Friday's Top Five: Childhood Toys

Total Truth.

*Note: Still catching-up...this should have been published on November 1st. Ahem. Don't forget to check the blogs of A Warm Cup of Jo & The Brooding Woman, and A Piece of Apple for their takes.

Hello faithful readers of five!

Today is one of the rare days where I am not only caught up on my work, but also caught up on my make-work projects. I mean, I suppose there is things I could do. But why bother, when I can blog instead? In any event, I am so far behind in my Friday Five blogs that today is as good as any to catch-up.

There is much to love about the 80's. As a kid the 80's, toys were awesome. Toys are o.k. now I suppose, but they are all "safe for kids & the environment." Boring. Life is not lived unless there is a real risk of injury or lead-poisoning.

Without further ado, here are my favourite childhood toys.

5) The Snoopy Sno-Cone Machine.

If you want to know why childhood obesity really took a foothold in the eighties, I present you with the Snoopy Sno-Cone Machine. This was the first toy I can remember wanting so bad. Every kid wanted to make their own slushie. This led to other culinary food-as-toys like the E-Z Bake Oven. It was cool for a while, until I discovered it was a lot easier to just run out and grab some snow from the backyard...

4) The Rubix Cube

Ah, the timeless rubix cube. It was a great time waster. Until you got frustrated and just peeled the stickers off.

3) The Cabbage Patch Doll

Sad story that really speaks to the poverty of my childhood. When every kid in the world was getting this toy, I begged my mom for one. She obviously couldn't afford a real doll, so she got me a "imitation" Cabbage Patch. I knew it wasn't real, but other kids didn't. I wrote the signature on the bum myself, created a fake certificate using crayons, and named her Rebecca (my favourite name as a grade 2 kid). I think I eventually got a real one when Dad got a job in the patch. But I didn't love the fancy one as much as I loved Rebecca.

2) Atari

It's hard to believe in the world of Play Stations, X-Box's, and Smart phones that at one time, this was cutting edge technology. I spent hours trying to save my 2-dimensional pixels from the fire in towering inferno.

1) Board Games

There was nothing that passed the time better than board games...or 'bored' games depending on how you view this past-time. The game of Life in particular was one of my favourites. You built a life depending on the spin and route you took, with the choices you made earlier in the game having consequences later on. Which is kind of like real life. Except I am pretty sure I will never have the kind of money my character did in the board game, 'cuz real life sucks.