Christmas Toys
This past week after Christmas, I was driving around my hometown. I couldn't help but notice how much was missing from the scenery. The Sears was closing, the Toys R Us is gone, and there is only one retail book store left. K-Mart is absent, as is Record Bar (which I have lamented before), and there is nothing even approaching a Blockbuster Video to be seen.
Such is life, I suppose. Things change.
But I began to think about Christmas and Christmas gifts from way back when.
Toys, in particular.
Toys were what I looked forward to. Toy stores were places of joy and excitement. Toys R Us was one of many: Circus World, World of Toys, Children's Palace, K B Toys... they all had an excitement and a uniqueness to them.
For example, Children's Palace carried a ton of Japanese robots well before Transformers came along. Shogun Warriors or Godiakin anyone? Or what about Micronauts? ROM the Spaceknight? Even the movie Dune had some cool toys. And I remember finding a Boba Fett figure at Circus World among a stack of figures laying below the racks.
And Sears toys. Sears had toys that no one else had. In particular, they had Star Wars toys that you couldn't find anywhere else. From "Jabba's Torture Chamber" to the "Cloud City Playset" and the infamous Blue Snaggletooth figure could only have been purchased at Sears with the "Cantina Adventure Set."
I looked forward to the toys, because that was how I spent the rest of my Christmas break: playing with toys. Once Christmas day was past, I was completely occupied by both playing with my new toys and integrating them into play with my older ones. They just enhanced my imagination and my playing.
Now, I wonder what it is to which kids look forward. Toys? Doesn't seem to be the case. Partly because they are almost phased out (or relegated to comic shops with tremendous markups), and partly because we don't seem to be encouraging imagination as we once did. True toys were all marketing ploys, but they were more than that to me and, I suspect, to many of my generation. They were stories, they were ways to play with others, and they were ways to continue the adventures from the movies and television in your back yard.
Now, we glaze our eyes into the MMORP. We don't engage directly - no tactile playing with toys. Now it's all about the screen. Perhaps that is the way of the future. But I am glad it waited until I was older - I loved those toys.
Such is life, I suppose. Things change.
But I began to think about Christmas and Christmas gifts from way back when.
Toys, in particular.
Toys were what I looked forward to. Toy stores were places of joy and excitement. Toys R Us was one of many: Circus World, World of Toys, Children's Palace, K B Toys... they all had an excitement and a uniqueness to them.
For example, Children's Palace carried a ton of Japanese robots well before Transformers came along. Shogun Warriors or Godiakin anyone? Or what about Micronauts? ROM the Spaceknight? Even the movie Dune had some cool toys. And I remember finding a Boba Fett figure at Circus World among a stack of figures laying below the racks.
And Sears toys. Sears had toys that no one else had. In particular, they had Star Wars toys that you couldn't find anywhere else. From "Jabba's Torture Chamber" to the "Cloud City Playset" and the infamous Blue Snaggletooth figure could only have been purchased at Sears with the "Cantina Adventure Set."
I looked forward to the toys, because that was how I spent the rest of my Christmas break: playing with toys. Once Christmas day was past, I was completely occupied by both playing with my new toys and integrating them into play with my older ones. They just enhanced my imagination and my playing.
Now, I wonder what it is to which kids look forward. Toys? Doesn't seem to be the case. Partly because they are almost phased out (or relegated to comic shops with tremendous markups), and partly because we don't seem to be encouraging imagination as we once did. True toys were all marketing ploys, but they were more than that to me and, I suspect, to many of my generation. They were stories, they were ways to play with others, and they were ways to continue the adventures from the movies and television in your back yard.
Now, we glaze our eyes into the MMORP. We don't engage directly - no tactile playing with toys. Now it's all about the screen. Perhaps that is the way of the future. But I am glad it waited until I was older - I loved those toys.
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