I absolutely looooooved dolls (still do!) and was a total Barbie fanatic.
I'm not a Barbie guy (that sentence doesn't generally have to be said, I imagine), but there are some of the special editions that I'd buy, like Mulder and Scully, Kirk and Janice Rand, etc.
When I was at my grandmother's, though, she had a farm so I spent a lot of time playing outside with things like
yard darts (which have now been banned).
So many toys have been banned. When I was growing up, we were generally trusted not to maim and kill ourselves (or each other) with our toys, but people got to feeling like the risk was too much, I guess. Like those cap guns that would actually spark. Anyone remember those?
Flash forward to 2026 and I have a massive Barbie collection. At the moment, there's roughly 70 of them. If there was a fire, I'd grab my dolls, family albums, and my teddy bear. Priorities!
I get it. I'd grab my writing, as many of my comics as possible, my laptop, and Tiki and Babs (plushies) if I could only get a few things.
Joan and I have started a club if you'd like to join. I promise there aren't any dues, and vampire slaying isn't necessary, despite her status as a Slayer.
😉
I didn't play with many toys, and most of those I did was over with friends or my grandmother's. Toys I recall playing with include Etch a Sketch
Etch-a-Sketch. I can't believe I forgot that when I was listing things. When I was in grade school, I
loved to draw, and I thought that thing was the coolest (though it didn't always erase properly, which could be frustrating.)
Lite Brite (I loved this one)
Well, of course. You
do know the difference between right and wrong.
😉
speak and spell (or whatever you call it), and one (starting at age 4) in which you point an arrow to an animal and pull the string to hear what animal it is and the noise it makes. I also recall a Fisher Price toy record player that I'd play and dance to by the time I was 4.
The animal noises one, which I also remember, was called a See 'n Say. And you are right. The other one was called a Speak and Spell—and cleverly enough was once used by one of my favorite superheroines, Zatanna (the Mistress of Magic), to cast spells to defend herself when she lost her voice as a teenager. Not that anyone but me cares, now that I think of it.
😛
I read a lot starting at age 5. I also did puzzle books and game (choose your adventure type) books. Heh, I still remember a brilliant one in which to turn to the page of your choice you had to add the numbers given to find where you continue.
I remember having a Choose Your Own Adventure where my wrong choice got Batman locked in a payphone booth (yeah, I guess Two-Face can't do that now) and gassed to death, and all I could think was, "That's nonsense. Batman could just kick out the glass and climb out the side." They should have consulted me when they wrote that.
😛
Oh! I taught myself basic math by age 6 using flash cards that put me years ahead of other kids. Some adults thought I just memorized the answers, but nope, I understood how to do the math.
Math. My one weakness. Aside from sunlight. And crowds. And spiders. And heights. And all the other stuff.
😛
I also played a bunch of board games (and one tic tac toe like game that I think was called Connect Four).
Connect Four is the game you're thinking of, I'm pretty sure. Here's a commercial I dug up ('cause you can find just about anything on YouTube these days.)
There was also one in which you used rubber snakes to pick up marbles but I can't recall the name of that.
I tried to search this one up because I wasn't remembering what it might be myself (unlike all the other games you mentioned), but all I could find was something called "Sidewinders" (in the US; it had a different name in Canada, where it originated), which I don't think is what you were referring to based on your description, but here's a video about it.
Finally, there were games like
paper fortune teller and
M.A.S.H.. I played those with friends a lot in elementary school (and maybe into 6th grade), though I never took it that serious.
I remember both of these, which were more often played by the girls than the boys, but having mostly female friends, I did find myself involved a few times throughout school.
Considering the costs of some of their sets nowadays, they have to market them to adults!
I saw a Spider-Man set the other week and was like, "Oh, cool!' (Spider-Man being one of my two favorite Marvel characters, the other being Steve Rogers.) Then I saw the price tag, and I was like, "Maybe next month. I've got some bills to pay."
The talk of Popples reminded me of Weebles, as in "Weebles wobble, but they don't fall down."
I'm not old enough to have been there when these were initially released but I remember them from when I was a kid nonetheless.
It was all about Mego and the Worlds greatest Super Heroes for me. Nothing else mattered. Any other toy or action figure I would come across would only have value if it could be absorbed into the world of my make shift super heroes.
Though I was born a little later than these were released, I had one of these as a kid. I had a lot of random stuff, some of it found at yard sales, which I would just pretend belonged in the same world as my preexisting figures. Long before multiverses became commonplace in fiction, I was making multi-universe crossovers all the time with my action figures.
I bought a figurine of Buffy and Angel. The first thing I did when I got them home? Took them out of their packaging and posed them as if they were fighting. 🤣
I did the same thing with my Captain Kirk action figure. I got it home and started figuring out how to pose him so he was firing his phaser at someone without him falling down every time there was a stiff breeze.
My Funko Pop Asami Sato (
Legend of Korra) won't stay standing because she's too top heavy. It must be her big brain.
😛
Don't get me wrong, I love Leo too.
No accusations of Leo bigotry being made here, don't worry.
😛
I think he's probably got the coolest weapon of the lot!
He does have a cool weapon (though my favorite martial arts weapons are the staff, escrima sticks, and tonfa, weapons with lethal and non-lethal options which act as an extension of the body's natural fighting style), but interestingly, it's not actually clear in the classic media what it is.
It is called a katana in dialogue but doesn't align with one visually. Katana have a slightly curved blade, which Leo's weapon does not. The straight, single-edged blade is reminiscent of chokutō, but the tsuba guard (prominent with a rectangular shape) is that found on tachi or katana. It's often called a ninjato, but as I understand it, such a weapon isn't historically existent, being more a pop culture invention from the '60s.
Take all that with a grain of salt, though. I am not an expert in historical Japanese weaponry. I just read a lot. And am a huge nerd. I know. I hide it so well.
Speaking of weapons, I love the fan theory about why each Turtle has their specific weapon:
here's a link.
I hadn't read those before. Those theories could make sense, I agree. Donatello's weapon is the most likely to have just been chosen by him, in my opinion, though, with the weakest explanation (though it does still make sense.) Being generally non-violent, only fighting when he has to, and preferring to solve problems with his mind, it just makes sense that Donny would choose a weapon like the staff, something with strong non-lethal capability but still very useful for taking on multiple opponents.
I don't know, it felt like I had more disposable income as a teen with a part time job than I do as an adult!
It definitely felt like I was more financially solvent as a kid working at McDonald's or even a young adult (twenties) working as a custodian than I have since I entered my thirties and onward, especially the last decade.
