Chick Chat

CHICK CHAT: Our Favorite Childhood Toys and Games

Today we’re talking something super fun: toys and games! Remember Slinkies and Twister? Battleship and Candy Land? Troll dolls? Or were you more of a Barbie and G. I. Joe kind of kid? Let us know what were your go-to amusements as a child, so we can all take a nostalgic walk down memory lane. (Extra points if you still have the toy or game!)

Lisa Q. Mathews

As a virtual only child, I was a very busy doll and stuffie mom. Of course one can never choose a favorite child, so trust me that I loved them all (and yes, I still have some of them downstairs, why do you ask?) But the toys I spent the most time with were probably my weird dollhouses. One I think someone made, because the setup was…different. It had 2 floors, with access to outsiders via a liftable slanted roof. It opened to what I guess was a bedroom for everyone under the eaves. No bathroom, no kitchen (I added a plastic toilet and sink to the bedroom. The downstairs was a very formal living room, with a piano and velvet couch. The inhabitants were those little German figures with the adjustable ace bandage arms and legs. My other dollhouse was less formal: It was a plastic and vinyl trollhouse cave, carrycase. The molded furniture was the same garish colors as the rest of the cave: orange, brown, mustard and black. A smiling troll family lived there: a bride and groom and a tiny baby that originally went on a pencil. Oh, and some weird family black sheep, except he was bright red, with blazing orange eyes and a very soft tuft of pure-white hair. Oh yes, rest assured my childhood was perfectly normal. (My kids grew up with a tasteful Playmobil Victorian, complete with a ghost dragging a ball and chain on the roof.)

 Ellen Byron

I always loved dolls, but one stands out in particular: Little Miss Echo. Not necessarily because she was a favorite, although she was. (I think my Madame Alexander Marmee doll earned top ranking on that score.) Little Miss Echo contained a recorder in her chest. Basically, she parroted back what you recorded into her. The reason she stands out is that one day, a friend and I got stuck in my bedroom closet. We were screaming like banshees to get out. My mother was downstairs with my friend’s mother and thought we were playing with Little Miss Echo and hit the ceiling with a broom to get us to shut up. The two moms finally came up and released us. (Turned out we weren’t stuck; there was just a weird knob in the closet we didn’t know how to use.)

I actually once ordered a Little Miss Echo off of eBay – don’t ask me why – but her recorder box didn’t work anymore, so I returned it. BTW, my Marmee doll had her own misadventure. (For those who didn’t read Little Women, Marmee is what the March sisters called their mother.) One of our dogs pulled off Marmee’s wig, rendering me hysterical. My wonderful parents took me into the city to the late-lamented New York Doll Hospital, where they attached a new wig. But for some reason, I chose one with two long, thick braids, so the doll became more Pocahantas than Marmee.

Marla Cooper

Ummm, this is going to be one of those posts where I realize I had a weird childhood, isn’t it? I didn’t really play with toys or dolls much. I grew up riding horses and spent most of my time doing horse things. I also loved taking walks with my dogs. I vaguely remember a Fisher-Price farm that had little Fisher-Price people and animals, but I wouldn’t call it a favorite. The only thing that I really remember playing with was a board game that was a hand-me-down from my older siblings. It was called Kreskin ESP and it had different ways you could test your psychic abilities. Spoiler: I have none!

Cynthia Kuhn

Mostly I was into reading books, but I do remember the Fisher-Price bus, car, and plane with the little people inside; Barbie, Skipper, Ken, Dawn, and friends (we lost all of their shoes immediately, without fail); a bunch of Breyer horses that we would set up all over the family room floor, and the Chrissie doll whose hair grew at the push of a button. Games we played over and over included Life, Masterpiece, Operation, Monopoly, and my favorite: Mystery Date! 

Leslie Karst

I was obsessed with horses starting at around age four, and by the time I was in junior high school, I was the proud owner of a herd of some fifteen plastic Breyer horses. My best friend Nancy and I would play with them after school (she had her own herd) and make up all sorts of stories about their lives: the lead mare bringing the others out of the storm to the safety of the woods, the stallion saving the herd from a pack of wolves. You get the idea.

In about ninth grade, we even acted out the Shakespeare play we were studying at school–I think it was Julius Caesar–using the horses as the characters.

And yes, I still have every single one of them.

Jennifer Chow

I had a slew of toys. We went through several rounds of Slinkies, both metal and plastic, but I kept stretching them out too much and breaking them! We also had classic toys like huge bouncing balls and marbles—in fact, I pulled out a set a few years back so my dad could play! With my brother, we often defaulted to green army soldiers and Hot Wheels. My own collector items included Troll dolls and a Barbie (once only; she was taken away from me when she somehow got dismembered). My favorite, though, was a My Little Pony. And as a family, we owned Monopoly. I lost every time, even with house rules, and that’s still the case today.

