After shopping for boys for the past seven years I've now become quite adept at it. In fact, it's quite easy. Boys like toys with a bit of fire power. The like to blow stuff up and shoot bits at each other. Even Lego and Playmobil, staple unisex brands which were the 'new thing' in the 70s, have a bit of fire power these days! Then there are Super Heroes, Star Wars and dress-up costumes. When they're older it's games consoles with games which fire things and blow stuff up. Remember this and you can't go wrong!
This is the first proper year where I'm venturing down the pink aisle of the toy shops as my youngest and only girl is 20 months old and she's wanting toys which aren't of the the Vtech/Leapfrog/Fisher Price baby educational variety.
So down the pink aisle I go and what do I see? Shelf after shelf of sparkly pink tat. I have no idea why everything must sparkle or be pink if its to be marketed at girls, but despite having two big brothers and an influx of those gender-neutral baby toys, my daughter makes a beeline for the glitter!
I was a very girlie-girl when I was young. I loved dolls and babies and any toy which could be dressed and brushed and I can't remember much sparkle or much pink.
So what were my favourite toys over the years? I've done quite a bit of research and found dozens of gems - many of which I'd forgotten the name of - and I'm now sitting totally assured that Santa brought us kids of the 1970s much better presents than anything I could find for my daughter today.
1. SINDY'S DREAM HOME
Here it is, folks! The cream of the crop of all toys which ever existed ... Sindy's dream home! I had that blue bedroom and orange bathroom suite in my house and it was blinking spectacular! As was the roof patio and greenhouse with paper plants to colour in. Then we have the 'wall of sound' with crackling fire and purring cat! For those not aware of early Sindy ... she was much cooler when she had a big head and didn't look like Barbie. The 1990s ruined her.
2. GIRL'S WORLD
The best thing about this ultimate in 'styling heads' was the little booklet which gave you lots of hair styling and make-up ideas. I remember the sporty look instructed you to draw freckles on. I'm sure this booklet taught me how to plait hair, which is very useful. The curlers didn't work, but the make-up was quite good. In time, I discovered the wonders of scissors and chopped all of it's hair off.
3. LADYBIRD'S 'WELL-LOVED TALES'
The drawings in these books are so vivid and I remember gazing at them for hours, examining all the detail in the clothes of the characters and the scenery. I had all of these books and I'm very lucky to still have them sitting on my eldest's book shelf. I loved them because they were the real un-Disneyfied versions of the fairy tales. The wicked queen in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was made to dance to her death in red hot iron shoes and I'm pretty sure the Big Bad Wolf ate Little Red Riding Hood. Then there was Cinderella who went to a whopping three balls and had a different outfit for each! My favourite book was Snow-White and Rose-Red (top left), probably just because there was two girl characters and it was a less well known story and I like to back the underdog! :)
4. BRITAIN'S ZOO
I loved this toy and played with it for hours. I had some farm animals too, but the zoo was the best. One of my earliest memories was getting three donkeys from the local shop circa. 1977 (before my sister was born and I lived in a council flat in Sunderland with my parents and nana). The polar bear family was my favourite, but I also had a sneaky regard for the giant tortoise. I didn't have that band in the picture above though - but I wish I had!
5. FISHER PRICE SCHOOL
FP 'Little People' were much better in the 70s. The school roof was magnetic would you believe! I learned to read and spell with this school! Plus ... and wait for this ... the front wall was a blackboard AND you got real chalk! As for the characters, just look at the freckle faced school bully. You wouldn't mess with him, would you? :)
6. LUNDBY DOLLS' HOUSE
Rivalling the Sindy dream home in 'the amount of time you can sit and play with a toy' stakes is this Lundby dolls' house which was called something Swedish and Ikea-esque. This was a fab toy and I was VERY lucky to have this. The car was brill as it had seatbelts and the kitchen was very 'modern' as it had a dishwasher. The wooden television was especially memorable as it had a photograph of a long-haired bloke on water-skis. Oh and it lit up. Even the fish tank which I inexplicably placed on the outdoor balcony lit up!
7. BALLERINA SINDY
This was my first 'big girl's doll' and I got her when I was four. As previously mentioned, 'big head' Sindy was a good, solid, great British doll and I wish you could still buy her. Who'd buy Monster's High if you could get a Sindy? Not me, that's for sure!
8. JEM DOLLS
Jem, a range of popstar dolls, arrived in the early 80's and for a time, she rivalled Sindy in my affections. The doll on the right had flashing red earrings! My favourite was Jem's bitchy rival, Stormer (above left), who was more 'rock chick' than pop starlet and ... well, just look at that hair! Need I say more?
