What I DON'T Collect and An Unusual Discovery

As I try to regain some sort of momentum for posting there are so many things that I'd like to do this year. One of these was to share some thoughts about toys you may never see here on Toys and Stuff, a subject intended to be covered this past week but understandably postponed.

1) Action Figures. If you've been a long time blog reader you already know about the 4" action figures I started to cover in 2011 and 2012. Simply put - I stopped. They are kind of neat but after reading various on-line reviews and watching YouTube reviews one thing just ended up bothering me. Toy companies will take the various body parts and swap them between figures so Thor's face may end up on some villain's torso, or some villain's torso may end up in a hero's body. Okay, I'm not totally daft and I know parts swapping is not an uncommon practice with toy companies, but ultimately this whole genre of toys didn't maintain my interest

2) Star Wars. There's just too many of them. Unless someone is willing to give me a warehouse rent free, it ain't gonna happen (with one small exception which perhaps we'll see this year)

3) Lego's. See #2 above. Today's typical Lego set is so far removed from when I was growing up it's unbelievable! The variety now is astounding, but I'm not going to buy 500,000 bricks just to make a Batcave or Hogwarts Castle - where would I put it?

I could go on but these three categories are mega hits in the collecting world - just not for me.

Scanning family photos this week happened to be an unexpected source of inspiration for the blog because lo-and-behold I had come across several photos from either Christmas or birthday parties which contained toys - toys I had forgotten I had.   Check out this photo below from my birthday in 1963:

There are several points of interest here. First is the rocket cake topper. I do believe this was made of cardboard. The bear is actually a cake my mother made. She used to make and decorate cakes in all sorts of designs and began selling them, though it never became a full-time business. Notice the coffee pot on the right which we talked about yesterday. BUT the icing on the cake (pun intended) are the cake toppers or decorations seen strewn along the front edge of the platter: Captain Video space ships and alien figures by Lido! Holy Cow! I do not remember these at all but it's apparent I was interested in space toys from an early age.  What surprises me is that after so many years of trolling eBay and the Web not once did looking at Captain Video toys spark any recollections. Good grief, I've spent twenty years trying to reclaim my childhood by collecting toys  - do I have to start another collection? LOL We shall see, we shall see.

Enjoy!