Housecleaning and downsizing often resurrects items long in storage leaving you with the decision about whether to keep or donate to the rummage sale. Toys are a good example of this. For some, it’s easy. Dolls went quickly for me as I was never much a doll player, probably because they weren’t interactive. Barbie dolls were considered too pricey so I got the cheapie knock-offs. Those are long gone and not missed. The only doll that ever got an enthusiatic reponse from me was the Chatty Cathy doll.
The one I got had a pull-ring in the back of her neck. Yank on it and she had a dozen or so sentences she would recite one at a time each time you pulled the string. This was pre-electronic tech so what she had inside her was basically a phonograph record. This worked great until I wore the darn thing out pulling on the string so many times. Sadly her voice degenerated to an unpleasant grinding sound and that was the end of Chatty Cathy. A pity since an intact Chatty Cathy with a good voice box commands a pretty decent price as a collectable vintage toy.
Another vintage toy I wish I still had was a little scooter I sat in and pushed around when I was a toddler. It looked like a zebra, with four wheels, a wooden tail and head painted like a zebra. The legs had coverings similar to the cores of paper towel rolls also zebra painted. An internet search has turned up nothing like what I remember. The closest I could come was this.
Even this doesn’t quite look like it but it gives a rough idea of how it was shaped. I rode that thing incessantly around the house (I was about four or five but remember it quite clearly). It was a great way to burn up excess kid energy. It’s a wonder I didn’t wear ruts in the floor. I probably drove my parents totally crazy which may explain why it disappeared once I outgrew it. Off to a rummage sale (alas, *sniff*…).
At one time we had more than one Slinky toy about, but over the years something would happen to them. They would get bent or damaged in some way so they could no longer slink anymore. So those are gone as well.
Still, a suprising number of toys managed to withstand the attentions of both myself and my kid brother to survive to the present day and are definite keepers, not to be given away or sold. One was a little wooden pull toy put out by the Holgate Toy Company.
With sturdy wooden parts and a strong pull string, it’s still in good shape and would still be good entertainment for a small child. I also still have some wooden blocks of the same above design, probably put out by the same company. A few tinkertoys still survive and on my bookshelves I have a small plastic ferris wheel. I have no idea what toy set it came from but it still endures and will even spin if you push it with a finger.
There’s a vast menagerie of plastic dinosaurs, farm animals and various critters still present from many Christmas gifts over the years, enough so they could fill a toy zoo twice over.
But by far the most entertaining toy (and likely the most hazardous) was the Creepy Crawler Set. We had two versions, one which made bugs of various sorts and the other you could make weird looking critters which could fit together in any design you wanted. The set consisted of a electric heater, with metal form molds. Plastic goop stuff came in bottles and you would pour the goop into the molds and ‘cook’ them on the heaters producing all sorts of odd looking critters. Apparently these things were a lot more dangerous than I remember.
However, I don’t recall either my brother or I burning ourselves on the hot cooker or getting sick from the plastic fumes. We must have done the cooking in a well ventilated area because we both survived to tell the tale. And I still have a bagful of the plastic beasties. The cooker, molds and goop are long gone but the Crawlers survive in all their creepy glory.
All of these will be sticking around for a while, because they bring back memories of a simpler time (or at least it seemed simpler). But that’s how housecleaning usually works. You can junk some stuff and shed nary a tear but some of it you just can’t bear to part with. That probably signifies what’s really important to you.
Can’t say for sure what the Creepy Crawlers signify, though.
Have a safe and happy winter.