Playing With Toys
Ok guys and gals, here is my latest project:
A book about playing with toys.
What I want to do is collect the toy-playing stories and memories from our youth (and any youth actually). The stories we made up, the toys we made, what we thought and felt; both boys and girls.
This may seem kind of vague but I have posted a few of my stories at the end of this post for reference:
I want to capture these memories and share them with each other and with the kids of today. I love hearing about how someone made a Gi Joe base out of pillows and a cardboard box; or how someone else imagined his closet was a black hole and the SilverHawks went on missions to rescue his California Raisins figures. I think it would be neat to have these stories and to read about other adventures kids were having while I was having mine; plus the creativity of children is so dang inspiring.
I want this to be pretty open; any toys, any time period, any gender, age, whatever
I plan to offer it on kindle and any other formats I can get it on (smashwords, etc?) I will have to learn how to do that but it shouldn’t be a problem. There is also the possibility of getting a printed version if the demand is there.
I plan to offer the book for free … or for $1 with all proceeds going to a children’s hospital.
Each story/memory will end with the authors name and website/email (if they so choose)
So, if this sounds like something you’d like to be a part of send me your stories, however short or long
I’d like to have all the stories by the summer so I can get it all edited and formatted in time for Christmas.
No vulgarity or swearing.
If you know of anyone else who may be interested or any other toy forums to promote this on, then by all means feel free to or let me know and I will. The more stories, the better
Thanks!
Christopher Tupa
Some of my memories (keep in mind these are a work in progress):
One Sunday night The Empire Strikes Back was on TV and while watching it I made my own Star Destroyer. For some reason we had a big flat box in the house so I took that and used it for the base and glued a few smaller boxes on top for the bridge and what not. I got a few Star Wars action figures out and played with them on top of the ship. It was really lame and quick to make but I played with it while the movie was on, afterwards it got dismantled.
On another Sunday we were down in our basement and on the TV was a weekly Disney movie about Big Foot. In between watching the show and the commercials I decided to make my own AT-AT type toy. I made the whole thing out of cardboard and cardboard boxes; with if I remember correctly, toilet paper rolls for the legs. It didn’t last long but it was neat to make.
In the 7th or 8th grade I made my own SeaDuck from the TaleSpin cartoon. This one was made entirely from wood and I painted it yellow and red. It was pretty heavy to play with but it was fun to fill it up with my toys and action figures and fly them around the house on adventures. I made the back door out of cardboard I think and taped it on so it would open. After a year or two I either threw it away or sold it in a garage sale.
Once, in the 5th or 6th grade I spent the night with a friend of mine and outside his house was a large pile of bricks, all stacked up in a giant cube. His family was doing some remodeling or something and had the bricks delivered – I’m assuming this now but at the time I had no clue why they were there. But my friend had removed a few bricks and stacked a few others up in different ways to basically turn that huge stack of bricks into a fortress/base/castle for his toys. I thought that was so cool and even 20 years later I still remember that huge brick playset.
January 17th, 2013 at 12:01 pm
You traded the Sea Duck to me, where it had a further year or two of adventures (made it to TX).
January 21st, 2013 at 10:21 am
A wonderful concept! Looking forward to seeing where this goes and maybe even contributing.
January 21st, 2013 at 10:25 am
Thank you!! I hope you do contribute! There is room for everyone and all the memoreis/stories. I cannot wait to read all these stories, I think this will be a very fun book! If you don’t mind, tell everyone you know, the more the merrier!!!
February 2nd, 2013 at 7:12 am
[...] a book and needs your childhood memories. Designed as a collection of stories of toys in play, Playing With Toys is open to submissions from anyone who would like to share stories of their childhood. Click [...]
February 4th, 2013 at 10:14 am
Hey Chris, great idea! Let me write some up and see if you can use ‘em…
February 4th, 2013 at 10:34 am
Awesome! Can’t wait to read them!! I’m hoping this will pick up steam and we’ll have a nice thick book. I think this would be so much fun to read!
