TOYS ARE AWESOME

Ok. I had WAY more fun with this than I thought I would. I was excited at first but emotionally distraught over missing my sister. I didn't give myself a chance to really soak in the idea of toys and all the nostalgia it would come with. So here it is:

We decided to keep boardgames and videogames out of it, which I'm glad for since this list was hard enough to come up with as it is.

POLLY POCKETS. My sisters and I could not get enough of them. If we were good during our family outings to the navy exchange, we all got to decide on a brand new polly pocket from the store. THIS WAS MY SHIIIIIIT.
I remember we got a lot of different ones, beach houses, animal related ones that came with tiny puppy figurines to train (I don't remember what brand they were and if I could remember I'd lose my mind with joy) we had off brands of different mansions and stuff that we just mixed together and created an entire city or village or what have you. My absolute favorite was my tree house though. It made me really really want to live in a tree house one day. it had a hammock, and a trap door, cameras and a little creek...AND A WORKING SWING? yesssss. No matter what new awesome mansion or shopping center or pet shop we ended up getting, the treehouse was always my homebase. Everything about this toy has me brimming with joy and my imagination is running away with me. I used to pretend the little magenta bird sitting on top of the tree was my camera security system. YEsssssss...

MCDONALD's AMAZING WILDLIFE PLUSHIES.These toys were a big deal for me and my sisters. One, because we loved animals and making animals have amazing lives with awesome personalities. Before we got super into barbies, our little animal friends were there with their crazy adventures. Two, because my parents never let us buy happy meals...but they finally did so we could get these specific toys! We lost our cute little azn minds over these things! The best part about these little critters was that we created an entire universe, with families and drama and social lives. We just kept adding and adopting to our animal families and creating strange dynamics between each of the creatures. We used to write stories where I would illustrate in a comic book style fashion... Gosh I could go on forever about these critters. We never left the house without them, which worked out well because they were pocket sized! This was my little fella. His name was Brownie. (I think that later I got another happy meal with another koala...she was dubbed Cupcake, Brownie's girlfriend). These little toys later trickled into an obsession with TY beanie babies but let's not go there....

BARBIES were another obsession of ours. We had soooo many barbies. All kinds of accessories. The coolest part was that my mom would often just let us pick and choose from garage sales and we ended up with really ghetto but awesome set ups for our dolls. We'd create dramatic lives for them of course, with adventures and story lines that lead us all around the house and sometimes into the yard (weather permitting). My favorite toy of all my barbies though, was the only toy I ever threw a legitimate tantrum for in a store. My mom was LIVID.....she fooled me into thinking it would never ever happen since I cried in the store for it. BUT...Low and behold, the toy of my 7-8 yr old dreams appeared on my birthday (thanks mom! ;D). I've searched high and low for the correct image of the horse she got me...I'm not sure if it was Tawny or not and honestly I can't even remember what I named her myself. I was just so enamored by her beauty. I literally combed her hair all of the time. I didn't even comb my barbie's hair. Just the horse. hahaha. Of course she couldn't walk on her own for very long like the commercials boasted, and she certainly couldn't trot or hop over fences. Barbie wasn't even able to properly sit on her without them both toppling over. I didn't care. She was mine! I'm certain my love for this horse trickled into my obsession with aimlessly riding Epona when I started playing Ocarina of Time later in life ;)

PLAYDOH. Playdoh. playdoh. PLAYDOH. How can anyone not like this stuff? I used to eat it, I loved it so much. Hahah well, no I didn't EAT it, eat it. I merely tasted it out of curiosity and sometimes the food creations I made out of it just seemed so convincing. I am so thrilled that I was able to find an image online of the exact toy my mom got for us when I was 6. I LOVED this thing. My mom has an adorable video of me, my sisters and my cousins all playing with this stuff and gosh it makes me miss it so much.

And finally, POKEMON CARDS. This one I was hesitant to add to the list cause I wasn't sure if it counted as a boardgame or a toy....I'm just going to go ahead and call it a hybrid. It is everything and anything I ever wanted. Hahahahah. Collecting the cards was a blast, battling was always epic, drawing them and imagining and trading...all of it! :D I wish it were still socially acceptable for me to carry them around and show them off and battle. hahahaha. <3 I'll have to look for where my sisters and I kept our collection...We even had fun japanese versions on some of the pages. And our holographic cards were so awesome! Argh!!! I must look for them 8)

Anyhow. This list theme was VERY FUN. I encourage anyone else to think of their favorite toys from their childhood and maybe look for images of it online to see if their memory of it is still fresh. and just for funzies, I wanted to list a few runners up:

1. POGS
2. Creepy Crawlers
3. Sky Dancer Fairies!!!

I was so stoked to find a picture of the exact Sky Dancer my mom bought me! I used to take her outside and see if I could get her stuck in the trees. Kind of dumb, but hey kids are kind of dumb sometimes. <3

My mom refused to buy me POGS and creepy crawlers (they were boy toys...harumph). But boy was I stoked when I got my own Sky Dancer Fairy. That bitch was awesome. Hahahahah. And with that, I bid you all good day.

-Jackisrollinginthenostalgia