<p>Nostalgia toys:</p>
<p>Kiddles, shrinkydinks (similar melted chemicals), easy-bake oven, slipNslide</p>
<p>Most coveted thing: Mickey Mouse watch!</p>
<p>Hey! Somemom! Don't make me look in the mirror. Especially in bathingsuit season. Mean. Cruel. Unkind. This was supposed to be the kindler, gentler thread. I think we ran most of the guys off. </p>
<p>As for the choice of the word "dropped", I actually meant to say the # of kids I'd "downloaded" but my head got ahead of my fingers (or is it the other way around?) as we were onthe topic of gravity taking its toll.</p>
<p>I just reread this thread and had a nice laugh. There was a similar one, with funny things kids did/said, a few weeks back <a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=64291%5B/url%5D">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=64291</a></p>
<p>Coming back to the original topic, I have to share a toilet-training story. When my older s. was learning to potty train, daddy was not home yet on one particular night when nature came calling. He was becoming a "big boy" and learning to stand on the blue Little Tykes stool in front of the potty and do it like the "big boys". I thought I'd be a responsible mom and try to give him some pointers. As he stood there, I suggested he hold himself with his thumb and index finger. He looked at me as if I were from outer space and said "NO Mommy!! You don't do it like that, you do it like THIS" (holding himself with his thumb and middle finger). I looked at him, a bit puzzled and asked why. He again looked at me like I was the world's biggest fool and said, wiggling his index finger up and down, "You use this one for tapping!" I laughed for hours! I guess since we dry ourselves differently, it just NEVER occurred to me how to avoid dribbling... Oops, we're back to that topic again. Full circle, I guess.</p>
<p>[url=<a href="http://www.disneykins.com/%5DDisneykins%5B/url">www.disneykins.com/]Disneykins[/url</a>]. I could stare at the displays in the candy store for hours, pining for more for my collection (of which I still have about a dozen, by the way...)</p>
<p>Speaking of candy stores, I could walk all the way over there with a quarter and come back with a bag full of candy.</p>
<p>Although I am from California, my mother's family had a house on Cape Cod. I remember playing Whiffle Ball on the front lawn, and the salt so crisped the grass it cut our feet. I remember the smell of the laundry drying on the clotheslines - and they were NOT politically correct back then - and the gray wood on the shed that held the washing machine. And then those squeezy popsicles, in long plastic bags, and fighting for the red one or the blue one. The smell of Sea&Ski, SBMom I remember it too.</p>
<p>I remember when my hair was white blonde. Of its own accord.</p>
<p>Loved, loved, loved shrinkydinks and the Easy Bake Oven.</p>
<p>Speaking of smells, how about the smell of just-freshly-mimeographed papers handed out in grade school?</p>
<p>Thinking about my day-glo diet and all the huffing I did, I suppose it is unsurprising my kid has ADD!</p>
<p>SBmom-
Ditto sheets!! What great stuff! But the blue always faded.. The greatest job to be given by a teacher was to be able to turn the handle on the mimeo drum to run off all those papers.</p>
<p>And have we no Pez dispenser or Bazooka bubblegum folks here? Does anyone remember the sun camera, that you'd put out on the front lawn and the picture of wahtever you put on it would "darken" in the sun? How about those majic rocks that made long spindly crystal-like things in water, but the minute you move the container they all broke and fell to the bottom :(</p>
<p>Ahhh. many days spent playing capture the flag on the neighbors lawn 'til it got dark, or til mom called for you, whichever came first.</p>
<p>Totally tangential -- Pop Quiz - Trivia
1) Who played the milkman in "Doby Gillis" and what was his name? (no one ever gets this-- very obscure, and no cheating by looking it up on line)
2) What was Tiny Tim's real name? What was Soupy Sales' real name?</p>
<p>(2 a) Herbert Khaury. I thought I knew Soupy Sales's name, but it escapes me at the moment....</p>
<p>Sea monkeys!!</p>
<p>Could only be ordered through rip out page from (Archies, Little Dot, or Richie Rich) comics.</p>
<p>moot-
You even spelled it right! Soupy Sales was Milton Hines, though someone once claimed it was Milton Supman first- and then it got changed to Milton Hines.</p>
<p>SBmom-
My older s. had seamonkeys! He accidentally left the light on overnight and we had boiled shrimp the next morning!</p>
<p>He also ordered the chameleon from the back of the "Boys life" magazine. We bought about $50 worth of "stuff" for the terrarium, including a heated rock, for crying out loud. Then we went out of town (the next week) and our neighbors, who had 2 cats, babysat for the chameleon. end of story. Anyone need any meal worms that are still in our freezer?</p>
<p>jym626- along the lines of your toilet training story, my S at the age of 3 went everywhere with his hand in his pants holding tightly to something he obviously prized dearly. When I said to him once, "S, you just can't go everywhere with your hands down your pants," he looked up at me and said, "Yes I can." And so he did.</p>
<p>Sea and ski and sea monkeys, Yes! and the charms from Cracker Jacks and the toys from cereal boxes where you'd sneak down early in the morning before all your other siblings woke up and open up the box, dump out the cereal, and dig out the baking soda-powered submarine or the silver ring with the magic stone.</p>
<p>Remember when a new pair of Keds made you run faster?
