Toyland training

The other day on Twitter, one of my “Tweeps” (people I follow/am followed by) asked something about favourite childhood toys. The replies were varied, as you’d expect, and the youngest didn’t necessarily know what the oldest was talking about, or vice versa. A fair bit of explaining was done.

Many of the toys I had were connected to television, mostly through commercials. The 1960s was the era in which advertising to kids took off, and cross-promotions began. Like other kids, I was trained to play consumer.

One of the TV toys I remember most is a Johnny West doll with his Indian friend Chief Cherokee, by Marx. Johnny came with his horse, Thunderbolt, but I never got any more of the accessories, including a horse for Chief Cherokee, so I used to borrow my sister’s horse statue (I can’t remember if I ever asked, and so I don’t know that she knew her horse was being ridden by a plastic Indian doll). This was all very un-PC, of course, but it also wasn’t very interesting: I got sick of them pretty fast.

GI Joe dolls (by Hasbro) were far more interesting. I had them when they were a foot tall and couldn’t “talk”. Unlike Johnny West, you could take their clothes off (and they weren’t anatomically correct), but like the Johnny West dolls, they came with a lot of accessories—the GI Joe ones were definitely more realistic. I liked them a lot. I actually remember having my two GI Joe dolls naked, lying on top of each other, kissing. Kids do the darndest things…

There were two toys I really wanted, thanks to TV commercials, but both turned out to be less than advertised. The first was a large, battery-powered tow truck called Big Bruiser. It seemed so cool on black and white TV ad, but it was a little limited in what it could do. The tow truck broke fairly quickly, but I had the pickup truck and parts for quite awhile afterward.

The other disappointing toy I found out the name of only when I was looking for links for this post: It was a semi-trailer truck operated by a kind of gearshift remote control attached with a cord. It was called Johnny Express and was made by Topper, a company that apparently named all their toys “Johnny” something. My version was a little before the “new, new, new” version in the linked commercial—mine didn’t have headlights or a horn. It also broke pretty quickly and, like Big Bruiser, could only go forward or backward. Not all that interesting. And, since I never got any of the accessories, I had to play with my other toys.

The toys that lasted the longest were all made of metal. Biggest of these were Tonka Trucks (now owned by Hasbro). While they were mostly trucks, one of my sister’s high school boyfriends gave me a black Tonka VW Beetle. Those toys were indestructible and outlasted my childhood (they probably would’ve survived nuclear war…).

Far more numerous were my Matchbox cars by Lesney. Originally solidly made die cast metal, they declined when Mattel introduced Hot Wheels. Matchbox introduced Superfast to compete, but eventually the company went bankrupt and is now owned, ironically, by Mattel—the company that made Hot Wheels.

I had so many Matchbox cars that I had to get a bigger carrying case. I had them into adulthood, but lost them in one of my many moves when I was a young adult. I actually still miss them.

There were other toys I had because of TV (like a “Do Bee” handpuppet and some modelling clay from Romper Room or Play-Doh), but the main toy from television—and the only one I still have—is Gumby and his pony pal, Pokey, too. I spent hours and hours playing with them (and for awhile I also had a rubber Bozo the Clown who was about the same height as Gumby). I had no accessories, no related toys, but I didn’t need them: In the 1960s version of Gumby, he and Pokey often used toys—real toys, including some that I had, too—as if they were real (like driving a car, for example). This really appealed to me. And I also liked that he could “walk into any book” for his adventures.

The storylines were often creaky (at best), the animation primitive by today’s standards, and were generally empty entertainment—and I loved every minute of them.

Gumby was produced by Clokey Productions, which also produced a series called "Davey & Goliath" for the Lutheran church. I used to love that, too and it's reputedly the longest-running church-sponsored programming on television. They were wholesome, Lutheran, and similar enough to Gumby and Pokey that I liked that, too, but I didn't have any toys from it, and wouldn't have wanted any.

In the mid-1980s, I found a VHS tape of Gumby episodes and bought it (I still have it). Then, I found a Gumby watch (I wore it, but it was hot). I still have that, too. An ex-boyfriend gave me a set of Gumby and Pokey puffy stickers, and I think I MAY have them packed away somewhere.

When the subject of toys came up on Twitter, I was looking for information on Gumby and found out that the episodes were available on DVD (seems most anything is now…). The other day, I saw it at a store in Auckland and bought it (buying the combined set was cheaper than buying 1 and 2 separately, you see).

A final toy I wanted because of television arrived much later: The Fright Factory Thingmaker toy by Mattel. In those days, kids could get seriously burned from the things. I got Etch-A-Sketch, Spirograph and other toys, but of all of them, Gumby and Pokey are the only ones that have stayed with me—for more than forty years now.

I could add games, and I did have a few, like Booby Trap, Hands Down, Mousetrap and, when I was quite young, Candyland, but there was a problem: As a young kid I didn’t have many friends (there weren’t many kids around), so I usually didn’t have anyone to play them with (although I do remember setting up Mousetrap and playing with the contraption).

Which is why the toys I could play with by myself were the ones I liked so much. Many of my toys were hand-me-downs, or completely unrelated to television, but the ones I remember the most—and would still own if I could—were all sold to me on television.

I still find most of my toys on TV. I was trained to play consumer, after all.