Thursday, October 22, 2009

They Never Get Old

I was sure my parents never took any photos of us playing Fisher Price, but I was wrong. I found a few slides while looking through a box the other day. The looks on our faces tell the story. This was our all-time favorite game. We built houses with blocks, picked out furniture and families, and played for hours. In the summer we sometimes took our Little People out in the back yard, but the best time to play was during the colder months: Saturday mornings began by pulling the dishpan of toys from the closet and pushing the boxes of blocks out into the living room where we set up our towns. Each Christmas a few more packages of people and furniture would show up under the tree, and sometimes at birthdays a whole set would appear; a farm, a house, the houseboat or school, the castle, or maybe a school bus to replace the old one whose wheels were bent from play or melted after being placed on the heater.

When I had children of my own I was sure Fisher Price would be their very favorite too. We bought a second hand farm and house at a garage sale, a firehouse and circus train from Kiddie City, and gladly accepted any offerings from friends and neighbors. Sadly, my boys were just not all that into Little People and, regrettably, I sold much of our collection in a yard sale years ago. I figured I could always replace them. Not so... not unless I shop on ebay. Most of my present collection is still the toys my parents bought for us when we were little girls and they are still well loved. The little girls play with them every day.

3 comments:

  1. This brings back a lot of memories! I was the one that set the bus on the heater. Oooops! I didn't know!

    It is definitely more of a girl thing. My girls loved the FP loving family dollhouse. I'm not getting rid of it, no matter what Jamie says!

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  2. These are great! I wonder how these got misplaced for all these years, makes me wonder what else we might find.

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  3. My little brother and I played "Fisher-Price", as we called it, for hours at a time when we were little. He had the airport, I had the school, and lots of the furniture. I remember our friend down the street had EVERYTHING! We loved going to her house. So when I got married and had kids, I started collecting it for them...and then they made the people big and chunky and the sets more babyish. I wish I had bought more when it was at Kiddie City. Now, my kids play more with the bigger dollhouse stuff. Oh, it brings back memories though....when I got that schoolhouse, I remember it was in the Sears catalog for $8.99. Thanks for sharing those pictures!!

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