The Chronicle Herald (Provincial)
Top toys from past still popular
Audrey Derby still remembers her favourite — and at the same time, the most surprising gift — she ever received for Christmas. It all happened 70 years ago.
Somewhere in the early 1950s, the Sherwood, P.E.I. woman unwrapped a record player and record. At that time, there was a popular song out by Perry Como, called Hot Diggity (Dog Ziggity Boom). Derby still recalls how the chorus went: “Hot diggity, dog ziggity, boom what you do to me.”
Derby says she excitedly got the record player plugged into an outlet and managed to figure out how to place the record and start the turntable spinning. Then, she turned up the volume, ready to hear this popular song.
The music started out perfectly. Then it went, “Hot Diggity, dog ziggity, boom I'm a circus clown! Jumping up and down!”
“Can you imagine the shock, then the tears, that followed?” says Derby. “My poor mom. I can still see her face fall. She didn't know there was a child's version of the popular song!”
Derby says she didn't dwell long on the disappointment, as she knew her mom had picked blueberries at $1 a bucket to give her family a good Christmas that year. That little record player played many other records for many years, says Derby.
Valerie White Parker, from St. John's, N.L., remembers vividly how in the mid 1960s, every little girl around the age of five years old wanted Chatty Cathy, the talking doll. Made by Mattel, the doll talked when you pulled a string.
White Parker now knows the doll would have been expensive, but didn't realized it back then. All she knew then was her little friend Sharon, who lived two doors down, got Cathy, while she got Cindy, who didn't talk.
“I thought maybe I hadn't been good enough throughout the year,” she says.
TOYS FROM THE PAST
Toys from the past have a way of staying with us, creating feelings of nostalgia.
People are even more drawn to the comforts of nostalgia these days with the year we've had, says Brigid Milway, owner of What, These Old Things?, an online vintage boutique based in Dartmouth that specializes in eclectic vintage and antique finds.
“I am doing everything I can to connect my customers with items that will give them that joy that they felt when they received these toys as a kid,” says Milway.
Krista Montelpare is the creator of Love Letter Lifestyle, a blog where she teaches others how to thrift and repurpose vintage items. She says currently, Fisher Price and other toys from the 1980s are extremely popular. In fact, they are as expensive now as it would be to buy an equivalent new toy today, says the Glace Bay woman.
Other popular items include Little People, which Montelpare believes were taken off the market because they posed a choking hazard, are all of a sudden worth a ton of money, likely for nostalgia over play value. Ditto for the Fisher Price farm sets and schoolhouse magnets. Pretty much all of the toys from the 1980s are popular again today, she says.
“You can find them in antique stores and for auction, and if you spot one at the thrift store, be prepared to pay higher-than-usual prices,” says Montelpare.
Milway says it's not only the 1980s that are hot trends this year, but also toys from the 1990s are making a huge comeback as well. A lot of toys have been rebooted for modern times, but nothing beats the classics, she says.
“I've been focusing my time on Polly Pockets, the miniature compacts and dolls that are hugely collectible now,” says Milway.
Kids at heart with grown-up wallets are willing to spend big bucks to get a piece of their childhood back for themselves or their kids, she says.
Aside from the nostalgia factor, Montelpare says a lot of vintage toys were made of good quality materials, even if they may have been hazardous in other ways according to today's standards. That's demonstrated by how they've withstood the test of time, she says.
Vintage toys were made from solid plastics and wood that can handle rough play over several generations of siblings or cousins.
“My guess would be that the trend towards mass-production of toys over the last couple decades has given us items of poor quality, toxic materials, and other things,” says Montelpare.
It also speaks to how fast trends move now and how the "hot toys" may cycle in and out of vogue just as quickly, whereas a Little People playhouse or farm set can offer play value without a connection to the latest Disney movie or trend, she adds.
“My Cabbage Patch Doll was my prized possession,” says Montelpare, referring to the doll that led to a craze in the Christmas of 1983, with parents lining up outside of stores to snag one of the coveted toys. “A good quality doll will have play value for a long time.”