February 4th, 2013 at 11:44 am
This is the story of Playmobiles (and other toys) in Perú:
Playmobiles were sold in Perú between 1970s and 1980s. In that period of time, a peruvian factory that made plastic toys and other plastic stuff, La Basa, had the Playmobil and Mattel licences, so Playmobiles and Barbies were made in Perú in those years (I’m not sure if Basa hade the licence from Hasbro, but I think so because my 80s My Little Ponies were made in Perú too. This could happen because in 80s the peruvian goverment banned importations, so stuff had to be made in this country).
In 1990 entered a new president, the importation ban ended and Basa lost the licences for making toys (Mattel, Playmobil, etc). Basa still exists, but it doesn’t make toys anymore.
The last Playmobiles could be found in some independient stores until early 90s. Most 30-40 years old adults played with them, and some of the oldest playmobiles are currently being sold in mercadolibre.com.pe.
In this link: http://traveling-pics.livejournal.com/519335.html you can see a late 80s Playmobil spaceship with its crew made by Basa.
I have my old playmobiles from 1987. In December 2012 I noticed that two of my Playmobil kids got lost. I don’t know if I lost them or they decided to run away and look for another child to play with.
So I was planning to buy more playmobiles online to recover from the lost of these two, when, OHMYGOSH! in a store called Wong in Plaza San Miguel shopping center, in Lima, in Perú, I found out that they’re selling Playmobiles again, after 20 years!!!
In Perú original new branded toys are ridiculously expensive (I use to buy my action figures seconhanded). So I’m buying new Playmobiles little by little. New ones have better and more detailed designs and I like them more than the older ones
They are made in Malta now.
About the Secondhanded toys: In recent years it has become common to find streetsellers in some parts of Lima city selling used and old branded toys (some of them are from the Happy Meal of Mac Donalds). I’m told they are the leftovers that weren’t sold in their original contries, but also there is the rumor they were donations and ended up being sold on the street. I got most of my action figures buying these ones.
PD: sorry if my engrish is too bad, I’m a native spanish speaker (you can translate this entry for your book from engrish to proper english)
Un Saludo!
February 4th, 2013 at 5:04 pm
I’m interested. Lots of great toy memories. May have a story or two for you to use.
February 5th, 2013 at 5:52 am
Great!! Can’t wait to read them!!! Thanks for joining in!
February 5th, 2013 at 5:54 am
Great story! Thank you so much for sharing! I too had some Playmobil toys when I was younger. They are so neat, every now and then I pick one up. I have always been facinated by them, especially their yealry catalogs they put out, so much fun to look through!!
February 5th, 2013 at 7:30 am
Great idea! My pretend stories were pretty weird when I was a kid. I’ll have to see if I can remember any and write them up.
February 5th, 2013 at 7:45 am
The weirder the better!! Can’t wait to see what you write, I am so looking forward to this! I’ve been wanting to do this for years!
March 1st, 2013 at 4:52 pm
Over the last five years I’ve been telling a story in the form of a webcomic with my GI Joes I grew up with in the 80s. They’re still fun after all these years. That’s probably not the sort of thing you’re looking for, but check it out for a laugh.
March 2nd, 2013 at 4:29 pm
I’ve seen it on the Joe forums, funny stuff! Very creative too!
March 2nd, 2013 at 9:46 pm
Ah, playing with toys. There’s so many experiences.
I guess I should start chronologically, and go through the most memorable experiences.
As a child of the 80s I must start with the big 3 toylines: MOTU,
Transformers and GI Joe.
I never had that many Joes, mostly because they were too small (which is
the reason I never had Star Wars toys) I may have had a few aside Destro
and Shipwreck that were Christmas gifts.
Transformers I didn’t have that many (Grimlock, Slag, and an insecticon
that I can’t remember it’s name right now) cause they were very expensive
and I wasn’t into Go-Bots (except Rock Lords, but they’ll come later in the
story)
This means that I was mostly a Masters of the Universe kid. I had Thunder
Punch He-Man and I spent a lot of quarters on blast caps for him. I had to
get more than 1 Man-at-Arms, because Nail Paints damaged MOTU figure heads.
