What were your favorite toys as a child?

 From my Storyworth collection

One of my favorite toys that I think about often from my early childhood was a kid’s toy jukebox that played Disney songs. You pushed a button, and it supposedly found the song on the cylinder inside and played it (I think it had a needle and read the cylinder similar to a record player). I mostly just remember that I liked it and that Dad spent a lot of time trying to repair it/make it work like it was supposed to. I don’t remember how long I had it, but I remember liking it a lot.

As a young child I also had a teddy bear that I liked. It had short arms that stuck out to the front of it allowing my toy handcuffs fit on him perfectly. He was my cops and robbers partner and was always the bad guy. I would punch him sending him flying across the room then wrestle him to the ground and handcuff him.Speaking of playing cops and robbers, I also LOVED various dart guns that I had. Why can’t kids get these anymore?? I had one that looked exactly like this, and I had a toy .357 Magnum dart gun that actually shot hard enough you would know you had been hit! There may have been a cat or two that was “hunted” with these when my parents were gone from the house.

I also had (have!) a red Tonka fire truck. I say had/have because Mom kept it for me, I still had it as an adult, and we gave it away to Amanda’s friend Brian when they were little kids. When Amanda grew up and had a son, Brian’s mom returned it us for our grandson to play with, so it’s gone through 3 generations now.

The bike Dad fixed up for me (see “What was your Dad like growing up?” post for details) was one of my all-time favorites!

The last “toy” that really sticks out in my mind was the Atari 2600. Our family went through a time where we did not trick-or-treat on Halloween, but we would go downstairs into our walk-out basement, board up with windows (so as to not be bothered by other trick-or-treaters) and play games as a family. The first year we started this (around 1981), my parents bought us the Atari. We kept it for many years.