9. MANDY ANNUAL
Every year for Christmas I got a Mandy annual and I read it diligently from cover to cover several times over. I was always a Mandy rather than a Bunty girl and it's such a shame neither of these great girls' comics exist today. Maybe adolescent girls became too sophisticated for stories about boarding school kids saving their school from a wicked development company ... I don't know, but it is a shame. Most of the stories seemed to revolve around ponies for some reason, which brings us on to .....
10. MY LITTLE PONY
These are still around but they're much weirder and even come in semi-human 'pony girl' form with lots of glitter, sparkles and pinkness. The originals were much cuter. This one was my favourite and she was called Bubbles.
11. MISFITS
A unisex toy, these were a set of very strange and terrifying people which you had to make up. There was a 'blacked up' fella in the mix so they're too retro-racist for today's market. I did find a similar, updated version of these in Home Bargains a couple of years ago but they were nowhere near as scary therefore nowhere near as good! Just look at that baby's face on the left!
12. AMANDA JANE
I'm lucky enough to still have two of these dolls from when I was little, which my little girl loves to dress. Amanda Jane came in three genres. Baby Amanda Jane (above), classic Amanda Jane (child aged around 4) and Miss Amanda Jane (child aged around 10). I had quite a few of these dolls and lots of outfits including my favourite - a Brownies costume. They had very bad hair though and would look like Jimi Hendrix after barely a few months of brushing.
13. FISHER PRICE HOUSE
Every child of the 70s first dolls house! This is so much better than today's Little People or Happyland as it had lots of removable furniture. I loved the baby (above right) who would sit in it's cot, highchair or pushchair and wasn't the least worried that he was the same height as the adults. Neither was the dog!
14. VIEWMASTER
Mostly this was a rubbish toy, UNLESS you managed to get the Disney Viewmaster reels! I had Cinderella AND Lady and the Tramp and was probably the envy of the neighbourhood at a time when Disney films were only released - at the cinema - every generation. That's right kids ... there were no DVDs and no VHS (whatever that was!) - you had to go to the cinema in the school holidays and watch clips at Christmas and Easter on 'Disney Time'.
15. THE GARDEN GANG
I seem to remember that these fab Ladybird books were written by a child and were coloured in felt tip pens. I had lots of these books and I think my favourite was Polly Pomegranate, who wanted to be a ballerina. I also liked Grace Grape the shy but talented opera singer.
16. CLACKERS
Some time in the early 80s, clackers emerged. The first type was basically two hard plastic balls attached to either ends of a piece of cord which you had to manipulate to 'clack'. After taking several childrens' eyes out, the above, re-designed clackers appeared. I was only allowed these by my parents for obvious safety reasons.
17. TINY TEARS
She cried AND wee-wee'd which was phenomenal technology for the 1970s. I loved my tiny tears and it never occurred to me that although she had the body of a 6 month old baby, she also had a full head of permed hair which wouldn't have looked out of place on my nana.
18. FASHION PLATES
Easily one of my favourite toys, these fashion plates would occupy me for hours. The idea was you could match up head, body and legs (six of each to choose from), take a crayon rubbing of it and then colour it in. Simple fun, but the possibilities were endless. Particularly when you discovered that the back of the plates had patterns which you could rub over too! I wish I still had these as they were fabulous! :)
19. LEGO
Long before the sickly pink Lego Friends range and long before the Lego Minifigure was invented, Lego people looked like this. Basically, you made clothes out of the bricks and to make a child you shortened the arms. Endless possibilities for creating families and girls played with the same type of Lego as boys in the 70s too! Imagine that, horrible Lego Friends!!
20. VICTORIA PLUM
If you're a girl you'll know that girls love stationery and every girl in the early 80s had a Victoria Plum pencil. I had colouring pencils, pencil cases and a particularly loved rubber pencil topper too!
21. TOPSY AND TIM
Of course you can still buy these books and there's even a TV show, but they were much better in the early '80s. My favourite book was the 'Learn to Swim' one and can remember my favourite picture of a swimming race at the end. Tim cheated as he swam with one foot on the bottom of the pool. He was always far more useless at doing things than Topsy.
22. CAMBERWICK GREEN PUZZLE
I remember playing with this wooden jigsaw for many years and Camberwick Green (as well as Trumpton and Chigley) was one of my favourite TV shows. Mrs Honeyman with her baby was my favourite character, but I also liked Dr Mop. The picture above says age 2 to 5, but I can't imagine a 5 year old playing with this toy today!
23. NATIONALITY DOLLS
I've always loved national costumes and I had a lot of these large dolls, which were all dressed in traditional European dresses. I had all three of the above. They must have been quite cheap simple for the fact that my parents managed to buy me so many of them! In hindsight they weren't that brilliant as their clothes weren't very accurate, but I still played with them a lot.
