How did you play with toys growing up?

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I used to love barbie dolls. I took their clothes off, applied nail polish to their little fused fingertips, and chopped their hair into sleek bobs.

I played in the usual way. With my action figures like GI Joe, green army men, etc.: Using blankets like a mountainous landscape, or plains. Using shrubbery/weeds like they were a jungle. The sandbox like a dessert. etc.

I liked the jet Transformers the best. I'd turn them into jets, run around pretending they were flying, diving on the Autobots shooting them with missiles, then I'd transform them into robots, land and have them smack the snot out of the autobots who were still turned into vehicle form.

I loved Construx, and Lego's. I'd often play with them all day.

I would also play house with my sister. Pretend to be an animal. Played dress up a few times. etc.

My mother tells me that I rejected any furry cuddly toys when I was very young.

Later when I was 9 to 11, my brothers encouraged me to play with "Action Man"! This was at the same time I was given a chemistry set and did all the experiments in it. I was taken with reading in bed (science, etc) until as late as 10 and 11 pm, and my father attempted to put a timer to my bedside lamp.

I never played with toys very much growing up, but I did play with barbies. When I say play I mean I walked around with a doll in my hand and shook it. You can say I was an unaverage child.

I lined them up
I opened and closed hatches
I bit the hands off of my Star Wars figures
all before 5

as I grew I began to play with my toys in a more "normal" manner (6+), albeit scripted, but how one is supposed to play with them.

Wow. Blast from the past. I used to love Lego's. I hated having to take apart my creations though. And Matchbox cars. I collected them, and my friend and I had a rivalry going on who had the most (I think I still have most of them - I'll have to check ). I do remember never actually enjoying playing with them though. I never had the imagination to do more than *vroom* *vroom*, and God forbid one would get a scratch (although I did have some I was willing to bang up). I also sucked my thumb for a long long time (almost teen-age years), but unfortunatly switched to chewing my nails. Anyrate, while at home, I always carried my "blankey" around, but not like Linus... Mine was a scrap from what had once been a bear. I haven't thought of it in years, but I remember when I decided to quit I had one peice maybe two square inches, and another not much bigger than my thumb. At my dad's house, it was the better part of a mostly headless rabbit (the ears were the first to go).

I was obsessed with touching and smelling my toys - doll furniture, fabrics, any plastics were appealing. Also remember a lot of situational play - army, cops/robbers, house, etc. Except there wasn't a lot of script; it was more talking about what I was going to do...really weird.

Did anyone spend a lot of time tinkering with "non-toys" in the basement or attic? Like I could find an old stove or desk and play with it for hours, or else I would go out and take the weed clippers to edge the lawn and sidewalk. I'm shocked my parents didn't institutionalize me.

I was obsessed with families too, and certain types of toys. I considered myself a "toy collector". I focused on collecting stuffed animals. Each one had a name, a family and a detailed life history. I thought of my bedroom as a kingdom called Pretendland.

So, for example, if you asked me about a certain stuffed animal, I would say:

"Sparkles the giant white lion arrived in Pretendland in August of 1986 after a temporary stay at the county fair. An immigrant from a distant land, he is not related to any of the other stuffed animals, but he is popular within the community and is especially close with the Dapples family of horses. This is because he saved their adventurous children, Austin and Walnut, from the Double Headed Dragon who lives on the cliff across the great meadow . . . "

I'd go on and on like that for quite some time.

I practised my hairdressing skills on Barbie dolls, painted underwear on them with nail polish or painted their skin different colors with nail polish, dyed their hair with mascara and felt pen and hair dye and nail polish, made poor, concentration-camp clothes for them, played concentration camp and had them singing about their experience in the concentration camp, practicing my own vocal skills ("I fell off of a very high roof and a block fell on top o-of me. Both my arms went missing... and it seems like I once had three. There's no reason to live anymore so perhaps I'll hang myse-elf from a tree." And then another pone, with a different voice, singing, "She fell off of a very high roof and a block fell on top o-of her. Both her arms went missing and now she looks like a cu-u-cuu-mber. There's no reason for her to live so together we'll muurder her." (Because she couldn't hang herself without her arms.) I also did swimming and diving competitions with them in the bathtub (I was really practising my own skills in flipping them off the ledge in a certain way and pushing them jsut the right way). I also did gymnmastics competitions with them and me and my friend played she-was-shot-and-is-almost-dying-and-we're-the-doctors-who-have-to-save-her, also Sex Lessons, by turning one of the Barbie dolls male, making her/him look more male, and this transgender was giving sex lessons, other stuff.


Me and that same friend played America's Most Wanted, we played ER, we played "missing child hide and seek", dissected dead birds (and Stephanie wanted to be a vet, and then changed her mind and wanted to be a forensic pathologist), had funerals for the dead birds, we played school once with one of us being the teacher like my crazy teacher who yelled at accused everyone of every little thing, I read her one or two of my stories but it wasn't the best entertainment, we played chess on the computer, we made fake profiles of missing children and fugitives, watched America's Most Wanted together, made a criminal-catching, missing-child-finding group with her friends and me and her called Most Wanted (not just limited to North and South America), acted out plays that we made, both in person and on tape (acout a criminal family and the Barbie "boot camp") and other stuff.

I played with marbles and later matchbox cars, throwing them across the room, I'd just take out one after one to study the pretty ones and I'd line all my toys up from the middle of the room to the door. Sometime I started to obsess with cuddly toys, I always had a favourite one which I'd drag around with me for no purpose. When people grabbed it and tried to make it look like a real animal, pretending to feed it, asking for it's name, then I'd get mad because I didn't know what the people wanted from me.

Then, when I was in elementary school, I didn't play much any more. I starting reading for hours and I'd read anything I could get my hands on, including the adult books I understood nothing of.
I just read them for the sake of... reading? I couldn't stop reading, I didn't want to stop reading and just read everything I could find.


I think I started using toys appropriate later though. I played scripts and later invented my own with small animal figurines when I was 11/12 years old. I often forgot moving the figurines and to an outsider, it looked as if I just stared at figurines.


Back when I was a kid, I had a swing and a sand box outside, lots of toy cars and such things and I spent hours outside, just swinging and flooding the sand box because it was so much fun. I probably spent half my time outside.

I played a lot with Lego and Meccano (got it from my dad) those were really good. I combined them with other toys to make up a story. Most of the times it involved some kind of war.

Other times I tried to recreate existing machines or buildings, once I rebuilt a summer home (on scale of course ), with small drawings inside etc. Later I took apart broken electric things and tried to repair them, one time that got me a nasty electric shock, my arm tingled for a day.

I've played with them the usual way, but I didn't make my Barbies talk.

Loved stuffed animals and still have my teddy bear. I was very attached to that bear. Played a lot with Lincoln Logs, building all different kinds of structures, demolishing them and then building again. Had trucks and I'd push them around the floor or sofa, but I also liked to turn them over and spin the wheels. Had a train set but didn't like it because it was too complicated and didn't do that much except fall off the track if it went too fast. Ended up burning out the transformer after about a week. Was given a couple of model airplanes and cars to put together but HATED assembly and the glue was smelly.

Oh, yeah, and I broke the legs off of my sister's Barbies. Also liked to take the shirts off of my sister's Barbies.

Z