I'm fascinated by toys, as you can probably tell by some of my jewelry like the jacks earrings I made for Handcrafted Jewelry magazine a couple of years ago or the roller skate earrings currently listed in my shop.
When I visited the library last week, I picked up the book Toy Time: From Hula Hoops to He-Man to Hungry Hungry Hippos: A Look Back at the Most-Beloved Toys of Decades Past by Christopher Byrne. Christopher is the content director of TimetoPlayMag.com, so he's well versed in the popular toys from the 1940s-1980s. I expected to flip through it, but ended up going back and reading it from cover to cover.
The book organizes the toys into major categories: dolls, outdoor toys, battery-operated, creative/art, fads, boy's toys, multiplayer games, and classics. Each entry shows a large photo of the toy or packaging, along with a brief description ("why we loved it"), history, and an update on the toy's current status ("where is it now?").
It's packed with trivia. For example, did you know that the popular card game UNO was invented by a barber? Or that Care Bears first appeared on greeting cards and only later became stuffed animals? And did you know that some of the best-selling toys go their
start on consignment? (The game Pictionary was one of them.)
I read about toys I'd owned, toys my friends owned (and I wanted!), and toys I'd never heard of. I loved seeing a photo of my Spirograph and learning that the Nerf ball was marketed as a toy that "can't hurt babies or old people." In that last category of new-to-me toys, I learned about Vac-U-Form, a toy from the 1960s which let kids design and assemble their own toys by molding plastic over an open heating unit. I would have loved something like that, but it's hard to imagine that a toy like that would pass today's current safety standards. It did make me wonder if when 3D printers come down in price they'll market one just for kids to make their own toys.
A fun, quick summer read!