So here we are, about three weeks from Christmas. And I still don’t know what I’m going to get untitledson. I haven’t had the time to research the must-have toys for three year-old boys. All this thinking about Christmas presents brings to mind my favorite gifts from holidays past:
Fuzzy Pumper Barber Shop — What amazed me about this toy was that it actually worked like it did on the TV commercial — the Play-Doh hair came a-sprouting out of the top of the hard plastic head (at least until I forgot my lump of Play-Doh inside said head, where it would proceed to dry up and fill each and every hole like drywall spackling. I would then have to poke each follicle out one-by-one with a toothpick. What a buzzkill. Or shall I say… what a FUZZkill.
Barbie Fashion Plaza (with elevator) — More Barbie schwag. When I circled this bitch in the J.C. Penney catalog, I knew damn well I’ d never get it. Then when I did, well, my mind was blown. Finally, I could retire the old Kleenex box that had served double-duty as Barbie’s Corvette and fuck pad. My favorite feature was the elevator, which amounted to a jerky pair of leg shackles in which I would snap Barbie’s little stub calves. I’d pull the elevator string, throttling her from the garden level to the terrace in one jerky movement.
And lastly, my all-time-favorite…
Barbie Fashion Face — I spent some serious time with BFF. I’d comb the long hair, resisting the temptation to cut it, like my friends had so foolishly done to theirs. I’d put my mom’s old blue eyeshadow and toffee-colored lipstick on her, and then remove it with a Kleenex and the Mary Kay Exquisite body lotion (which I was convinced kept her skin dewy and youthful). When I go home over the holidays, I’m going to dig her out of the crawl space. And if I haven’t yet cut her hair, I will now. Poor thing’s almost 30 and has never gone through her punk phase. Maybe I’ll use a black Sharpie and turn her into Terri Nunn from Berlin.
As a child of the 80’s, I must reminisce about my Cabbage Patch Kids, notorious for their tattooed, tight asses.
I think you should not tell your mother about the fashion head or whatever it is, do it up like her, and then leave it on her doorstep and act surprised when she finds it.
1) 1977: Royal blue stereo complete with turntable and 8-track.
2) 1978: Apple scented powder (which came in a big plastic green apple.
3) 1979: 10 foot stuffed snake.
4) The year I got my first Barbie (circa 1972) and within 2 hours of owning her I had
chopped all of her hair off and dyed it with green food coloring (what a mess!). Oddly,
I never did get another Barbie.
1984 to 1988 was really my Christmas heyday… I remember each one fondly, and three gifts stand out: Castle Greyskull, for my He-Man action figures to live in; a Nintendo (and Super Mario Brothers 2 the next year), and a dog that would eventually be loathed by everyone in my family except for me.
Hands down my best Christmas gift ever was my Atari 2600 along with the Asteroids game. In those days we called cartridges tapes, remember? Second best was my Star Trek USS Enterprise bridge play set complete with transporter. That thing rocked! Star Wars figures and vehicles always went over big with me too.
Had to be my Crissy doll, with the “hair that grows and grows, right down to her toes!” I adored Crissy–she had auburn hair and brown eyes and just like me. Unlike me, her hair could be reeled into her body using a wheel on her back or released to its full length when you pushed in her belly button and gave a gentle tug. I made her clothes and had a Crissy carrying case. I longed to get her best friend Velvet, who had long blonde hair and a velvet dress.
I kept that doll FOREVER and let my darling E-Grrrl played with her. Than just weeks before we moved, I discovered E-Grrrl had gotten too enthusiastic with the wheel on the back and sucked every last shred of the big hank of hair into Crissy’s body. No more long flowing locks. Wah! I broke down and sent Crissy to the landfill. I couldn’t let her do Europe with bad hair.
Malibu Barbie, circa 1971, is still hot and sassy after all these years. Her hair and her tan are perfect as always and the outfits I have for her are back in style…..
My favorite childhood gifts: Fashion Plates, Holly Hobby sleeping bag. EZ Bake Oven, Betsy Wetsy doll (she peed in her diaper - gawd, talk about teaching them early…), and I remember a few Barbies in there, too. Some of my geekier faves: Spirograph and a praying hands paint-by-number kit (the canvas was black velvet and it came with like 10 shades of caucasion flesh-toned oil paint to create contours in the hands.) Oh, and one year I got a record of Claire Bloom reading “Sleeping Beauty”. Loved that.
“Back in the day” the Easy Bake Oven used heated coils to bake the cakes. Hot enough to weld your fingers together as you took your product out of the oven. Metal pans. Metal oven. No plastic. About 20 minutes to make a cake…versus the hour or so it requires so that it can bake SAFELY by the lame-o heat given off by a light bulb. Today’s kids are missing out, but they do retain the use of all ten fingers.
Same for the old school Creepy Crawlers. Old school rocks. Speaking of Barbie, come see a pic of the original Barbie Dream House on my site.
Mod Ken with the dark brown shag and stick-on facial hair. I dreamed about getting a Mod Ken. You could adorn his face with a porn ’stache, beard, or pork chop side burns. I think I was 8 or 9 when I got him. Barbie was so grateful. She hated that hard, molded plastic hair that Malibu Ken had.
A couple of years later, I got a Fashion Photo Barbie. I think she was one of the first ones with earrings and a ring stuck through her hand. She came with a camera and a stand that connected with cables. You could stick her feet in the stand and then click the camera and she would vogue for you.
When I was in ninth grade, Mod Ken and Fashion Photo Barbie got turned into a project for Romeo and Juliet unit we did in English class. My mom and I designed and made period costumes for them. They loved the costumes so much that they never took them off.
You have, of course, seen the NEW Barbie Fashion Head — it’s the Unicorn.
You can style its mane, and apply Barbie make-up to it.
I can’t decide if I should be mortally offended on behalf of horses, or admit that I would have LOVED this when I was 6 . . .
The fav memory I have of giving my eldest son a gift, way back when My Pal Two was BIG! He said, with fervent eloquence, “you didn’t just give me My Pal Two–you gave me HAPPINESS!” Gawd, I jess love that kid ‘o mine. Even more fun is to bring up the memory now, since he’s 23 (bwahahahahaha!)
hands down, the year i got the tandy radio shack trs-80. it was later dubbed the “trash-80″, but fuck the nay-sayers. i loved it. yeah, i had the tape recorder to save data and play games too. seems like just yesterday i was programming the TV (we didn’t have a monitor) to flash 50 different colors…
Where are the updaaaates. So many blogs were slow in updating this past week! I’ve actually had to do WORK cuz there was nothing for me to procrastinate with!
Sorry about Friday, John. I try to post three times a week, but I was uber-busy. Hopefully, Monday’s post will make up for it.