I was trying to paint a mustache like in the cartoon. The Slime Pit’s slime
was frowned upon by the adult family members so, shampoo was a more
acceptable substitute (a recurrent theme in my childhood) until I was
caught using My late Grandma’s medicated shampoo.
My cousin Kinda got into She-Ra (mostly cause my aunt always wanted to one-up
my mom. Like when I was 4, I had a MOTU themed party. I had the ride-on
Battlecat and stuff.
When my cousin turned 4 a few months later, my aunt made a She-Ra party for
her… Luckily my mom had my He-Man costume around and He-Man stole the
show. Still a real pony with a winged saddle beats a ride-on Battlecat)
Back on the main story: We usually spent summers at our late Grandmother’s
house. We’d do the usual kid stuff. I’d be forced to play the boy roles on
EVERY single thing she wanted to play with. Jem? I’m Rio Pacheco, Barbie,
I’m Ken… She-Ra? I’m Kowl, cause she had no Bow and any Male Masters
figure I had (mostly Adam with the Weapons pack sword.) The problem was
that I wanted to play Filmation’s POP with the weird looking frilly dolls
fighting Horde oppresion, while she wanted to play Mattel’s POP, where all
the girls had sleepovers at the crystal castle and they combed their hair
and talked about Adam being cute.
Now, being an 80s child on a Latin American family in the 80s makes it hard
for a young boy to play with Princess of Power dolls or dolls of any kind…
Cause of Machismo and the weird notion that a boy touching a doll makes him
“less of a man” or so my father used to think. That’s why I had no Princess of
Power dolls and when I TRULY wanted to play MOTU/POP I had to wait until my
cousin was distracted with something else so I could sneak with her dolls
and play MOTU/POP secretly. I was able to do this often because she, really
didn’t care about She-Ra.
I was also into Super Powers and Mattel’s Secret Wars. My vague comic book
knowledge came from my dad, who ocasionally read Marvel and DC comics… At
the time I had very little knowledge of the English language, so he’d
read/translate them to me. So, I had my own Marvel vs DC Crossovers.
Usually pillows and bedsheets made their respective HQs. Black suit spidey
was an experiment made by the DC side to destroy Marvel… A “Venom before
Venom” or so to speak. Doctor Doom’s castle was Castle Grayskull… Doom’s
green, Grayskull’s green, so it made sense in my Child mind.
As you can tell so far I didn’t have many friends as a kid. Mostly because
I was into toylines that they weren’t into. Well, there was one kid when,
my parents divorced and I had to spend half a year with my grandmother. We
played with MOTU together and he introduced me to Thundercats. He had
Panthro, the Thundertank and Cat’s Lair. A few days after, I got Lion-O and
Mumm-Ra. None of us had Cheetara (probably the same reason why I never had
a Teela or Evil Lyn) so “our” Cheetara was a cardboard cutout (not sure if
it was from a BK Kids meal or something) the thing is that after a few
afternoons of play time we had the “genius” idea of combining MOTU stuff
with Thundercats. That day Cheetara cut-out died of Ecto-Plasm poisoning…
Cardboard and Slime are a bad combination.
I did get some Berserkers (Hammerhand broke straight out of the package)
Now I’ll go with my last two lines of the 80s which were Silverhawks and
TMNT. First I’ll start with Silverhawks, cause mostly it’s short lived and
there’s only one story to tell. I only had Quicksilver, Copperkid (whose
bird was confiscated by my mom… Annoying whistle + new baby = chaos),
Bluegrass, Mon*Star, and Flashback. Never saw the Steel twins or any other
characters. Remember way earlier I mentioned the Rock Lords? Well, since I
had no Mob, I used a Rock Lord (Sabrestone) as a Moon Star powered Melodia.
That’s it for the Silverhawks… I basically turned Lady Gaga into a tentacled rock!
