a childhood memory

Equestria Daily posted about these:

(Photo ganked from EqD).

They're erasers, made in the mold of some of the blindbag ponies. But they remind me of one of the things I loved when I was a kid, one of the things I spent my limited allowance on and begged my mom to take me to the small local office-supplies store so I could see if there were any new ones.

Diener erasers.

These were "figural" erasers - they were molded in different shapes (animals, space aliens, dinosaurs, I think there were also cars?). They were huge when I was a kid. I think it was because they were fairly cheap (maybe as little as a quarter? At first?) and there was the whole "gotta catch 'em all" aspect of it.

And also, they were fun toys. If you were like me and liked to play by inventing little stories and moving small toys (stuffed animals, small toy animals, small dolls) through them and "acting the stories out," these were great for that. Or they made good inhabitants for the Lego houses I built. Or, if nothing else, you could tuck one of them into your pocket for comfort when it was test day at school or you were going to the dentist. (Maybe I should do something like that again when I go to the dentist - take along what my mom used to call a "pocket friend" - no one would know but maybe I'd feel better)

I KNOW I'm not the only Gen-Xer who remembers these. In fact, there's a website that has 70s memorabilia (I must look at the website more some time, to see what else is there). They have a 1975 Diener catalog up there. (Some of those erasers were made for YEARS. I would have been six in 1975 and I remember being more like 9 or 10 when I was really into buying the erasers).

I remember a lot of those! The little blimps, the high-top tennis shoes, the Flintstones ones...


And oh my gosh....they made New Zoo Revue figurines. That's who made the Henrietta figurine I found at an antiques shop, and now I see they also have Freddie and Charlie and a girl frog I don't remember from the show. (And now I REALLY want a Charlie the Owl figurine if I can ever find one - that's a cute figurine)

Oh, and the geometric shape ones! I remember Mrs. Irish, my third grade homeroom and math teacher, had a treasure box with "prizes" that you got when you did something especially well (or when, for example, she saw you working quietly when the rest of the class was being disruptive). She had those; I know I got the hexagon and the pyramid out of her treasure box.

(I know it's really weird how vividly I remember certain things from childhood, but that's how my brain works. I have a freakishly good memory which is probably a big part of why I was so successful in school. A colleague of mine once accused me of having an eidetic memory and I don't think I'm quite that good, but I do have an uncommonly good ability to retrieve stuff from ....well, in this case, close to 40 years ago. And in a lot of cases, seeing something triggers a memory I hadn't even known I had - like the memory of Hexie Hexagon.)


Oh, and the cars and the sharks. I know my brother had some of those.

The animals were my favorite. Relatively few of the animals are shown on there - maybe they came out later. Some of them were kind of realistic, others were pure cartoon. One of my favorites was a seated anteater wearing a bowler hat and a jacket. And there was a crocodilian (I think it was) dressed as a singing waiter - or at least, I imagined him as a singing waiter, because that's what he looked like. And a rabbit that looked a lot like Thumper from Bambi....

(Actually, these may have been the Itty Bitties. I didn't think of them as such but looking at the photo on that page...there's the anteater (yellow) and the dragon and the sea serpent and the poodle and the circus horse and the sitting bear.....I remember all of those and I had most of them.)

The thing was, we never erased with them. We played with them. I think eventually in time some of them they kind of hardened and crumbled (often the fate of erasers) but while they lasted, they were fun.

In some ways they were as big as the sticker collecting that became so popular a couple years later, but for me the erasers were more fun.


I may have to quietly check on my wal-mart grocery run tomorrow just to see if they got any of the erasers in, and if they did, buy a couple. Just for old times' sake.