Today's Wednesday Factoid is: Did you have a favorite toy as a kid?
I'm actually not sure. :(
It's weird for me because I have a really good autobiographical memory that includes back to very early childhood, so I remember being an enthusiastic toy owner, but I can't really think of what I would have considered my "favorite toy." At least, not consistently.
I certainly had phases during which I played with or loved certain toys the most. Early on I liked the Care Bears and had a stuffed Birthday Bear that my mom and I made from a kit. (I still have it! It's on my bed!) I had a classic baby doll with a soft body and an attached hard plastic head and limbs that I named Priscilla, and I wrote her name on her soft body in magic marker. (You couldn't see it under her dress.) I used to "parent" Priscilla by creating facsimiles of furniture or facilities out of toys and other objects and placing them around the house next to the big versions of these pieces of furniture or facilities--like, Priscilla would need her own couch next to my couch, her own toilet next to my toilet, her own bed next to my bed. My mom pointed out that people with babies usually use the facilities with their children, not create separate small versions for the kids. Which made enough sense to me that I agreed to clean up the mess.
I had a building set called Construx that I really loved. I think I had a basic set and a futuristic car kit, or maybe it was just the car kit, but I loved it and enjoyed making robot creatures out of the bits and creating stories about them. I did make the recommended car from the instructions, but it wasn't as much fun as making up robot families.
I had a Hugga Bunch doll when all the kids were really into those--I had the pink one (whose name was Huggins), my sister Patricia had "the boy" (whose name was Hugsy), and my sister Lindsay had two (the purple one, named Impkins, and the almost bald one, whose name, bizarrely, was Patooty). We would sometimes play with them in association with our musical record about them. We never had Cabbage Patch dolls but these were kind of similar in some ways.
Hmm. I had a Poochie toy that I liked a lot. I had a weird electronic mini-piano that I found in a desk one time at my gifted program, and I was convinced a secret pal had left it for me. (I don't know why I thought that.) I had a Baby Alive with my sister and we enjoyed playing with her. I had a little doll from my grandma who was brown-haired and brown-eyed and beanbaggish, and she had the words "Peanut Butter" on her midsection. My sister had a blonde one dressed in purple named "Jelly."
We had some very cute dolls called Love-A-Bye Babies. They were a little bigger than the palm of our hands and really fun to feed and buy outfits for. I had a few but I don't remember if they had names. It seems like they must have.
Of course we had a bunch of Smurf figurines. We liked them but I don't actually remember playing with them much.
My sister had Lady Lovely Locks dolls and they had these clip-in hair barrettes called PixyTails; I didn't care much about the dolls, but I enjoyed swiping the hair clips and wearing them to school.
I had a She-Ra doll and I also had her flying horse. I really liked that. I believe most of the other toys from that series in our household belonged to my sister Lindsay, who received a crapton of them as birthday gifts when she was barely old enough to safely play with them.
I had some really cool big toys that I won at carnivals--a big red teddy bear with a crayon coin bank in his hand, a big toucan with a rainbow beak, and some other critters that I treasured. My sisters and I also had matching stuffed birds in red, blue, and green. (Mine was named Notee.) When I was really small, I was into a mermaid toy called "Sea Wees 'N Babies," which was a mermaid toy that came with a floating sponge lily pad she could fit into so she could play with you in the bathtub or pool.
I got into the idea of stage magic when I was a little kid and tried to learn some tricks with my dad. For a birthday one time I got a magic kit including a hat, and I was thrilled. I'm sure it was my favorite for a while.
And of course, I absolutely loved my collection of Pocket Popples. I got the whole collection eventually using my allowance. My favorite Popple was Potato Chip, so I got her first, and then I got the rest one by one. I thought it was weird that there were two baby Popples in the TV show but they only made a Pocket Popple of one of them. I also had large Popple toys of the two Baby Popples and a medium-sized toy of Potato Chip. I sometimes used to carry them around or take them to school if I could get away with it.
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