Merry Christmas, Dear Readers!
I thought I’d do something different this year and look to the past — not in a Christmas Carol sort of way. There is a new documentary series on Netflix called “The Toys That Made Us” and it got me thinking. We all have memories of our favorite gifts received — dolls, stuffed animals, and battery powered everything. Here are mine.
This was one of my first favorites:
The Fisher Price Woodsey Family. What’s not to love about little squirrels with a little log house they fit in so you can carry them around? It helped that I had shag green carpet for the squirrels to burrow in.
This was the Radio Shack stuffed dog with a radio inside. OMG I loved this so much. On its belly I dialed mostly into KVKI to listen to my seven year old jams.
Fashion Plates. I’ve always been into style and this is obviously what started it. I went through so many crayons and colored pencils.
Western Barbie (who winked when you pressed ha button on her back) and her horse Dallas. Y’all, this doll had to have been Dolly Parton-inspired. Shiny western jumpsuit, blue eyeshadow, big blond hair. Her eye got permanently stuck closed, of course. I loved making her trot around the green shag carpet.
They Atari 2600. This is the ONLY video game system I’ve ever been able to use. See those controllers? One button. Maybe there was one button. I think there was also a button on top. It was the best. There were clunky cartridges you had to blow into sometimes to get the dust off to make them work. I was a master of Centipede. I absolutely cannot play it on the PS3. I can’t work the controls. My children have tried to teach me, but there are too many buttons. What do they do? No one really knows.
Crystal Barbie. Obviously this Barbie was inspired by the show Dynasty. This is the most iridescence Barbie could fit in a box. She was the queen of my Barbie Townhouse. I had over a dozen Barbies, but this was the fanciest and therefore, the best.
Spirograph. I loved this thing. One day I opened the box and there was a spider in it. I swear it looked at me. I taped the box shit and put it in my closet.
Not a toy. My parents gave me this Panasonic stereo with record player when I was 14. I had this thing forever. Brought it to college. You couldn’t kill it. It was a great little stereo. I added a 5 disc cd changer a few years after I got it and the set was incredible. The crappy speakers were better than they should have been. This (not the actual pictured unit) was where I first played The Smiths, Pet Shop Boys, The Lemonheads, OMD, Squeeze, The Beatles, Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding, Julian Lennon, R.E.M., and 10,000 Maniacs. I had to replace the needle once and rescued many cassette tapes from one ornery side of the machine. This wasn’t where I first fell in love with music. That was most likely to the radio in my mom’s car or the living room hi-if, then my little doggie radio, my child’s record player that I played Joan Jett on when I was six, my parents’ boombox that I taped songs off the radio and kept under my covers so I could listen at night when I was 11. But this was the stereo that opened my world. And that’s what made it the best child/teenagehood gift.
I hope you’ve had a merry little Christmas.
Love,
Kerry
kerryfaler.blog 