Y'know it's cliche to marvel "Kids these days have everything" I can concur with that, I guess, but I think my generation had it pretty sweet. There's some truly awesome shit in the '82 Wish Book!!
Some of the highlights--
Out of all these board game "classics"....we had BONKERS! I have no recollection whatsoever of how the game was played (or any memories of ever playing the game, for that matter) but isn't the artwork on the box swell?? You know what game we had that was absolutely kickass ? "Cat's Eye " which, sadly, is nowhere to be found in the Sears Wish Book. And even sadder still, it's MIA from the basement.In a barely relevant aside-- remember Bonkers candy? Maaan you couldn't get through a Laugh Digest without running into 50 ads for that shit. Do they still make Bonkers???
We had this Hasbro "Skedoodle" gadget. It's another of the missing toys (ok, maybe my parents didn't save absolutely EVERYTHING) but I'm not really missing it. I mean, it looked like a really neat-o gadget but ultimately it was just Etch-a-Sketch's lameass cousin...with a joystick. (This was the boy version...haaa) As is to be expected, we lost most of the stencils.
I think Sears screwed my parents over when they bought their Happy Valley Furniture (see item #1) . Apparently this was a 2 bench and 1 table set but we only had (I should say:"HAVE") 1 bench. So the folks at Sears gave 'em the shaft I suppose..... or at least that's a nicer thought than the possibility that my sister's & mine incredible avarice (even at that young age) had so impoverished my parents that they chipped in their one third of $46.99 (I's no good at math) to an impoverished mommy & daddy collective and split the Happy Valley Table & Bench set with 2 other families.Oh, also we had a toy box very similar in structure to #2 there, but the design on it was different and less wonderful than the Happy Valley line.
This toy was MINE, all mine. I remember the instructional tape (with blank B side) they provided... called "The World of Sound" if I recall correctly. I know one of the clever uses for tape recorders they suggested was recording oneself playing "Chopsticks" on the piano. Which is not exactly how I used mine....I clearly remember my first big job with this baby... I hid it behind a platter on the the dining room hutch and I surreptitiously recorded my parents' meeting with the insurance man. Yeah...we had an insurance man that came to our house (my sister used to be scared of him) I don't think they do that in the insurance biz anymore do they ?? That practice has gone the way of Bonkers candy (yep, I have since researched it.. they's discontinued ..WAAH)
Apparently I sensed that I could glean some valuable classified info from insurance dealings....but my wee 6 year old brain had no idea what that info would be. Hell, I barely know now...
This I am adding in here to illustrate that I didn't possess something from EVERY page of the Wish Book. I just want to show how I was not truly SPOILED ROTTEN (I was just regular spoiled) . How rad it woulda been though, if I did have this!! I had a Viewmaster... but you had to READ the reel commentary. Not half so rad as all this, right?? This is like a filmstrip, kinda. Filmstrips were terrif...especially if you were the chosen one who got to man the projector. When educational films made the jump to VHS they became significantly duller...because they lost that audience participation factor...
This school here predates the total lame-ification of Little People that took place in the 90s (the Fisher Price toy, we're not talking about midgets here) I had this awesome school...... it was unfortunate for the pupils that they didn't have anywhere to play unless they took the roof off the school. They so should've held a bake sale or somethin'. Still, they did have a pretty sweet merry go-round. I wanted a life-size one for my school.This one I did have...had my parents not bought me toys like that and the Play Desk (below...)
I would not be the academic ace that I am today.But my absolute favorite thing to play with as a wee moppet...hands down....was BARBIE. Probably if playing by myself I would fart around with the Play Desk or "Skeedoodle" for a spell (oh..we did have some truly rad Colorforms playsets...Smurfs, Miss Piggy, Mork & Mindy) but if Laura and I played together, 90% of the time we were playing Barbies.
The first stage was house construction-- we had a few pieces of Barbie furniture but no Mattel manse of any kind. We would set up rooms on the stone step in front of the fireplace and also the coffee table. We'd make tables out of coasters and beds out of crocheted Kleenex box covers (the oblong type, obviously ). Then we'd name all the girls .Our top names were: Kate, Sydney, & Samantha. Not in that order...'cause I believe "Sydney" was the #1 fave...we'd fight over who got to be Sydney. But we played with 6 dolls (3 ea..very fair) so we musta had a few other names we used. I can't remember the others. Just never "Barbie"...nobody ever used "Barbie " for a name.
Anyways, I will spare you retellings of the elaborate melodramas we'd stage and get back to the Wish Book. In there I found "Magic Curl Barbie" which I retro-covet. I never had that one. Surprisingly, Barbie truly rocks that fro.. . and I dig that dress. Is it not terrif?? I find I can appreciate her better while supping with Ken rather than in the above pic where she dwarfs the entire beauty salon. How is Barbie supposed to water her fro in that sink, huh?? HUH?
We did have Pink & Pretty Barbie. She really had a gorgeous tan---a genuine, cooked-in-the-sun hue....none of that orangey faux-glow back then, you know. And the shirt she came with was probably the single-most popular piece in our collective Barbie wardrobe. Don't know if you can tell from this pic, but it had silver polka dots. Also, it was backless--very saucy. The write-up here says her sheer pink cape could be converted into a hat. WHA-A-AAAAAT?? How is it that I never knew that?? I don't know why it so upsets me....how attractive can a hat made from a cape be, anyways??
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