Collections
I had an aunt that was a department store buyer for women’s clothes. So she made multiple trips to NYC, even taking me along once to see the Statue and Empire State. We even ate in one of the last Automats (Note: if you don’t know what this means, check out a doc on the subject, it’s short but fascinating).
I guess she made multiple trips to the shrine of childhood, FAO Schwartz. Soon I acquired 3 collections.
The first was a box full of ‘rubber’ animals. These soft, pliable (not bendable) creatures stood about 2-3 inches high and were generally kind of whimsical–smiles on faces, some holding objects or ‘walking’ on hind legs. These were always really neat stocking stuffers.
Then there were the nodders. These were animals made of brittle plastic. The head hung loose in the body, weighed by a small magnet. This meant that a slight touch caused the head to nod for several minutes.
I actually still have one–the turtle. His head and tail can bob up and down; pretty apt as I still rescue turtles on highways when I visit south Jersey.
And lest we forget–the solar toys. There was a plastic bird that had a solar thing in it that captured the sun and caused the bird to nod forward and ‘sip’ a glass of water, then bounce back. Repeat until nightfall. Also, a quartet of small solar things that rotated under an upside down light bulb–the more intense the sun, the faster they twirled.
The World’s Fair of 1964 introduced me to instant plastic molded figures. There was a machine that would make the toy before your eyes! The hot plastic was injected into a mold, baked in there for maybe a minute, then cooled. The trap door opened and boom! Out came your dinosaur, animal or whatever.
Recently, a friend reminded me of the hickey maker. No, it wasn’t called that, smartass. It was a ‘gun’ that shot compressed air. It had no use when playing, except I guess to simulate a hurricane and knock down your little green plastic army men. But you primed the gun by sucking air into a storage hold. Someone discovered that if you put the gun against your skin while you primed it, your skin felt funky and you had a red mark.
Now, we didn’t know that was, for all intents, a hickey. I confess to not knowing at all how to give one. Well, in college, my gf and I talked about it and neither of us knew for sure. I tried it on her, no result I could see. Five minutes later, I glanced at her neck. OMG. What a tattoo. And right before spring break. She tried to tell her parents she slipped in the shower. To her surprise, her un-hip mother knew what it was. I wonder now if my ex-gf ever saw one on any of her kids.