With Christmas In Mind...

[sandyRoe]

Lucky kids will probably be getting toys and bits of kit worth worth hundreds of pounds. I got to thinking about what were my favourite toys. I'm not even sure if they were a Christmas gift. It was two knights on horses but the crowning glory that went with them was a castle someone had made for me out of a cardboard box. It had a door cut in the side and crennelations along the top.
I wonder what kids of today would think of that?

[aelmpvw]

some of them get hours of entertainment with the cardbox box that the expensive toy came in

[snags]

Thunderbird 2 model with Thunderbird 4 inside... FAB.

[jno]

cardboard is nice but fragile; someone should invent plastic bricks that sort of lock into each other. If they worked well enough you could build houses or castles or whole theme parks.

[sandyRoe]

I think at that time Ivanhoe was on the telly so knights and castles would have been X-Boxes of their day. I suppose they helped get the imagination flowing.

[China Doll]

Either my roller skates or I used to collect lots of little plastic animal figurines (and then play with them spread out all over the carpet much to the joy of my father) so I used to get them as stocking fillers :c)

[sandyRoe]

jno, you may have the germ of a good idea there. I'd never have taken you for an inventor. :-)

[SlackAlice]

My 'Jacko' skates with the metal wheels. Managed to wear the wheels out and had the pocket money to upgrade to 'rubber' wheels.

My neighbours were quite happy with the more silent rubber wheels ☺☺☺

[weecalf]

We were so poor ,the dad used to buy victory vs we used to sit round his tongue to keep warm.

[zebo]

We kept all the old Fisher Price toys from when the girls were small and their children love to play with them, they're a far superior product than those today, stronger plastic, even if they don't have all the modern gizmos. On ebay, they're classed as "vintage" and even bits cost a fortune.

[davetuc]

We were so poor, we used to sit round the only candle in the house. And when it got really cold, we'd light it.

[maggiebee]

What davetuc? You lived in a house? We only had a shed at the bottom of someone else's garden!

[boingo]

When I was 5, my Mum and Dad bought me a children's tool kit. It wasn't plastic, it was basically a smaller version of the real thing. It had a hammer, saw, pliers, screwdriver etc. This was about 1970 so 'elf and safety' wasn't like it is now! I loved 'helping' my Dad build and mend things and I am now quite handy around the house DIY-wise! When my two daughters were little, I kept the box from our new fridge freezer and turned it into a little house which they decorated with crayons. They played in it for ages. My girls are now 10 and 13 and they both help me with DIY and have made some great playthings for their kittens. They often say 'Mum, how did you mend that?' and I'll show them so they can do it themselves when they need to!