Remember dandilion necklaces and lying in the grass watching the bugs and ants crawl about?
And games of Marco Polo? And skinny dipping?</p>
<p>Alumother--
And these are our leaders of tomorrow... maybe the colleges ought to require the mom's to send a few of these prize anecdotes with their applications! These are gems!</p>
<p>Crash-
I remember INSISTING my mom take me to buy Buster Brown shoes (ugly brown things) just so I could get the secret spy decoder ring.</p>
<p>If you all really want a trip down memory lane, head on over to <a href="http://www.vermontcountrystore.com%5B/url%5D">www.vermontcountrystore.com</a>. They have those metallic tumblers that keep drinks so cold, they sell Spoolies, Chatty Cathy, Tiny Tears and Betsy Wetsy dolls, even those old bathing caps with the flowers on them! They have Charles Chips, Teaberry, Clove and Blackjack gum, Reed's roll candies, Ship N Shore blouses, Tangee lipstick -- I could go on and on. They have stuff I forgot even existed until I saw it again there!</p>
<p>Now - did any of you ever eat Scooter-Pies? I loved those things. And candy necklaces.</p>
<p>I really liked Ant-Farms too. There was something quite fascinating about them. And did anyone have a creepy-crawly maker? It was like the easy-bake oven but you made bugs out of gel-like stuff. (Note the use of the technical terms...)</p>
<p>And I saw Elvis in concert when I was 10. (Although it was big-hair Elvis in the white jumpsuit and big glasses.) It was 1971 I believe, and I went to see him at the "Orange Show Fairgrounds" in San Bernardino. My first concert, lol. Nothing else has come close.</p>
<p>patsmom - thanks for your list of stuff. My sister and I have been 'arguing' for years about what those rubber rollers were called and I was right! Spoolies! I think ours were dark pink or brown. </p>
<p>I lived about a mile from the world's first Sonic. The big thing in junior high (and I hate to admit it but even into high school) was to collect the plastic animals that came on the side of your drink. There were monkeys, elephants, donkeys and something else - maybe giraffes? They came in neon colors. The monkeys were the best, because you could hook them together by their arms and tails and hang them from the rearview mirror. My mother passed away a few years ago and when my dad sold the house he brought me several boxes of stuff. I just opened one and found a pink elephant. I'd been telling my kids about those animals for years and I'm not sure they believed me. Now I have proof. (Those things were easily breakable and small enough to swallow. What were they thinking hanging them on drink cups?)</p>
<p>Patsmom-
Was it called dip-n-do that we used with the spoolies? It was a pink gelatenous substance with lots of airbubbles that we slopped on our hair. After that I went in the opposite direction- ironing my hair and/or sleeping under a hairdryer with my hair rolled up on coke cans.</p>
<p>Dippity-Do.</p>
<p>Mootmom, you've come through again!! A true bastion of useless information :)</p>
<p>I had really straight hair but my best friend's hair was curly. I remember we tied a tennis shoe to her hair to see if it would dry straight. This was before blow dryers. What were we thinking?</p>