Now TMNT… I was in Elementary school and post-divorce… This last part
is very important since my dad used to bribe me with toys back then. So,
this one day he took me to KB toys and there I saw HIM! Rock and Roll
Michelangelo. It called to me The vibrant card, his bright green color and
his tongue sticking out like he was having too much fun. I begged, begged I
even clung to his leg and he got me that figure. thus began my next toy
addiction. Sears Toy Catalog helped me for Christmas and I got a bunch of
turtle toys AND the blimp! I never had the Sewer or Technodrome since I was
no longer an only child on my Mom’s side. Shoe boxes and plastic cups made
my sewer base. Two pieces of cardboard full of reflective tape made the
inside of the Technodrome (an Idea I reused for my Marvel Legends Danger
Room display)
My dad disapproved of me having an April, but he was a bit lenient about
it because she did not have rooted hair. The weekends he’d come pick me up
started with a stop at KB or Toys R Us, where he’d give me a whole $5 to
buy A TMNT toy…The best part was when I brought additional money on my
own. Special Thanks to saving money and to the semi-busted soda machine
that spit out change randomly at school. As an adult I feel bad about the
cashiers that had to wait for 8 year old me to finish recounting all $10 in
coinage plus my dad’s $5 bill! so my TMNT collection was decent.
Still, Ooze was frowned upon so my Mutagenman, Muckman and any
Ooze related stuff was substituted by generic brand fruit scented conditioner.
There was one conditioner that looked kinda like the cartoon ooze.
Since my dad remarried, I got a step sister and the kid she had a crush on was into TMNT…
So we complemented each other and played the heck out of TMNT.
We once reenacted the entire TMNT Arcade game. He had 3 foot Soldiers… Lucky!!
He had the Technodrome and the Sewer, I had the blimp, he had Tokka, I had
Rhazar. He had Bebeop and I Rocksteady. His parents and my dad seem to had
it well planned so we didn’t have to play with doubles. My step sister
wanted to tag along and she ended up using April… Who was always
kidnapped and being pretty useless. He moved, then my dad and his wife
moved so, once again, I had no one to play with.
Then one day on summer 1994 IT happened…
I was appalled and disgusted by toys. 1995 came and my younger brother on
my mom’s side was old enough to play with toys and not use them as a chew toy.
So, I was forced to the childish endeavor of playing with him…
As a phoenix, reborn from the ashes, the Toy lover in me had risen once more!
While my younger brother was into Power Rangers and Gargoyles,
I got into Marvel toys. It helped me a lot that KB had a 3 to 4 specific
Marvel figures for $10 and that my Orthodotist had moved his office to a mall.
So, every month my dad would pick me up at school and drop me off at the mall.
He’d give me a 10 or a 20 for me to spend at the mall after the visit.
My mom would have given me a 10, so I had plenty of cash to visit the comic book store, KB and the
arcade.
Luckily my best friend in Junior High and High School was into
Marvel figures, so we played the heck out of them whenever we stayed at
each other’s house. Sadly, as we grew older, the stories were limited to
replaying the Capcom Fighting games in action figure form. By our junior
year, he wasn’t into toys, but didn’t knock me for me still being into it.
Heck! he even pleaded with our Homeroom teacher for me to get the toys from
a cancelled toy drive, just to ensure that the toys my class had collected
would have reached someone who would have enjoyed them… All 3 of them.
While I wasn’t Playing as much as displaying them, that year’s science fair
I made a super playset with rudimentary action features out of trash. Old
TMNT toys, Marvel toys, some of my brother’s Gargoyles toys made the
display. Didn’t win any awards and my popularity plummeted even more, but I
didn’t care. I enjoyed the heck out of making that playset and playing with
it!
I got into college and Marvel Legends began to show up. By then I was a
full-fledged collector. tried Mint on Card, but it made no sense to me. Once
again I began playing with them, but whenever anyone would show up (my mom,
my brother, etc.) I’d deny that I was playing with them. “I was tinkering
with their articulation! Wow! These figures are super poseable!” I used
that excuse so often that my friends and family would just say it before
entering my room. Easy to cover with one figure, but re-enacting the whole
Onslaught saga was a bit harder to hide.
