What was your all-time favourite childhood toy?

What was your all-time favourite childhood toy?



Sometimes this additional security question comes up when you forget your password and try and log in. To be able to retrieve your password you need to answer a few security questions. Typically, I just type whatever comes to mind and hope it works.



But lately, I’ve been giving this one some real thought...



I had a TON of toys as a kid.



But, I’d have to say, that, if I had to pick just one -- just one toy that brought the most joy into my life -- I'd pick a toy you can easily find in the outdoors; one that was completely free.



I’m not going to lie and say I didn’t sit in front of the television and play Nintendo for hours.



I would later get the Sega Genesis as a birthday gift; and then came Super Nintendo. Like all the other cool kids I kept upgrading my ‘system’.



Adults like to upgrade their phones and rave about all the cool new gadgets or ‘apps’. So we’re not all that different from children. Don’t pretend otherwise.



Anyway, this form of console upgrading continued throughout adolescence: with the addition of the Playstation, and later the GameCube. I had a Gameboy Color that I just got rid of during the pandemic. I had it in storage for years. But, for what it’s worth, I’d have to say that out of all these consoles I held the Playstation in the highest esteem.



Indeed, there were a few games my brother and I would skip meals over just to beat; and then we would switch players and try and beat it again.



But, at some point school got serious for me and I grew out of those consoles. I know my brother kept upgrading. I was just over at his place and he has a Playstation 3 with well over a dozen games, and he’s beat close to all of them!



There was another toy the both of us shared that came close to my all-time favourite. It was one of those battery-powered Jeeps for toddlers; and I'd like to think my brother and I were the talk of the neighbourhood for a few weeks when we got it. We’d drive the darn thing up and down the streets and hold up traffic like a couple of rockstars or something. We really thought we were cool and all!



There was also that GT Snow Racer we got for the winter, one year… and that was fun in its own way too. We built some ‘jumps’ and wiped out a few times in the snow. We came home battered and bruised, but it was still fun.



Of course, there was that neighbour and friend with the massive trampoline…



But, I’m not going to leave you hanging anymore. I’ll tell you exactly what made the very TOP of the list and exactly why it belongs there.



So, less than a kilometre from the house where we grew up, there was a playground. It was just far enough away from the house that we weren’t under any constant surveillance.



It was a sort of special playground because the city had removed the gravel from within the wooden confines, and replaced it with bits of rubber (from car tires). It made for a cushy run from one side of the playground to the other when playing games such as ‘grounders’ or ‘tag’.



But, we quickly built small piles of the rubber in front of the swing set for a soft landing. You see, what we’d do is, we'd let go of the swing in mid-air and sail through the air and onto the pile. There was something about this simple swing set that set it apart from all the other ‘toys’. There was that feeling of weightlessness mid-air that was completely addicting, and we would immediately return to the swing and start pumping our legs to do it all over again — until our very bones were aching from all the free falls that day.



But, that wasn’t the only thing the swing offered. You could also just sit on the swing with a Slurpee in your hand if you wanted to -- in the sweltering summer heat, or whilst chatting with your mates. So, it was a bit of a social clutch.



Or you could come back at night for some ‘me’ time and watch the stars. It was a pretty good medium for doing so. I saw a couple of shooting stars this way.



You could swing really high, and count ‘cherry bumps’ and wonder if the darn chain will ever snap; I saw it happen once, and it didn’t end well for the chap, sorry to say.



And you can wind up the chain in a knot while you’re laying stomach down on the seat until your feet can’t touch the ground anymore… and then let go. I assure the reader that this is a great way to get really dizzy.



Lastly, when you’re just about to leave the swing (and I don’t condone this one), you can grab the seat with both hands — whilst extending it (the chain and all) far away from the equilibrium position — and oscillate it hard enough that it wraps around the middle bar; so no one can use it after.



Well, that is until someone climbs up like a monkey and releases the chain — or city maintenance does it.



It’s a good way to anger the Karens and Kens, either way.



So, I’d have to say that the swing set is the ultimate toy. It was most certainly my all-time favourite.



But to be fair, I also had this massive stuffed polar bear that was half my size. It was my mate for years; until its nose started to peel off, and its fur became gross and hard. I remember one of its marble eyes cracked, and the cotton stuffing inside started to come out at the seams -- that's when I gave it away...

Kind of reminds me of Toy Story.