Barrel of Monkeys

Thunderbirds, model railways and Action Man.
Which rather predictably is what my 6 year old son loves to play with now (when he's not playing lego Racers on the pc)

HOT. WHEELS. and matchbox.

my mom = only child: went back home one day, married 15-20 years, to discover that her father had taken all her toys to the town dump. TRAUMA! As a result, not one of my child-things has been thrown away, unless by ME (ditto sister's): when we do so, even if mum has been complaining abt space and clutter, TRAUMA!! "I never expected you to throw THAT AWAY!! I loved that" We sigh, as kindly as we can. (Her clockwork trainset was VERY cool, and how her dad — an ENGINEER — can have put it on the dump, beats all understanding

In fact she saved a boxful of her own teddies, and those survives alongside ours, the moths munching more of their faces year on year. For some reason as kids we favoured slightly grown-up names over cutesy ones: Stanley = v.cute koala-type thing, Henry = sort of egg- duckling mutant cross, Stephen and Richard = gay bear couple, one sand-yellow, one green-blue, both tatty, one glass eye on a lethal wire stalk between the pair... (I only just now realised they were gay)

Big Wheel trike, baby. And a pachinko machine, along with various board games and all...

Lots of dolls and stuffed animals. Plastic dinosaurs and animals, which my brothers and I preferred to cars. Barbies that made their way to other people's homes or an undignifed demise after having limbs or heads removed and turned into mythological beasts.

Star Wars Toys.

i read more then i played but i had legos and blocks , He Man, marbles and some trucks.

Because everyone in my house is soppy, nothing has been thrown away, it's all up in the loft. Cuddly toys are NEVER thrown away, apart from a golliwog that my cat pissed on a long time ago, and it stank so badly it couldn't be rescued. Perhaps the cat did it as some kind of anti-racist protest?

Fucking corporate toy hegemony - I had the Transformers (Dinobots were a strange mix of CLASSIC and SUX0R), the GI Joes (the small, semi-articulate ones), the Star Wars (I lost my Klaatu on the bus one day - it made me very sad), and even a Go-Bot or two. Mind you, these were the COOL Go-Bots - the really fancy ones. I had the Porsche one. It was nice. However, my mom went & gave it to my selfish li'l nephew (yeah, he's only 3, but, DAMN, he's selfish). He removed the rubber treads from it. I think I actually whimpered upon seeing that.

All my friends had the big honkin' set pieces, though - the Cobra Commander Compound, the Millenium Falcon, the Autobot HQ. Damn them. Damn them all to HELL.

two words:

LEGO

i was a preteen legomaniac. i was damn good. i'd get the sets, put em together, and use the parts for more creative ventures. for a while i was big on creating epic scenarios on the kitchen table. i made lots of Dymaxion cars years before even knowing who Buckminster Fuller was. ah, the joys of the untamed imagination!