From Where I Sit

By Pat Spilseth, Columnist

Remember silver-plated cap guns with the snapping caps our trigger finger could shoot off? How about that cowboy hat you wore when you were five? Did you have a pearl buttoned shirt and twirling silver guns in a holster attached to your beaded Indian belt? How we loved Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, their horses and going to Saturday matinee movies. I remember all of these.

My grandchildren have jeweled crowns and princess dresses. They model gowns with fancy heels and their necks, wrists and ears are festooned with jewels. They switch TV channels, videos and iPods like pros. They beat grandpa and me at Go Fish and Chutes and Ladders. Grandpa sulks for a few hours. Their closets have dresses,  jeans,  sweats, soccer team shirts and numerous swimming suits.

But each time they come to grandma’s house they go through the old toys my kids Kate and Andy played with and check out each room in our house to make sure nothing has changed. They pull the noisy musical xylophone and squeeze the squealing purple pig, dial the buttons on the red Mattel telephone and smell the plastic yellow tulip. The girls like to draw with the Etch A Sketch screen and put the doll babies and teddy bears in the stroller. Six-year-old cousins Ellie and Charli dash outside to the swing set and slide; four-year-old Max Margaret swings on the hand-over-hand bars and two-year-old Scout rides the little green car down the grassy hill.

Years ago Dave and I visited the Minnesota History Center in St. Paul when it had an exhibit featuring toys of the 50s, 60s and 70s. We rediscovered the joys of seeing little red tricycles and red wagons, rubber dolls, bride dolls, even a walking doll, erector sets, Tinker Toys, Lincoln Logs and a rocking horse just like we had for our little kids There was a video of a girl twirling a hoola hoop, the toy I never mastered. Elvis had swiveling hips; not me.

In suburban ramblers of the 50s, kids played with Betsy McCall paper dolls and read Nancy Drew girl detective books. We loved our baby dolls, teen dolls and fashion dolls. I remember playing with my collection of 12” tall international dolls with costumes from Austria, Holland, Norway and Mexico.

In 1963 the Easy Bake Oven came out. As I was jotting down notes about the exhibit, a woman about my age recounted a story about her three sisters who had baby dolls with soft, squeezable rubber bodies. Fascinated with a “rich” neighbor’s bunk beds for their kids, these sisters created bunk beds for their dolls in Mom’s oven, on racks one above the another. Easily distracted, they forgot their dolls and went outdoors to play just as their mother began making supper, preheating the oven. Soon, an unpleasant smell enveloped the kitchen. Oh, oh…Mom opened the oven door: the sleeping rubber dolls had melted all over the oven. What a mess! What trauma for the three little sisters!

Mom and Dad gave me a very special present one year, probably for Christmas or my birthday, a beautiful walking doll in a blue satin dress with long blonde braids. It was all the rage in the Fifties to have a big doll of maybe three feet in height. Some dolls could speak in phrases by pulling a cord, sip from a plastic bottle and would walk slowly when I held onto her hands. My special doll never got a name. She was so special we kept her in her original box to save for “special” occasions. Today, in 2024, she remains in that same heavy cardboard box buried in Mom’s oak dresser upstairs in a bedroom at my house. I’m too old to play with her now; not even my daughter Kate played with her. The doll is not a hit with my grandkids…she’s not that entertaining, I guess.

Dave grinned when he found a box of Lincoln Logs and a red barn with cows and horses like he had as a little tyke on their farm outside of Kensington. The Lionel trains and Tonka trucks caught his eye while I was watching a small TV set playing the Howdy Doody Show with host Buffalo Bob. In 1947 Howdy Doody, the first TV show with live audiences, premiered and ran until 1960. A peanut gallery of kids would scream “It’s Howdy Doody Time!” Kids would run to the TV set in the family living room, where they sprawled out on the itchy wool wall-to-wall carpet.

In 1955 Tinker Toys were popular. I still remember the tall rounded silo box where the wheels and sticks that fit into the wheel’s holes were placed after playing. Gathering and putting away all the pieces of Tinker Toys, Legos and Lincoln Logs was a requirement after playing with them. Pick-up Sticks could be scattered all over the floor as their thin plastic pieces rolled under desks and furniture, some never to be found.

There was a set of plastic tea time dishes on display, but I remembered my china tea set, probably made in Japan, of tiny tan cups and saucers and a teapot with yellow flowers. The set came in a square cardboard box with specific slots for each cup and saucer. My friends and I would sip tea, sitting in our back yard on the grass, pretending to be grownups.

Popular Barbie dolls were created by Ruth Handler, co-founder of Mattel Toys. Her daughter Barbie was the inspiration for the 350,000 dolls sold in March of 1959. We saw Barbie and Ken dolls, roller skates with strap-on bindings, pull toys of a spotted dog with drooping ears and a spinning top just like the toys we bought for our Kate and Andy. A little red Schwinn bicycle was set up with a kick stand near a wooden tennis racquet, Nerf balls, lawn darts, transistor radios, B-B guns, plastic sleds and a hand pump to blow air into bicycle tires when they became flat. Our kids didn’t get into GI Joe’s or action figures, but Kate loved her Pretty Ponies in pinks and blues, and Andy wore out at least three Big Wheels, riding them in our driveway.     

We live near the old Tonka Toy factory so we were fascinated that in 1946 Mound Metalcraft was founded, which became Tonka Toys in 1955. Tonka is a Dakota Indian word meaning great/large. In 1946 Tonka sold 37,000 toys; in 1964 their famous dump truck appeared. Matchbox cars were created in the Sixties. These die-cast toys were 3” long, small enough to fit into a tiny box measured for matches. In 1969 Hot Wheels were a hot market item. By the Seventies, toys were created for kids to play away from home, at day cares as more moms and dads worked outside the homes. TV’s Sesame Street with Burt and Ernie as well as Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy and Oscar the Grouch became favorites of my children.

How great to be a kid with an imagination! Kids today play with computers from babies on into adulthood. Their creative young minds still make up stories like we did. They probably imagine avatars flying through space with monsters and imagine themselves as Harry Potter and his buddy Hermione? It’s another era, but toys will always be on kids’ birthday and Christmas gift lists.

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To contact Pat, email: pat.spilseth@gmail.com.