Toys

I remember my childhood as being quite idyllic. Because we didn't have computer games and only 5 channels on T.V., we used a lot of imagination. As I contemplated the entertainment I enjoyed as a child and reached back into the recesses of my mind I came to an uneasy conclusion.

Toys in my childhood were stupid.

• Slinkies: Curly metal that could walk downstairs but tangled within the first 82 seconds of ownership making the slinky completely useless except as an implement for torture. More specifically, hold one end of slinky at the top of stairs while having sister hold the other end at the bottom of the stairs. Let go.
• Barbies: Pretty much did the same thing as they do today. You buy a Barbie with cute clothes. If you take them off, you can never put them back on again. Spandex hadn't been invented. You were now the owner of a naked Barbie. When you got bored, you pulled off her head. Refer to third sentence of this paragraph.
• Slime: I don't even know what to say about this. It just felt weird and I can't believe it didn't cause me to throw up.
• Silly putty: If pressed against a newspaper, the print would transfer. It could bounce when rolled into a ball. Then it bounced into the storm drain.
• Tinker toys: Lots of small parts that could be put together to build absolutely nothing of consequence. It was a skeleton of a building that, even with the best imagination, was nothing.
• Lincoln Logs: According to the pictures on the outside of cylinder, one could make a whole town with beautiful and sculpted fences along with two story cabins throughout. In reality, the set included enough to make half of a cabin and most of the logs were cut the wrong size.
  
• Simon: Can this really be considered a "game"? Lights up a different color and you copy it. Sounds more like trickery for using rote memorization. 7 hours of school and then come home and play Simon? I don't think so.
• Betsy Wetsy: Feed her a bottle and she pees in her diaper. How fun.
• Electric Football: Take half an hour to carefully set up your team as your opponent does the same, accidentally knocking over both colors of players, argue a lot, turn it on and watch as the plastic men fall over and have seizures until they all end up at one corner of the field.
• Stretch Armstrong actually served a purpose. It eventually morphed into today's "stress balls."
  
• Master Mind: This was a game for the genius child. The rules so complex, it is doubtful the author of game even knew what he was talking about.
• Easy Bake Oven: A teeny tiny cake mix that cooked under a lightbulb. Lightbulb burned out halfway through "baking" time. Never occurred to us we could get the same results with a full size cake mix and oven.
  

If you lived through these toys, you remember the thrill of Atari, the birth of the real entertainment. Pong and Space Invaders were actually interactive. Fast forward 30 years and now we have Mario Kart, Indiana Jones Lego Wii, and Star Wars Lego Wii. The aforementioned games that entertained the children for precisely 3 days.

Best entertainment for the 70s era would have to be a great big box.

Best entertainment for a child of 2009 would have to be a great big box. 9 year old boy has owned and daily spent time in a box that held the big screen T.V. We purchased it last November.

And yet Christmas will come again. There will probably be a descendant of Simon, another Barbie to join the naked and headless crew, another video game to be quickly forgotten, and a few more boxes to assist with building a fort. In the meantime, all the toys and games sit untouched and my kitchen chairs and stools sit in the living room covered with various quilts and blankets, changing function and form daily.

Toys are not needed for imagination.