Bob CollinsThe opening of the latest Toy Story has people remembering their favorite toy as a child and, judging by this blog post from Bob Mondello with NPR personalities showing their favorite toy, many people have rescued theirs from the ash heap of history.
Try as I might, I can’t recall a favorite “toy” as a kid. I’d kill, still, for a good Wiffle Ball game, but that’s not something you save. I played a lot of “dice baseball” games and I still have some of those around, but that’s only because I played it as an adult, too.
A few years ago, my mother sent this to me:
The problem is I can barely remember playing with it. I must have, though. Its eyes are gone, the music box attached to its belly as if it were a State Fair cow stomach exhibit doesn’t work anymore, and it appears to have been squeezed regularly. But it has no particular emotional meaning, as evidence by the fact that it currently is guarding the detrius of the workbench in the garage.
I have a few toys — besides the closet full of Beanie Babies — that the kids had when they were small, but they probably have more meaning to me, than them.
Do kids still play with toys? Toys that you can hold, or throw, or shove in the closet at some point until their mother digs it out and sends it to them decades from now? Or will today’s kids some day find an old — probably cracked — CD, and suppress a tear as they recall their moments snuggling with World of Warcraft?
Let’s see Pixar make a movie out of that!
