My six-year-old granddaughter “Ladybug” has every toy known to man in a playroom that was once a ballroom in her family’s 1890s Victorian home. The room is 27’x 18’ and on that sea of blue carpet is a puppet theatre with dozens of puppets, a kitchen corner with all the appliances and a table and chairs, a doll bed, a doll house (big enough to hide in when she was 3), a little table with a fort and a castle on it, a table with a toy train, shelves with colorful crates full of games and puzzles, an easel with chalkboard, stuffed animals on a wooden built-in bench the entire width of the room and a tub of costumes to dress up in. The middle of the room has a tube to climb through, a teepee, assorted push/pull toys, grocery cart, etc. There are also toys in her and her brother’s bedrooms and nearly a hundred books.
I was babysitting a few weeks back when my daughter gave “Ladybug” a new lunch box — seems her little brother liked her Elmo one and was using it at nursery school. Inside the “My Little Pony” lunch box was a little strip of corrugated cardboard to keep the shape (they aren’t metal anymore). The little strip had several folds in it and my granddaughter took it with her and ended up playing with that little strip of cardboard all evening. She used it to corral her “my little ponies,” and to fold and unfold it like an accordion. I could see her mind working and can’t imagine what that little scrap of cardboard was becoming. She finally put it down as I turned off her light after her bedtime books.
Last week, after reading Linda Kennet’s “What’s in the Attic” article about toy cars which were first cast in 1890s, I realized as human beings we really haven’t had manufactured toys all that long. My mother, who was a child during the Depression, had so few toys they all could fit in a shadow box (which I made up for her on her 60th birthday).
I always had plenty of toys as a child and I certainly bought enough toys for my own kids. I’ll never forget one Christmas when my husband and I started bringing up the toys for our son’s Christmas from the basement, when we realized we really had taken this toy thing to a whole other level. So we picked out an appropriate amount of overindulgence and took the rest back to the basement. Luckily, for several years afterwards, every time my son was invited to a birthday party, I didn’t have to go to the store, I just went to the basement.
We Boomers spend so much money on toys for our kids and grandkids but all they really want is the big cardboard box it came in.