Patricia Sargeant

When I was in elementary school, perhaps 6 or 7 years old, my parents bought me the biggest plush Winnie the Pooh I have ever seen in my life. It was almost as tall as I was. It was huge and soft and smelled wonderful. I talked with it, read to it and slept with it. Regarding sleeping with that toy, did I mention it was huge? It took up more space on my bed than I did. Ha! I loved that toy.

Readers: What was your favorite toy or game as a child?

43 thoughts on “CHICK CHAT: Our Favorite Childhood Toys and Games”

  1. My favorite toy was blocks. They came in all sizes and you can make houses with rooms and people and have them talk to one another. Next up would be Fisher Price toys – love the popper, then Skippy doll, then slinkie and then the board games. I also had books, second favorite thing.

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    1. We always had blocks at our house. And you reminded me of playing with Lincoln Logs at a friend’s house! I loved those. In fact, I thought about ordering some recently, don’t ask me why.

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  2. I had dolls. And Barbies. As a child, I had a green side-dump truck. That seems to have been my favorite (if you believe my parents’ stories). I had two Cabbage Patch dolls and the horse, which I still have. But mostly I read books.

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  3. Cynthia, I own a vintage Mystery Date game, thanks to my older sister. (For those not in the know, the loser gets stuck with The Nerd.) And El, as a kid I visited that doll hospital in NY. Fascinating. (But all those…heads.)

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  4. I had a couple of G.I. Joe’s that I had great fun with. Then when I was a little older, we got a Pong console. That was an absolute blast!

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  5. I remember the Mystery Date commercial! I can still sing the jingle! Mystery date… are you ready for your Mystery Date? Is he a hit? Oooh! Or a miss? Awww…

    It’s funny how horses were such a part of some girls’ childhoods. My only connection to even a real one was refusing to get on a horse during my ill-fated sleepaway camp experience. It’s where I discovered I was afraid of heights. That saddle looked a million miles away from the ground.

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  6. Books, I was a huge reader, but never a doll person. Jacks, roller skates, my bicycle and always board and card games. My mom was a huge card player, so we all learned how to play a number of card games, from war and old maid to gin rummy. Sorry, Monopoly and Scrabble, which quickly became my favorite, but equally as fast, no one else wanted to play with me (what happens when you are a reader, I guess!) Horses came into play when we went to my grandparent’s ranch. I could usually talk one of my uncles into letting me ride around the corral anyway.

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    3. I grew up playing cards with my older brother, who was quite the card shark. Pinochle was the family favorite. I could barely hold the hand of 12 cards but quickly got hooked. “When in doubt play the Queen” my dad would tell me when I was first learning the game. I still love to play Pinochle with family and friends and yes, play the Queen when in doubt.♠️♥️♣️♦️

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  8. Holy throwback! Love the memories this post evoked for me! I played with dolls, but spent more time creating the story and the houses/shops/towns for them than anything else. I repurposed a LOT of cardboard shoe boxes and cassette tape cases.

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  9. I did love Clue as a kid. Haven’t played it in way too long.

    I also was the first generation that had the Rubic’s Cube. Yes, I needed a good to be able to solve it, but I got pretty good at solving it once I knew the patterns to follow. Now? I’d need to book again.

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  10. I played with lots of different toys. I wasn’t really a doll person, although I somtimes played with my sister and her Barbies. My sister and I loved to have tea parties at a kid sized metal table with chairs. We served Hi-C and homemade chocolate chip cookies on a plastic tea set. Sometimes we even served our own cakes from my EZ B ake Oven! I loved my Etch A Sketch! We played lots of family style board games in the Winter and on rainy Summer days. Favorites included Sorry, Life, Clue, and one called Manhunt where you had to figure out who did the crime. All of these toys are long gone but I have many happy memories.

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    2. Loved my Easy Bake Oven! I got our daughter one when she was little, but she never took to it. Ironically, she’s now the best cook in the house! But she still isn’t a baker. That’s my department.

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  11. I am so much older than all of you. I got my first Barbie in 1959. She was #2. I still have her along with Ken that I got in 1962 along with her wardrobe and wardrobe holders. I still have many other games and toys. I read the Bobbsey Twins, Nancy Drew, the Bolton Sisters, the Hardy Boys. I still have the Bobbsey Twin books. I had an Etch-a-Sketch and an Uncle Wiggly Game along with Candyland. My favorite was Barbie, of course. Parcheesi and one with marbles that I cannot remember the name right now.

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  12. Clue was a favorite with our family but Scrabble is my personal preference (another inveterate reader, my mom or I usually won). Did anyone else have Go For Broke? It’s the opposite of Monopoly (not my cup of tea) – the object is to be the first one to get rid of all one’s money and assets. And my rowdy brothers always wanted to play Slap Jack.

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