed tag on it’s bott-bott, and when I asked what it said, I was told “Made in …” – probably Made in China. But from then on it was Maiden Bear); and my Chinese doll which I called Suki Yaki.
Anyways – Cinnamon was my absolute favourite doll until the sad day in Year 5 when I took her to school, and one of the boys teased me for still playing with dolls. So I whacked him over the head with it – and her head fell off! My dad glued it back on but it was never the same after that.
Paper Dolls: Back in the day I dreamed of one day becoming a fashion designer.
In the meantime, I designed and tried to sew clothes for my dolls. There was just one problem – I’ve never been very good at sewing.
So I turned to paper dolls. I was never content with just the few outfits the paper doll came with – I was soon designing, colouring and cutting out a fabulous range of outfits to add to the collection. I drove my mother mad leaving bits of paper everywhere … I’m pretty sure I actually owned this Barbie Boutique paper doll set.
Fuzzy Felt: Although it came in various sets (hospital, zoo, cowboy and indians, school), my favourite was the Fuzzy Felt ballet set.
The Family Tree House: As a child, I was obsessed by dolls’ houses and would even make my own houses and furniture – or, pull all the books off my bookshelf and turn it into a doll house instead (much to my mother’s despair – did I mention I was a very messy child?!).
Santa left the Family Tree House for my youngest sister one Christmas but we all loved playing with it, especially the lift in the middle of the tree which we could wind up or down.
I desperately longed for a Barbie doll house but my parents were deaf to my pleas, saying it was a heck of a lot of money for something that was basically made of cardboard. But it was such pretty pink cardboard!
Snoopy: By the time I was in Year 7 it wasn’t cool to play with dolls anymore (see my story on the demise of Cinnamon, above).
However for those of us not yet ready to put such childish pursuits behind us, there was Snoopy. He small, soft and cuddly, and he had a great range of clothes and accessories to collect and play with – a detective’s costume (a la Sherlock Holmes), a cute red jumper and jeans set, a leather jacket, and many others. But best of all, he was COOL.
Alas, the only chance I had to play with Snoopy was when I visited my best friend. Perhaps that’s why we were best friends, LOL.
Whatever Happened to the Toys from My Childhood?
I don’t think I’ve managed to keep any of the toys from my childhood – for a couple of reasons.
First of all – I was the eldest child of four, and not too many toys can withstand all that love and attention for so many years!
And secondly, because of the strained relationship we all had with my mother after we reached adulthood, there was very little from our childhoods that we were able to salvage. I have an old children’s picture bible which I was given when I was 10, but I don’t think there is anything else that has survived to this day. (Ironically, yesterday it was 6 years since I accidentally stumbled across her funeral notice online – 4 1/2 years after she had passed!).
At least I have my memories – oh, and Pinterest (would love it if you followed me there)!
What were your favourite toys as a child? Have you managed to hang on to any of them?!
I grew up in Scotland and South Africa and my favourite doll was called Tiny Tears. She was very special because she could “really drink and wet herself”! I still have Tiny but she had a traumatic experience with one of our puppies and she lost all the fingers of one of her hands. My sister and I also loved to play with Barbies but ours were generic brands called Sindy ?
I vaguely remember the dolls that wet themselves, but don’t think I ever had one …
I was about to write that I had a “Tearie Dearie” doll that cried and wet her pants – and then saw Karen’s comment – looks like we belong to the same era! I also remember the paper dolls and the little outfits with the fold over tags. Things were much simpler back then weren’t they? Nothing electronic or complicated – lots of imagination and not much else!
I remember how excited we were when we got TV games when I was in about Year 7 – pretty primitive by today’s standards, playing “tennis” on a black and white TV!
Oh how I loved those paper dolls! I still have my lego, my dollies and many other things.
How wonderful that you’ve managed to keep it all this time! Thanks to his mum, hubster still has his treasured Meccano sets, and even some of his old school projects!
Hi Janet – I was never really into dolls, although I had them. I was much more into Lego and construction kits. I won a small plastic construction kit in a colouring competition and you could use it to build a crane. Much more fun than dolls! I also had a pedal car that I loved. None of those namby-pamby plastic ones they have these days. It was rock solid metal and bright red. Long after I physically outgrew it, I would still sit on the very back of it and pedal it around under our house. But the one toy I longed to have was Mousetrap. Alas, we couldn’t afford it. If I was ever at a friend’s house and they had it, I would sit mesmerised. If only I could drop that marble through all of those gizmos, I would have been the happiest girl alive (though a Dragster and a Monaro would have also done the trick) 🙂
We never had Mousetrap either Nola, what can I say we both had deprived childhoods 😉