How did you play with toys growing up?

Post Reply New Topic

I used to play with matchbox cars - In particular the ones that you could paint yourself. When they stopped making them or if I wanted to paint a particular kind of car I would buy a normal match-box car and liquid-paper the whole thing so I could repaint it. I used to perfectly organise and allign my matchbox cars and threw tantrums if people messed it up. I hated sharing them too.

I also used to play with the mini-cars (I can't remember what they were called), I was obsessed with them, and at one point when I was quite young, stole a few packets from the local Target shopping centre, but got caught because I couldn't stop fiddling with them in my jumper pockets.

I also used to have soft toys that I loved, one in particular I kept with me all the way to high school was called Piggy. A small pink soft toy pig who I used to play with a lot. I drew cartoons about him and nick-named him bug-pug (like a South African / New Zealand way of saying Big-Pig).
I purchased a Barbie ferrari convertible toy (it was red, not pink, hehe) and used to play with this with Piggy in the drivers seat. I had a soft toy bear that was quite big that I used to sleep with every night even through high-school. I still sometimes have that need, but the soft-toy is replaced by my pillow or my wife.

I got obsessed with Lego. Like absolutely obsessed, but I never followed the directions when I bought a new piece. I just made up my own houses and space-ships and castles. I mix and matched the Lego men and had my own huge lego box of pieces. I would often sit and play with them imaginatvely alone, and It was heaven. I eventually got into Teknix (spelling?) which is more of a technical type of lego with lots of moving parts, bolts and nuts and engines and stuff, and i was obsessed with that through early high school. I would also make my own types of vehicles and machines or modify the ones I was supposed to make.

Just recently, I bought some new lego items that i've put up in my unit. But they are only a few pieces (some horses and lego men) as i've found that lego is quite expensive now. Though i've been eyeing off a Star Wars war thingo (the one from the jungle with two legs) that I saw thats about a foot high.

When computers started becoming popular I became obsessed with those too, and started making my own computer games and trying to build my own computers or figure out MS-DOS and make programs in Q-Basic. This progressed more and more throughout my teens. Even in high school, I got in trouble for hacking the School computers and put a batch file reference in the Autoexec.bat file that stated that the computer had a virus and then set it to a repeat loop.
The School was going to hire a computer technician until they caught me in the act. hahaha.

Thanks so much for this post, its been great remembering things I wouldn't have remembered without prompting.

I had hundreds of books and I read them all the time as a child. I also had a lot of Barbie dolls and stuffed animals, but never played with them. I never did like dolls really.

I was first directed to the attention of action figures at age 3, when my dad bought me the MASK Jackhammer for my birthday. Since that day, action figures have been the interest that I'm narrowly focused on.

I currently have my action figures displayed all over my house, and I'm NEVER gonna stop collecting.

I read up on them like mad, and I became quite a big name in the toy community online- I even do a special project for someone who works for one of the most prominent action figure sites out there. OH yeah- I also own a business selling them, too


As a kid though, from like the age of 7 on..I don' know...the whole concept of playing with them...just didn't do it for me. I had a strange desire to actually COLLECT AND DISPLAY them- but really, since when do any adults actually believe a 7 year old kid wants to seriously COLLECT toys? Maybe today, but not back in 1989- AND my parents were the geniuses who said "if you want to collect them, you can't open them"( brilliant).

But that's been toys for me.

Anyone with diagnosed Asperger's line their toys up as children?

I asked a psychologist this who says I have AS over autism, but she seemed to deflect the question by saying it's common for people to improve as they age. I assume this is her saying that I had autism when I rarely spoke, when I failed to interact with everyone but two people, and I lacked imaginative play; which is kinda like me now.

Yes, totally- wait....I still do though. Granted though, now we consider it DISPLAYING them, being collectors

I do this too, I arrange my teddy bear collection in rows. And my books... Though I haven't been "officially" diagnosed yet. I'm calling my mom to have her set up an appointment with my psych. as soon as it's a reasonable hour.

Last edited by Amara on 06 Mar 2008, 6:27 am, edited 1 time in total.

There has been a topic about this before and I wrote this really long post, so I won't reiterate what I had said back then, but the main ways I used to play (as far as I remember) were:

Wrapping my doll up in various bits of fabric instead of dressing her in ordinary doll's clothes, then unwrapping her and repeating everything a different way;

Tearing up a lot of colored aluminium foil into bits or wrapping it to form small, hard, shiny squares, with which I would then play pretending it was "food" or "chemicals";

Fingering beads and pouring them from one container into another, probably while playing "doctor" or "chemist" but not necessarily;

Smashing stones on the beach with a bigger stone to grind them into powder (with which I would play similar to how I used to play with the beads), or to see what they were like inside;

Lining up and examining beads, small blocks and other shiny trinkets, of which I had a vaseful;

Collecting bits of metal, wires, screws, radio parts, tiny lamps and the like, and playing with those in odd ways,

Etc.

