A Stroll Down the Memory Lane of Toys

By Melanie Holmes

Toys. We love them, we recall our first favorites, and we are chagrined to find our old-timey toys in the aisles of local antique shops. I recently pulled together a collage of toys with the goal of conjuring smiles. There’s a Slinky, a Cabbage Patch doll, and a pedal car! On that last one, be still my heart. Somehow, my family amassed three of those pedal vehicles, including a red tractor. From Jacks to Rubik’s Cubes, toys magically take us back in time. As the current generation clamors for iPhones and video games, following is a brief trip down the memory lane of toys, including some hidden history behind those magical items.

Toy pedal cars actually came along soon after the full-size automobile. Production of these tyke-sized cars began around 1890, but were largely unaffordable for the average family, and they petered out a bit. After WWII, the boom in prosperity (and children) drove a comeback in popularity for these cars. However, the end of pedal car production came about when metal toys gave way to plastic.

One of the most ubiquitous plastic toys, beginning in the 1960s, was Fisher Price’s Little People line. There’s the school bus with its permanent bus driver. The airplane. And of course, the removable barrel-bodied people – plus, Lucky the Dog.

Barbie came along in 1959, the brainchild of Mattel (created by the wife of Mattel’s founder). Barbie made her debut at an international toy convention in New York City on March 9, 1959, and what came after has filled kids’ heads with dreams ever since. Ken and other dolls came later, as did Barbie cars, houses, and enough clothes to fill a Barbie mansion.

Next up is a toy with a particular jingle that you might be able to sing in your sleep. “What walks down stairs, alone or in pairs, and makes a slinkity sound? A spring, a spring, a marvelous thing! Everyone knows it’s Slinky.” Are you humming it? Good. Now, try to get that jingle out of your head!

The pre-Baby Boomer generation grew up listening to “The Shadow” on the radio and playing with wagons, trikes, trains, and paper dolls. That last one – paper dolls – was a sensation that continued into the 1970s but has been relegated to the days of yore.

Of all the toys in all the world, two of the oldest are Marbles and Jacks. Historians say the game of Marbles goes back to cave times. They believe cave men/women and cave kids played with small round pebbles or balls of clay. In fact, clay balls were found in the tombs of Egypt. As for the game of Jacks, the Greek philosopher Sophocles mentioned Jacks being played around the time of the Trojan War (c. 1190 BC). Deriving its name from “jackstone,” the game has been played with stones, as well as the knucklebones from sheep toe bones. (Eww!)

Cheers to racetracks and train sets and checkers and BB guns (don’t shoot your eye out!)! The world of toys is a truly wondrous place to dwell.