Now as an adult my playtime is a lot more limited than my display time.
The last time I Played for real was in 2008 when my younger brother needed
help for a project. He needed to make some sort of TV show for a class. I
jokingly suggested Cribs: He-Man. While tossing off ideas between my brother,
some of his classmates and myselfwe had fun and
made fun of MTV’s Cribs. He-Man’s TV was a Nintendo DS that had the GBA
He-Man game as the TV Screen. The Castle’s dungeon was the dance floor and
after a rave party gone out of Control, He-Man Sparta kicked Skeletor out
of Grayskull and booted everyone out!
Now I just take “funny” pictures of the toylines I collect (mostly Masters of the Universe Classics)
while adding a touch of twisted (im)mature humor. The toys are sometimes
self-aware of their toy status. Other times they’re just slightly twisted
versions of their 80s cartoon counterparts.
Recurring themes on my Masters of the Universe Classics
“displayverse” are:
-Friendzoned Bow
-Adam is Lazy
-Man-at-Arms is a crazy drunk (hence Mekaneck)
-Orko is evil
-Frosta’s quest to win He-Man’s heart
-Faker is blue but no one notices (except Adam)
-Teela is dumb (no misogynist stuff, just exaggerating the Filmation
Teela’s cluelessness to He-Man’s secret)
-Skeletor is surrounded by idiots
-Sorceress Summoning He-Man for the dumbest of stuff (things like showing
her how to log into Facebook, Opening a bottle of wine.)
-MOTU bronies by using the blindbag scaled MLP…
and yes I do play with the My little ponies as well! Like all of my “adult life toys” with the twisted flair and a bit of
cynicism from a(n) (im)mature adult.
And that pretty much covers my entire life looked through toys. Hopefully they’ll still be a part of my life when I’m old and gray.
It’s funny, as a child I was more open to mix lines and play more freely than when I grew older and stuck to canons and different universes depending on the line…
March 3rd, 2013 at 5:40 pm
That is awesome! Thanks so much for sharing!
That’s funny you couldn’t use Slime but could use shampoo! At least you could use something. I dont remember having much slime, i think I was worried about messing up my toys. The idea of having a sleep-over/party in the castle is great! Actually makes me want to do that now, Im sure my daughter would love that!
KB toys was great, I used to get all kinds of discounted toys there.
Thanks again for the memories, hollar back if you think of anything else!
March 3rd, 2013 at 8:32 pm
I was born in 1984, so by the time I started playing with toys all the big 80′s lines were starting to fade and I latched on to Ninja Turtles. But I had an older cousin who had all those toys, so when he stopped playing with them they were passed down to me.
I remember the vintage Lion-O, Skeletor and Evil-Lyn, but my favorites were the Transformers. Mainly because they were hard to break.
Yes, I was one of those kids who broke toys for the fun of it. I wanted realistic battle damage, so I used dirt, bricks, and good old fashioned gravity to bang up everything I owned (my mom swears to this day the backyard at our old house is a graveyard of little plastic arms and legs).
But the Transformers were different. I clearly remember sitting on the concrete steps of my aunt’s house, holding my cousin’s G1 Soundwave by the leg, and BASHING IT REPEATEDLY AGAINST THE STEPS. The tape deck cover came off, but nothing else. “Wow,” I thought, “this guy’s tough! I like him!”
I put G1 Jetfire through the same kind of punishment, jumping off the same steps before throwing him nosecone-first into the mud while shouting, “NEEEERRRRR….KA-BOOSH!”
Today, I take immaculate care of my toys. My Encore G1 Soundwave sits across from me on a shelf as I type this, pristine condition with his mini-cassettes in their cases behind him.
March 4th, 2013 at 5:17 am
Thanks for sharing! I was the opposite, I was too careful with my toys. I didn’t want them to get broken or scratched up, in fact I rarely even took them outside. Not sure why I was so careful with them, but sounds like I missed some of the fun of playing with toys: bring rough, taking them outside and painting them!