December 26, 2004

• Christmas Toys of the Sixties

  

   "Christmas Toys of the Sixties"

   

  Recently while websurfing for "images" for my massive database, I found a couple of websites dedicated to the toys and games of my youth. WesClark.com has an excellent section in Avocado Memories entitled "Sixties Toys". The composite I created above uses images taken mostly from that site. Another site I vistited was Toyadz.com, which was linked from Wes' site. For the pure reason that some normal people have been taking the time to create websites which chart America's (and the world's) cultural history, I am always on the lookout for well designed and informative websites. The best ones are just as good as checking out a definitive text in the library. I love to hit the Search bar and see what will come up. The toys in the picture above are all toys my brother and sister and I had in the mid sixties. The "set-up" in the center is "Moonbase Alpha", which was "Santa's" gift to me one Christmas. "Lincoln Logs" were a building block toy, like Tinkertoys and American Plastic Bricks. Standing next to G. I.. Joe, which was never called a "doll", is Tammy, Ideal's fashion doll. My sister had the Tammy dolls instead of Barbie. The "Secret Sam" attache case was released at the height of the "James Bond" craze which reached a fever pitch in 1965. "Mouse Trap" is still a popular game. And the little Beatles figurines are now classic collectibles.

  

  I was looking at a Toy's R Us catalog in the weeks before Christmas, and for some reason, it seemed as if the plastic toys looked less interesting and less "real" than the toys of my youth. My brother and I collected model kits, planes, cars, and specialty items, like the Creature From the Black Lagoon kit. We had countless blocks and building toys. We used the dolls as "people" who populated the world we built.

  All three of us had vivid imaginations, and the toys became extensions of the playtime process. One Christmas, "Santa" brought me a Civil War set-up with hundreds of soldiers. I don't think I really ever "played" with the set, because it took so long to set up, that I was ready to stop play when finished with the set up.

  I always wanted one of these dashboards for our full size "cars", which were my brother's and my beds. But neither Dad nor "Santa" bought me the dashboard. When I saw the image on the Sixties toys site, all the memories of watching the TV commercial, begging for the toy, and then experiencing tons of disappointment when the toy didn't come.

  

  . I did get a "Cape Canaveral" set-up one year, and the spring loaded "rockets" had enough power to take out one of your eyes.

  One toy I never had growing up was a bicycle. The Schwinn Sting Ray was the most popular bike in school during the sixties, and I ached because my parents wouldn't let me have one. We had lots of toys, but our world was pretty insular away from school, and bikes would allow us to roam farther than our mother wanted. I did ride my friend Steve's bike in middle school. I got to be pretty good at it, and finally bought my first bicycle, a ten speed, in the 70s while in college

  

  . Until we grew too old to believe in Santa, he "brought" one "special" toy, usually the largest, the night before Christmas. We children had to stay in our beds, or else Santa might not "come" to set up the toys. Dad and Mom would literally spend the complete night arranging the three setpiece toys for our "surprise" on Christmas morning. Each of us received about 10-15 toys of varying size and cost. Usually half of these broke within a week of Christmas. There's another great nostalgic site called "Toys of Another Time", which allows for what I think is a rather nice segue into my latest "composite artwork" which might as well be called "Toys of a Future Time", but in fact is called "Schoolbusses on the Moon". This was created in the computer, one of the newest "toys" I have. As a single guy I have really never stopped filling up the toy box from when I was a kid. The latest "toy" is one I just got for Christmas. Each year at the company Christmas party, there are giveaways which are selected by drawing a name out of a bag. I usually "receive" a nice gift each Christmas, and this year I got picked for a DVD Home Theater in a box, but I already have two home theaters in different rooms, so traded for the ipod. I've already loaded up over five hours (already 270 songs, and less than 2% of the 40 GIGABYTE hard drive is used up.) Last night I wore the thing to bed. It's like a walkman, except with crystal clear "room filling" or should I say "head-tripping" sound. After the songs or CD's are loaded (first the contents of the CDs have to be stored on your hard drive on the computer), the ipod itself assigns titles, artists, and categorizes the selection. You can customize your own "playlists" or "shuffle" the songs like I do on my 200 CD jukebox. I don't really like the earpieces. I'm sure there are headphones, but what I REALLY like about it is there is an accessory cassete adaptor  that  can hook it to the car stereo. What better time to replace those two blown speakers and hook this little baby up to the Eclipse stereo. I tell ya, the sound quality through the little earpads I really don't like is magnificent. Well, I did seque to the computer, not the ipod, although it is, in fact, a computer with a 40GB hard drive. The computer allows me to indulge my muse when I want to use it as a typewriter or a drawing pad. It allows me to copy/paste whatever is in my imagination, or my imagination creates the images as I go along. Today, I updated the "Computer Art" section of the "Yes, But Is It Art? Gallery", and added a few new and older composites. The latest, below, is, as announced, "Schoolbusses on the Moon". I added the planet Saturn in the background as an afterthought, but that sort of cancels out this being on the moon, unless Saturn has mysteriously rushed headlong into our atmosphere, and perhaps that's what happened.

  

  • 12:47 am
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