I've spoken before about the Itty Bitties (That's an Etsy link, no idea how long it will stay good) that Diener made. These were sold at the small local office-supply store that my parents shopped at, so my brother and I would always ask to come along when they were going, as long as we had pocket money (As I remember, they were like a quarter each). I can viscerally remember the feel of digging into the clear plastic (it was a thin packaging plastic, like the boxes that salad greens come in) cylinder they were sold from, to look for designs or colors I didn't have yet. There were LOTS of these types of things- I remember blimps and tennis shoes and cars but the animals were my absolute favorite.
We played with them and didn't use them as erasers. I think there are still a few in my boxes of stuff in my mom's basement; if I ever get up there again I should retrieve them.
Small figural toys were one of my top two toys. I also remember saving up my money to buy Smurfs when they became popular. I don't remember now if they sold for $1.50 or $2.50 but by today's money that would be between $5 and $7. I note that because today - in a fit of nostalgia - I bought a few Smurfs in designs I didn't have from an Etsy seller for....well, for roughly what they'd cost today if they'd been $2.50 back in the early 80s. And yes, I know they're still made, but the modern ones, the eyes are bigger and closer together, and they don't look right - or they've been influenced by the movie (I have not seen it so I can't say it's "execrable" or similar, though I generally dislike the CGI-ification of things that I originally knew as a 2-D cartoon)
And yes, one of the slight cachet factors of the Smurfs, early on, is that they were European - I remember the old comic books, about the size of the Asterix books, and someone I knew had one in the original French? Flemish? Where they were called Schtroumpfs and everything was....just a little different from the Hanna-Barbera cartoon that came along later.
(Tangentially related, perhaps - I pre-ordered volumes 1 and 2 of the new printing of the Asterix omnibuses that are coming out in another month or so. I remember enjoying Asterix as a young teen - one of my French teachers had some of the original versions and we got to read them in French, though the English translations are very well done and preserve much of the humor. But that was another thing in that same general style that I remember being popular when I was a kid. And yes, I know, Asterix is probably dated in some ways and may have some....uncomfortable to modern eyes...stuff in it, but frankly, what DOESN'T?).
So I have a couple of "male" smurfs (including one dressed as a king, which I remember a friend having but which I could never find to buy) and Smurfette got up as a cupid that was cute eventually on the way to me in the mail.
(Mail, oh mail, it has become so important to me now that I'm not getting out as much and it's nice every week or so to have some small thing coming to look forward to)
What did we do with Smurfs? Well, we did play with them. Sometimes I would make houses out of cardboard boxes with spools and things for chairs. Or outside, we would make caves in the sandpile or little houses out of sticks. And my friends and I - until they got "too old" for such things - would move them through little dramas, sort of play-acting the different characters.
Later on, I just sort of collected them. Yes, as I said, I still have mine, tucked away at my mom's house, again another thing I should retrieve at some point.
There were also "Gnomes" by Imperial, which were fakie Smurfs - they had green or orange skin instead of blue. I had a few of those; a well-meaning but cheap relative got them for my brother and me one Christmas and I admit we kind of disdained them then, but now...well, I still have my "Gnomes" and I will keep them with my Smurfs. (Just as how some adult Pony collectors treasure their "fakie" Ponies)
(It is kind of an interesting thing how every time there is a popular toy, other companies try to copy - I remember when Miss Piggy was hot, there was a company that made fashion-doll sized "Gorgeous Creatures"- there was a pig and a hippo and I think a horse? I remember seeing them at the toy store and even as a tween going "Hey, they're trying to copy Miss Piggy!" just as I remember the year after Jaws came out, there were a couple shark-themed TV cartoons on Saturdays and....I realized the whole "trying to repeat a successful formula without understanding what made it successful" was a thing)
Another toy I remember having - and lots of my friends had examples of - but that you don't see too much any more are those "hugger clip" animals. When I was a kid, koalas were the most common, with bears (including pandas) being the second most common, though there were others (I think I had a Pink Panther? And I know they made a Garfield)
It's like these: (picture ganked from Worthpoint or one of those other online selling sites, as are all the following photos)
At one point I had a whole bear "family," ignoring the fact that they were different species and that koalas aren't even really bears (the koala was the baby, because it was the tiniest one I had)
There were also little fur mice. Made with real fur, yes, and now I shudder a little and hope it was rabbit fur or some other farm-raised critter. (It must have been rabbit, given how cheap they were). I remember I had one that lived in a dollhouse that used to sit on the floor in my room, and finally I had to start keeping Teechy up on a shelf, because the cat we had at the time, when he went in my room, he would steal Teechy and take him away and groom him....once the nose got lost but I found it and was able to glue it back in.
Another thing I remember that was a "thing" when I was a kid, was pairs of hugging animals. These were mostly made by Dakin, who was a big manufacturer of stuffed toys when I was a kid (I think they have since either gone defunct or been absorbed by some other company. But they used to make nice toys....) There were several species - one of my friends had the monkeys, and there was a set of dogs and maybe one of elephants?
I had the mice (again, photo pulled from a random "seller" site)
They had different names over the years - for a while they were Bernard and Bianca, for obvious reasons (Hm. Apparently I "shipped" that long before Disney did - didn't at the end of the very last Rescuers move she agree to marry him, or am I misremembering?)
I also had a set of bears:
I joked on Twitter that maybe that's what we need now - pairs of hugging stuffed animals, to try to increase love in our society. But they definitely have a certain aesthetic to them....
I had LOTS of Dakin stuffed animals; they also made small and relatively-inexpensive ones (though again, they'd cost more today, given inflation). Some of the gift shops in my town (like "The Attic") used to sell them and I'd carefully save my allowance and any money I earned doing over-and-above chores so I could add to my "family" (or "menagerie," I don't know what it was. Though there were whole family groups, with parents and children and grandparents and all....I tended to play a little fast-and-loose with the species thing, just like with the clip-on bears or "bears," though in some cases I conceded to reality and, for example, a leopard in a dog family was an adopted child)
Yes, I used to have a remarkably rich imaginative life as a child. I realize now, living largely under lockdown for my own safety, I wish I could have some of that back. (Which is maybe why I have the little dolls, and ordered the Smurfs, and have allowed myself more free rein in purchasing - mostly online, of course - stuffed animals than I might otherwise)
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