Which Childhood Toy Would you Bring Back?

[BushInn1746]

Brigidmac

The Victoria and Albert Museum seem to have kept a hopper.

I remember not one but TWO (and at one point three) Dolls Houses! There's one I still have, packed up in the loft, a Triang pretty basic one, with shoe-boxes of furniture, mostly bought in Wayfarers Arcade Toy shop ...

but I never really went for dolls - had some of those lead-footed pipecleaner ones, ...

Was given a Bayko building set when I was ill in bed for a short time.
 ...
- now, I wonder what else is up there? Must have a look....
TY

I think some toys boxed and bagged are in the loft. Take care on your footing etc.

My Granddaughter has similar bendy figures and we acquired a used Dolls House, but it looks like new.

Mark

[brigidmac]

Thanks for the memory and suggestion
No room in my tiny flat but good to know spacehoppers are still going strong ...and still orange .

I wonder if there's a way of knowing if they are vintage or new !

I still have a horse/dog that my mum made from cuttings off fake fur coat she made for herself .

It was made with beautiful white mane but age 2 . I insisted it was a dog . So we agreed to disagree 😊

[Rena]

Now that the thread has moved on from which toys we would bring back,  to our own favourite toys, I'm back again with my own favourites when I was a youngster.

I don't recall any very early toys, except I had a triangular kaleidoscope covered in red leather when I was about 5 years old which I carried about with me.

I remember getting a present of a pack of plasticine and I tried to emulate the older girl next door by keeping the colours separate.  Then one day I arrived home from school and found I had a big ball of brown plasticine due to a younger brother having fun.  One girl next door and I were of similar age and I think we'd be about 6 years old when we each made ourselves a small woven coloured raffia bag with a long plaited carrying handle so that we could use it as a shoulder bag. This held our school bank book and money..

Being old enough to play outside our garden gate brought new pals and I remember one such pal and I each had a tiny doll which we kept in a matchbox and carried everywhere with us.  Depending what was available they'd be laid in comfort inside bedding of cotton wool taken from the tops of medicine bottles and dressed in a simple robe that we'd made.   If I went out to play I always took my skipping rope and my pockets held a small ball, which were juggled using shed walls.  I think I managed to juggle 5 balls if I stood far enough back from the fence :-) .  The year  Santa gave me a pair of skates was the time I never took them off my feet, even to go shopping for my mother.   

I was a child during austerity war years and directly afterwards.   Our primary school day began with everyone in the assembly hall warming up by skipping the polka around the assembly hall. Then we'd all have to line up in our age groups for inspection.  We had to have clean polished footwear, Our hands had to be held out so that teacher could see we had clean hands and there was no dirt underneath our nails, plus we held a clean handkerchief in our hand.   Every Christmas and birthday since I became five years old I received at least one box of fine Irish linen handkerchiefs with either my initial or some pretty flowers embroidered on them. 
   They take up one full drawer in my dressing table !    Walking to primary school was practically the only time we girls played with the boys.  We each owned a few glass marbles and we'd scooped a few bunkers in the grass verges on the way to school. We each had to hit another person's marble to claim it as our own - the bunker was a safe place.   

[Viktoria]

Oh, the kaleidoscope ,ours was wonderful, I have never seen another so interesting .
Did not need turning ,you just shook it up and a totally different pattern appeared.
I would bring that back ,much better than modern ones.
I loved the board games,snakes and ladders,ludo.
Dominoes, we built with those.
I have mentioned these before but they were a constant source of amusement ,some very very old false teeth.
They transformed us into madly attractive adults, and  a long orange tasselled lampshade fringe that doubled as a wig added to our allure.
Boy we were Bobby dazzlers -big teeth teeth and long orange hair ,there was a full length mirror so we performed in front of that.
I wish I had a photograph .

Viktoria.

[Gibel]

The Christmas just after my 5th or 6th birthday I had a twin doll’s pram. I wanted to go out for a walk and of course I wanted both hoods up even though I couldn’t see over the top. I walked proudly beside my grandad. He was a silent man but I remember that walk as one of the best of my life. We walked so far my dad came looking for us as Christmas Dinner was ready.

One morning the following year I  woke up and there was a blue carrycot with a Rosebud doll in it. The doll had the most beautiful dress with drawn thread work. 66 years later that doll sits by my bed. She has two more beautiful sets of clothes and a party dress that matched my party dress and some knitted clothes knitted by by the mother in law of my 103 year old family friend. Strangely enough I’ve recently discovered that Rosebud dolls were made inWellingborough. I lived there for 15 years in the 7O and 80s.

