And, I know the young ones will not believe this, but those of us in the post-war generation had tin toys.
I had baby toys made out of tin-rattles and other things which would be frowned upon today. Tin soldiers were still being made. Are they now?
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Even better, I had a tin motel, complete with rooms and plastic furniture, and a center with the foyer and desk. Trendy. If anyone can find a photo of the tin motel, let me know. Mine had two more rooms than this one seen on the box, but was similar. The funiture was white and green and like this set EXACTLY. Wow!
I had a little tin cooking stove like this one with small pots and pans. It was in much better shape than the one for sale above.
We survived. We have brains. No nanny states then.
Umm, we also had toy gun and holster sets. Cap guns were especially cool. My two were red handled in red holsters and a belt for me to wear with my red cowgirl outfit, which looked almost identical to this one above. I lived in it in the summer. I particularly liked the hat and vest. And, yes, I had cowgirl boots as well, in red, of course.
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If you were "shot", you had to count to ten before you could get up off the grass again.
Happier days.....but, by the time my youngest two brothers came along, these things were far in the past. They grew up in the 1960s, and the space age was in full-swing. Cowboys and cowgirls became distinctly passée.
2 comments:
Well we in England are always a decade or so behind you Yanks, so I can confirm that in the 1960's my 4 brothers and I all played "cowboys and Indians" using similar guns and holsters (I think they were cap guns, so they went "BANG" when you fired them!)No "elf an safety" to stop you hitting the caps with rocks to make them go bang without the gun, too. Perhaps plastic had taken over somewhat, for although tea sets were often of china (this was England, after all) I do remember having a bright purple teapot made of hard plastic. My older brother convinced me we should make "real tea" in it one day when mum & dad were out. I was rather distraught to watch my teapot rapidly change shape as the boiling water was being poured in! Even though it didn't entirely melt, I was rather disgusted with the mis-shapen thing after that.
There were plenty of metal cars and lorries to play with, and tin spinning tops too. And at the seaside there were always tin buckets and spades - the latter being really dangerous if you or a sibling got a toe in the way while digging to Australia!
I tried to get my son as many wooden/tin etc toys as possible when he was little, and threw out all the plastic electronic ones before he got to see them! He never had pop music to listen to, only Classical and Folk. Now at 15 all he wants to do is catch up with his mates - rap, pop, and other things I don't even know the name of. The modern culture is all-pervading, and home-educating isn't necessarily going to help keep the influences at bay...
I'm two or three years younger than you, so all these are similar to playthings we had and remember with affection.
My sister and I had the tin dollhouses, with the lithographed walls and floors and hard plastic furniture.
I also had a farm with a tin barn, plastic animals and a farm family.
Our doll dishes were plastic or aluminum. In addition to the stove, we also had a pink washing machine (the horror!), that didn't really do much of anything, but was cute.
The grands have the usual plastic,with noisemakers, toys at home, but Mimi's is natural toy Waldorf/Montessori heaven.
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