24. CASSETTE RECORDERS
Wahey! Look at these beauts!! The tape recorder on the top is similar to my first one and it was very rubbish by today's music playing machine's standards but that orange 'record' button meant you could tape theme tunes off the telly. I had a couple of 'telly tunes' tapes, my favourite being either 'The Fall Guy' or 'The Littlest Hobo'. The upgrade to the below DOUBLE cassette recorder meant a) you could tape your tapes and make 'mix tapes' and b) you could tape off the radio carefully pausing through any talking and getting cross if you missed the beginning of the song. Suddenly there was no reason to spend money you didn't have (due to being 10) on albums! Awesome!!
25. FUZZY FELT
I have good memories of playing with this exact set of fuzzy felts and used to make the mouse on the scooter over and over again. No idea what the creature on the right is ... Zippy from Rainbow with a suntan? Hmmm ...
26. POT BELLY PANDA
I used to love this soft toy which must have came out circa 1982. You could also get pot belly bear (my sister had this one), pot belly raccoon and pot belly koala. He was lovely to cuddle at night and I'm pleased to say we still have him in the family and he now sleeps in my oldest son's bed with him.
27. CHARLIE'S ANGELS DOLLS
I was quite young when I got my Charlie's Angels doll (maybe 6 or 7) and this is the one I had - Kelly - who I thought was the prettiest in the show. My sister had Sabrina who wore a red jumpsuit with a blue scarf. I remember us playing with them in the back of our parents' Ford Cortina.
28. THE GINGHAMS
Ah, paper dolls! I would spend hours playing with these and this make - the Ginghams - was my favourite. Each of these four dolls came in a gingham box which transformed into a playset with furniture and the figures had lots of clothes which would take quite a while to carefully cut out. I was lucky enough to have all four of these boxes which were from left to right, Carrie's bedroom (blue); Katie's ice cream parlour (pink); Sarah's garden (green) and Becky's playroom (yellow).
29. ROLLER SKATES
I started my roller-skating life with similar skates to the ones on the left. They fitted over your shoes and weren't very good but must have been dangerous as my little sister was only allowed to wear one skate in case she went too fast. One skate meant she skated around in circles but she didn't go very fast at all so my mam's plan worked! Once the 1980s arrived in full swing I got a pair of yellow and blue roller boots from Fenwicks for Christmas. I must have been around ten at the time as I had them fitted and they weren't a surprise so it must have been long after the 'Santa believing phase'. I wasn't a particularly good skater and spent a lot of time on my bottom, but I must have mastered that front toe 'stopper' as I seem to remember it was worn down to the metal!
30. CARE BEARS
All little girls of the 80s had a Care Bear and I had Bedtime Bear, (the green one above), in both teddy form and plastic figure form. It was cute and cuddly and I seem to remember liking it a lot as Care Bears became, alongside My Little Pony, a bit of a girl craze.
31. E.T. MERCHANDISE
Everyone loved E.T. the tear-jerking iconic movie about a little alien (although, somewhat shamefully, Chrissy Grey has NEVER seen this film!). Both me and my sister had this little E.T. figure. Mine sat on a shelf to be prized as a collector's piece. My sister's doubled up as Sindy's baby and lived with her in the dream home. Very weird! :D
32. T.V. TIE-IN BOARD GAMES
I remember playing with both of these games a lot and I think the Blankety Blank one was my favourite. I even think I used to play them by myself, which is probably due to nobody wanting to play with me because I was a terrible loser.
33. FLOWER FAIRIES
I had quite a few of these little flower fairy dolls which served well as a child of Sindy or Barbie (the wings were removable and you could hid their elfish ears with hair). I had this exact doll, which I think was the 'Pink' fairy, and you could buy lots of lovely costumes for them. The only thing which spoiled them was the rubbish hair (worse even than Amanda Jane's), which when washed and hair-dried melted into a plastic clump.
34. PLASTICINE
Yes, I know you can still buy plasticine, but this is what it looked like in the 70s and I had lots of it and it used to get stuck into my bedroom carpet. My finest accomplishment was making the entire von Trapp family out of plasticine with three costume changes for each character. The Sound of Music was BIG in our house!
35. BARBIE
So I've already covered the fact that Sindy was much better than Barbie, BUT for a time in the early-mid 80s Barbie was very cool. This was because she became a shoulder-padded Dynasty-inspired boardroom career girl and I liked this very much. I had all of the above dolls (Day to Night Barbie/Ken and Crystal Barbie). I'm ashamed to say that 'Day to Night' working girl Barbie (above left) finally evicted Sindy from the dream home and moved in with Ken (but not with E.T. as their baby).
So I rest my case and I hope you agree that toys of the 70s and 80s were, without doubt, much better than what you can buy today. Oh, and if you're sceptical about my assertion that there was less pink in the 70s - here is your proof. A comparison of Woolworth's 1970s toy catalogue with today's offerings. How did this happen and is the devil's fairy, Mavis Cruett, responsible?
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