I had a fuzzy felt set when I was about 5 which I enjoyed.I had a Bayko building set bought at a jumble sale. I loved that to. As a family we played games on a Sunday evening on the trolley made by grandad for my parents’ wedding. We played card games, Monopoly ( I hated it), Scoop ( a newspaper game) and Careers. Anyone remember the Spirograph I’ve got one of those.

I had loads of books most from jumble sales. I loved school and adventure stories. I spent hours in my bedroom reading. Unfortunately we moved when I was 14 and I wasn’t allowed to take any of my children’s books only the classics. I was given a small box and I secreted my 3 Chalet school books in the bottom. My beloved doll was allowed to move because of her beautiful clothes.

I regret all those books they’d have been useful in my classroom. I also spent hours playing schools with my dolls and soft toys. I spent a lot if time alone in my bedroom having been sent there by my mother for some crime I hadn’t always done but you didn’t argue with her, her hand or the wet dish cloth, you ran upstairs  and didn’t come down until it was allowed. Mind you that could be hours later as she’d forget she sent you there.

Once I had spare money in the 90s I started buying more Chalet School books. By then I was living in South Yorkshire and used to go to book fairs in Buxton and there was a good secondhand book shop in Holmfirth. I now have a bookcase full and usually read them once a year. Generally when I’m feeling down. People have been writing fill in titles which adds to the series.

My balance was and is rather poor and I was always twisting my ankles as a kid. I never mastered my neighbour’s pogo stick and was hopeless on roller skates. I mastered my scooter and later a bicycle. I inherited my brother’s big tricycle, it was red when he had it and blue when I had it.

We lived in a close with a grass circle at the top so we played out a lot as there were rarely any cars about. Funnily enough at the other end of the close there was a small park but we never played there. The park was in London but our close was in Kent!

At weekends we’d go further into Kent for a picnic 4 adults and 3 kids in a Standard 10! We regularly overheated on Pole  Hill. The exhaust used to fall of too.

My dad bought an ex forces dinghy from somewhere and in the summer it was blown up and all the kids in the close had a wonderful time playing in it. Where summers always hot then? We lived in our swimming costumes in the school summer holidays.

I managed to carry on reading the Chalet School books after we moved. Going to the library was one of the things I was allowed to do so in the school holidays off I’d go to New Eltham and Eltham library and come back with a lot of books I wanted to read and a couple that my mother thought I should read. Then get home and secrete the children’s books in my hiding places!

[Treetotal]

Some long forgotten toys that I remember from my childhood days. It's great to read everyone's stories, they reinforce our memories.
I had a Petite typewriter which was tin and it had a wheel to select the letter that you needed. I also had a John Bull printing set. Photo favourite books were The Famous Five and The Secret Seven, They are so dated now but I loved reading them.
We learned to read at school with the very boring "Janet and John" books, they had a picture at the top and the text at the bottom.
Carol

[maddys52]

Some lovely memories here.

Had forgotten about fuzzy felt - I loved creating scenes with mine and would spend hours happily creating. Also loved jacks (or knucklebones), and many more happy hours spent practicing my skills at home and playing with friends at school. 

[Wiggy]

I was hopeless at Jacks.     But they were popular at school - as was the coommunal skipping rope and the shorter individual ropes.

When visiting my grandparents we used to love playing with my father and Uncles 'lead' (yes lead) soldiers and army.  . . . .  Grandad was one of the mounted officers!

Gran also made us wonderful dress-ups.  She made my brother a full sized Spider outfit once. 

Living in the country on a small number of acres, we too spent much of our time outside making up games . . .  'riding' the low hanging branch of a wattle tree,  digging drains etc etc.

I agree with Mazi - freedom to wander and make up games -  . . .  wish we had allowed our children the freedom our parents allowed us.       Different world now isn't it.

[Erato]

I remember the first 'real' book that I read - whole pages of text with no pictures!  It was 'The Little House in the Big Woods.'  My Aunt Charlotte gave it to me for Christmas when I was six.  I sat on the sofa in the living room reading it and calling out to my mother in the kitchen for help with the hard words, "What does s-l-e-i-g-h spell?"  My father told me that Granny's parents had been settlers just to the east of Wisconsin's Big Woods region and Grampy's parents had settled to the southeast of it. That was the first time I realized I had ancestors on the frontier who experienced first hand the sort of life described by Laura Ingalls Wilder.