Nancy’s blog has me reminiscing on the toys of my childhood. Of course I had all the classics: Etch-A-Sketch, Lite Brite, Spirograph, Easy Bake Oven...I had some that my friends didn’t, making me the object of much kindergarten envy, such as the Give-A-Show projector and the Magic 8 ball. Most of my friends had irritating parents far too stingy to pay $10 for a fortune-telling billiard ball, but my parents were practical and understood the necessity. I know $10 was big money back in the mid-70s; however, spoiling via Magic 8 ball does NOT negate Frozen Orange Gelatinous Goo torture, MOM.

Even better, my playmates were still stuck back in kiddie land with the Close-N-Play phonograph while I had a real ‘grown up’ RCA record player - the kind that was more of a piece of furniture. The phonograph was down inside a cabinet which stood on legs and looked like a rather ugly sideboard when closed. I believe I inherited it from my parents when they got a quadrophonic stereo with separate speakers. Although...I seem to remember throwing a pretty good tantrum concerning the defiling of Stones records by playing them on a Close-N-Play and that’s the kind of thing that would have made perfect sense to the rents, so maybe that’s why I had a real big-girl record player. Yeah, I was all about the Stones even as a rug rat - "Itsy Bitsy Spider" didn’t have nothin’ on "Street Fightin’ Man".

I was fond of Slinky once we moved into a house with a basement; while we lived in the classic 70s one-story ranch house, Slinky was fairly boring. Another toy I liked was called "Barrel of Monkeys", which may have had some other, higher purpose, but what I did was make long, long chains of monkeys (you linked their arms together) and string monkeys all over the house. I also had a farm playset, which came with a house, barn, lots of fencing, assorted animals and little tiny people. A few times since the onset of adulthood, I’ve wondered about what exactly that farm was. None of my friends had one, nor was it like anything else I remember from childhood - for example, it wasn’t Weebles farm or a Barbie or Dawn dolls accessory. I really liked my farm; after spending hours laying out the fence and meticulously arranging the outbuildings and animals, I would make my favorite stuffed animal, Koko the Koala Bear, who was much larger than the not-Weebles, come tromping in and stomp all over the farm. It was utter koala devastation - Godzilla goes down under, I guess.

As far as toy disappointments, there was Mr. Potato Head. I was disappointed because Mr. Potato Head didn’t DO anything. I’m not sure what I expected him to do, exactly, but once you’d put the big red (and in my mind, bridge-club-lady) lips along with the Italian organ-grinder moustache on him, the entertainment value was about gone.

The worst was probably a doll for whom I begged and begged and begged called Tiffany Taylor, who had hair that changed from blonde to black, but once I got her, I never played with her. I tried to throw her away a few times, but surprisingly, Mom always noticed a 19" doll in the trash can and rescued her, so I gave up on that; afterward, Mom would find her stuffed down in the nethermost regions of my toy box, hidden deep under piles of stuff in my closet or buried under vast stacks of quilts in the linen closet. Mom would ask why I never played with her, or why she was in the trash, and seemed very disappointed that I disliked the toy. I was too young to really articulate the problem (5 or 6, I guess) but the thing was, Tiffany’s hair didn’t really change, like if you added water or a "magic solution" or something. It was blonde in front and black in back, and to change you turned the entire top of her scalp around. The scalp was rubbery plastic while her face and body were hard, molded plastic. You can’t tell in this picture (although you can see the hip lime platform shoes), but almost instantly the rubbery plastic started to pull away from the hard, molded plastic, so Tiffany had this horrible gap in her head, kinda like an autopsy victim or Do-It-Yourself Lobotomy Barbie. It was truly disturbing. I didn’t have the vocabulary to adequately express my horror or how grotesque I found the yawning gash in Tiffany’s skull, so I just told Mom I didn’t like her. You can kinda see what I’m talking about here if you scroll down to the brunette picture; although this one doesn't look too hideous, trust me: my Tiffany’s gap was the stuff of which childhood nightmares are made.

In Googling for pictures to illustrate the horror of Tiffany’s scalp wound, I discovered something. Did you know Tiffany Taylor is also a Playboy centerfold? A NAKED one? Neither did I. *sniff* Goodbye to the last vestiges of my childhood innocence...on the other hand, real live naked Tiffany doesn’t have a big gap running around her scalp, and even though I’m not into naked chicks, an intact skull is always a good thing.

MONTOYA DELENDA EST!