Mocha With Linda hosts a weekly meme called Flashback Friday. She’ll post a question every Thursday, and then Friday we can link our answers up on her site. You can visit her site for more Flashbacks.

The question for this week is:

What toys do you remember from your childhood? What did you like to do to entertain yourself? Did you mostly play inside or outside? Did you ride a bike all over the neighborhood? Play baseball in the backyard? Basketball in the driveway? Did you have to “get permission” to play at a friend’s house, or were you and your friends back and forth between houses all the time? If you had siblings, was there a distinction between your toys and theirs? Did you “inherit” any toys from older siblings? What were the “fad” or “must-have” toys of your generation? Did you parents buy them? Was there a toy you always wanted and never got to have?

Just to help you plan, this week is Part 1 – Toys. Next week in Part 2, we’ll look back at Games and Puzzles. Because hopefully, our childhoods involved lots of playtime!

My favorite way to entretain myself was by reading. I preferred to play inside, but my mom sometimes shooed me outside. We did ride bikes around the neighborhood sometimes, but when I visited my cousins in Louisiana, we rode bikes everywhere. I think most of my friends lived too far away for a walk or bike ride, so our moms had to take us back and forth, so that obviously necessitated getting permission. But that was pretty standard in our house, anyway, to get permission to go somewhere. At my cousins’ house, where I spent a good deal of time as a child, most of their friends were within the sound of my aunt’s whistle–that was her signal to come home.

My all-time favorite toys were my Barbie and related dolls and their accessories. My nickname growing up was Barbie. The doll didn’t come out until I was around four, and I don’t know if my nickname came from her or if I was already called that. I did have one carrying case that, when opened, looked like a little closet, and I just loved the little clothes on little hangers and such. I made furniture out of matchboxes. There was a time when they sold kits to “make” Barbie clothes — the seams had some kind of glue stuff on them, so they stuck together rather than being sewed together. I don’t remember really loving those, but that is where I first learned how basic garment construction worked. Friends would bring over their Barbies. We also had Ken dolls and Barbie’s oldest friend, Madge, as well as some of her younger — cousins or something. I can’t remember their names. Francine was one, maybe.

There wasn’t quite all the Barbie paraphernalia there is now, but one toy I always wanted and never got was a Barbie Dream House. And, unrelated to Barbie, I always wanted an Easy Bake Oven and never got one. But one of my cousins got both. Sigh. (Not the cousins in La.)

As an aside, I know some moms don’t like Barbies now because of her…shapeliness and proportions and the supposed self-esteem issues she can cause girls, but, honestly, we never thought or talked about such things. It was just fun to try on the different clothes — and they were much more modest that what’s available these days.

I did have baby dolls before Barbie, but I don’t remember anything about them except that my favorite was named Susie after my cousin, Suzanne.

Another favorite, though not a toy exactly, was a little record player and several children’s records given to me by one aunt. I do remember a plastic tea set that looked like Corningware with the little blue emblem (chosen from the S&H Green Stamp store!), Etch-a-Sketch, Little People, Mr. Potato Head, Tinker Toys, Lincoln Logs. The last two may have been my brother’s or they may have belonged to all of us, I don’t remember. My brother was four years younger, so with different genders and ages we didn’t really play with the same toys often. He had a lot of plastic green army men and cowboys and Indians, Hot Wheels cars, Tonka trucks. My next sister was an additional four years younger, and then three more sisters followed. I think they probably shared (or fought over) toys, but I didn’t play with the same things then.

When I was a little older, I also loved my Spirograph and spent a lot of time making different designs. My La cousins and I were into paint-by-number kits for a spell.

I tended to be a “saver,” but in my late teens in a fit of cleaning out I gave all the Barbie stuff I had left to my sisters. If any of it survived — which I doubt — it is probably in my mom’s attic, not likely to be found until some day if and when the house is sold. I wish I had kept my first Barbie, because she was one of the first-edition ones in the black and white striped bathing suits.

Though we bought our own children current toys, I also loved to buy some of the classic toys I grew up with, too. They loved Little People, Hot Wheels, Tonka trucks and green army men and played with those for years — most of the others got played with briefly here and there but weren’t favorites. I think their favorites were Legos.

And that’s probably more than you ever wanted to know about what I played with. 🙂 But I enjoyed the trip down memory lane. You can join it or see what others played with at Linda‘s.