I also liked "boyish" toys, like toy cars, guns or action figures, and I think I preferred them to "girlish" ones. My mother did not specifically like this, especially the toy gun part. I remember Grandpa buying me a toy pistol which was transparent and had a system of small wheels inside, which would produce plenty of sparks when I pressed the trigger. I liked it very much and so did Grandpa (he knew what to give me for a present). My mother secretly took it without telling me, and gave it to some other child. I also remember being given this colorful toy jeep to play with for a while, which was based on a semi-automatic system and could roll along for a long time. Its wheels produced a pleasant whirring sound as it rolled. I played with it throughout the entire evening in our little corridor, rolling it towards the front door and watching it move, then fetching it and repeating the whole process once again. I was upset when I had to return it.

gad...hadn't thought about it in decades.

I did elaborate scenes; army men vs space men battles, rock concerts with domino speakers, tons of Hot Wheels interstates, model rockets with real engines, stuff like that.

Yes, I did, but it was usually part of an imaginative game. So maybe it doesn't count?

Ditto that. When I was very little I would line up my stuffed animals across my bed in one single row, and then rotate the last one up first each night so I spent an equal amount of time with each. I also had a camera case that my grandpa gave me that I kept all my favorite little toys in. I took it with me everywhere, and I'd take the toys out and line them up or organise them and put them back again. I think I already told this story here. All well. I still mentally and physically organise things I'm interested in.

I don't think that counts.

I used to line all of my stuff up in order of size and just leave them there; staring at the...order (this is how I played). My mother thought nothing of it for she saw it as a rather intelligent thing to do, and I agree with her completely. I still line stuff up on my bed; books and whatnot in order of size and "importance" (see: reading material). I did open and close the hatches on my toys; I still do the same thing with a pocketknife (or anything else I have in my hands that's mechanical). I just opened and closed my pocketknife for the whole one hour car trip; it's just feels "right" when I do it.

Not a thing has changed with me, really; I'm just better at verbal stuff (not social).

I had an assortment of action figures,teddies,animals etc. I would
pretend they went on different little adventures and make them talk to each other,giving each a different voice.
It was probably my way of balancing the fact I didn't talk much to
real people

'Cut & Paste' images from (mostly) magazines, paste onto newsprint....to obsessive oblivion. In fact, this was one marker for my Dx (autism). However, I would cut & paste without end. That is, I would physically have to be restrained since I could not stop; hour upon hour. The scissors (from cutting) had abraded my hand and I was treated 5 times for blood poisoning - one incident was quite serious. Scissors were taken away.

Still, I LOVE to cut & paste. Now it's called collage; a more sophisticated name - same thing though. I am judicious about my cut & paste mania and use a digital timer so I do not forget to stop.

Also.....lining up objects, playing in the snow (especially making snow caves!), stacking. Oh, stacking is still a big deal for me! I have blocks in my front room and I love to stack. I stack anything stackable! I never considered, but I also preferred plastic toy objects, not really soft plush animals - but I know like stuffed animals. I had a rubber orange hippopotamus I loved very much. I love leggos, erector sets, etc. About dolls (I am female, for those who do not know already): Not really. If I ever had a doll(s) to 'play' with, I would simply stack, organize, or arrange them.

Last edited by LabPet on 07 Mar 2008, 6:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I had dolls, but none of that "girly" stuff for me - ugh!! !!

I indeed used to line them up (biggest to smallest, naturally) and play schools with them (I used to make up my own series of maths books - I was obsessed by series & still am!! !)).

But I preferred my homemade stuffed toy cats which my grandmother used to make for me. They all had to have their first name embroidered down their front & their surname down their back. Those made from the same material had to be given the same surname.

I used to line those up & play schools with them, too.

I also liked "boys' toys" such as train sets & a toy garage with a lift & a long ramp - I liked ramps as well.

I also played with lego a lot, and read books whenever I got the chance (anything & everything I could get my hands on).

i never lined things up, although on occasion i would line up my rocks when i went to bed and slept with them. never stacked much either but did alot of compairing and vrses each other

In order and size? Ohh, it really is an intelligent thing to do, because it has a sense. I never did anything like that, instead I just lined up all kinds of things randomly and my mother always got worked up about the so-called chaos in my room.
I just realised that it hasn't changed, well, the countless books in my room are neatly lined up in exact rows, but I didn't order them by topic or size and I haven't taken this into consideration yet actually. I really like my chaotic nonsensical order, for I know where every book is stored anyway.