Before PlayStation: The toys I grew up with – Part 4

The 1980’s were my childhood years. My brother and I lived in a lower middle class family with a stay at home mother and a father who worked in a factory. Although my parents didn’t have a lot of money, my brother and I were always given many presents from Santa. And before Playstation and Xbox, there were still many toys that we dreamed about getting for Christmas.

My favorite was, of course, Barbie. What little girl didn’t yearn to unwrap Barbie’s Dream House on Christmas morning? Personally, I had a suitcase full of Barbie’s, all with the same shapely body and the same perky face, all dressed in different outfits. The other toys I remember were My Little Pony, Strawberry Shortcake, Care Bears, and Starbright. Some of these have recently made a comeback in the toy industry.

My brother’s favorite toys often attacked mine. I couldn’t even tell you how often the G.I. Joe’s raided my Barbie’s fashion shows. And how He-Man invaded She-Ra’s palace. His Matchbox cars would drive through the complicated series of streets dug out of our grandparent’s driveway. Let’s not forget the Star Wars figurines, Transformers, Centurions, or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Plenty of toys our parents forced us to share like the box of Lego’s and Marbleworks. We turned our living room into an entire town with the Fisher-Price Little People. Our Little People appeared vastly different from those of today. They looked like hollowed out tubes of colored plastic with round heads attached. We also played with our Casio keyboard and plenty of board games like Monopoly, Scrabble, Going to the Head of the Class, Uno and Trivia. Simon Says was always fun and so were the various shapes and sizes of squirt guns. The Super Soaker was a blast.

The best toys that we really had were our imaginations. We’d play hide and seek with our dog and construct a UFO with the cushions from our couch. Our dining room was turned into a theater, complete with curtain where we made our family members watch the plays and skits we had written. Our grandmother’s attic was a schoolroom or sometimes a kitchen where we made elaborate imaginary dishes that we served to my dolls. We became disc jockeys with our stereo, often giving away tons of prizes to the first 10 callers. And we had fun, even without the Playstation.