Do You Remember? - Old Fashioned Toys

By Susan M. Thigpen © 1985-2012

Issue: January, 1985

Do you remember when most toys came from Mama, sewn from scrap material; rag dolls or hand carved or whittled from Papa's knife?

Do you remember homemade stilts, made of scrap lumber with a foot rest block of wood nailed to them as high as you dared to try them?

Do you remember a big button looped in the middle of a circle of string? When you wound the string up and pulled out with both hands at the same time, the button would spin and make a humming sound.

Do you remember making a top from an empty wooden sewing thread spool, whittled to a point at one end, with a round piece of whittled wood stuck in the hole at the un-whittled end?

Do you remember hand carved, homemade yoyos?

Do you remember old fashioned swings made from a wide board and hung with rope from a high branch of a tree?

Did you ever make walkie-talkies from two tin cans with a wire stretched between them?

If we've left out some of your favorite old time homemade toys, write to us about them. Old fashioned homemade toys didn't usually cost much, but they sure were fun. Children today don't know what they're missing!