"The good things"

 Nostalgia post. I think a lot these days about some of the "properties" (the pop cultural things, in particular, characters) that were popular when I was about 10-14 years old - not yet a teenager, not still really a child (But oh, I wanted to hold on to childhood as long as I could. I was bad at being a teenager as it turned out, and actually holding on to childhood things probably made me seem weirder and more-rejectable by the other kids. But growing up scared me a little, and I was probably right in that; being a grown-up is scary a lot of the time). 

Thinking back to what I remember: there were Smurfs, there was Strawberry Shortcake and friends in their original (Raggedy Ann-influenced) incarnation (And heck, there was a Raggedy Ann and Andy MOVIE even though I never saw it). There were Care Bears and there was My Little Pony. And there was Garfield and there was still Snoopy, and there were the Muppets, and there were some lesser-known-back-then lines like Hello Kitty and the SS Happiness Crew.

Most of these were anthropomorphised animals, or what you might call "fantasy humans" (the Smurfs, while humanoid, were DEFINITELY fantasy creatures, and I would argue Strawberry Shortcake and her friends were; in some cartoon versions of them they were portrayed as being tiny and I imagined them as being kind of Tinkerbell-sized - so maybe about 6" tall, so the little dolls would be roughly "life sized). 

A lot of them drew heavily on the theme of friendship and what we'd now call "found family," when you think about it. Really NONE of the characters were a single, simple, nuclear family - there was only one girl Smurf in the original run (and the idea of Smurf reproduction and, I presume, sex, was entirely ignored). The My Little Pony OG generation had "babies," but as I remember they were basically clones of the mums, produced by a magic mirror (again: there were few "boy ponies" and I don't think the cartoon had any married couples even though in the old, 1980s line of ponies, there were toys that were family groups with a "daddy" and a "mommy" and babies).

And Garfield had Jon, and Snoopy had Charlie Brown.....but most of the characters, the "families" were loose friend groups. 

And I wonder if that's why I liked it? As I've said, I had relatively few friends as a kid and I kind of dreamed of being part of a big squad of friends even as some of the bigger friend groups I saw at school seemed to fracture frequently, and there were arguments, and someone once commented "if three girls are friends, most of the time two will be ganged up on the third" and yeah that seems kind of accurate. 

But again: a lot of these showed a nicer and better world than what we actually have. Things were more colorful! Characters had talents that they clearly knew were their destiny (Oh, to have a "cutie mark" or a "belly badge" that showed you what you were really good at!)

A lot of these were televised cartoons. I didn't actually watch many of them - oh, I liked the Peanuts specials, many of which had been around since long before I was born, and I liked the Garfield cartoon and specials. My brother (five years younger) was a huge Smurfs fan, so I guess I watched it too. Never really watched the old (1980s) My Little Pony; by then I was trying to be very sophisticated and grown-up in order to try to have friends and so I mocked it with the other girls. (But flash forward some 30 years to the 2010s, I came home from summer field work one day, flipped around to find something to just watch while I ate lunch, hit the new cartoon (sometimes known as Friendship is Magic or FiM) and said "ha ha, let's see how blatant of a toy commercial this is" but wound up HOOKED because it was an episode ("Bridle Gossip") about tolerance and not being prejudiced and....the characters all had slightly different designs and different voices and personalities? And from then on, I watched it, and figured since I was in my 40s no one needed to know and no one could mock me. 

(And yes, now, I am much the same with Bluey, too, which is actually more accessible in re-runs; Disney Jr. shows it late in the evening and while I've seen every one multiple times, it is a SOOTHING show and good to watch right before bed)

What the different characters/"properties" had in common for me, though: there were toys, in many cases small "collectible" toys available of them. Smurfs were a HUGE fad for a few months around 1981 or 1982. People would buy the little figures. And yeah, I had less pocket money than most kids (frugal parents who didn't believe in frivolous or conspicuous spending), I would save my allowance and the money I earned for "extra" chores (like helping clean the garage or mowing the lawn) and occasionally go buy a Smurf. And it's weird to think about now, but, oh, how happy that made me. It was a very simple thing and I SUPPOSE it was more the anticipation of "I have $X in my pocket, I can go pick out a Smurf, I wonder which ones they will have" and yet, also, having them was kind of nice, too. And at the very end of my childhood, I could STILL kind of play the game of moving them through little daily dramas (like my friends and I had with our stuffed animals or Barbies or with the little plastic toy animals that were kind of ubiquitous in the 1970s). And if nothing else? I could line them up on the desk in my bedroom and look at them.

And I had a much loved stuffed Snoopy (who finally disintegrated) and I had a Garfield (and I saved up my own money to buy that). And I had a Kermit the Frog, which I saved up for literal months to be able to get. 

And I always wanted  a Grumpy Bear, but I never asked for one for my birthday or Christmas, because again, it felt babyish to me to want one. (Many years later? I now have  a little one that I even sometimes carry along on my travels):

 And all those things - I once referred to them as "a rock to wind a string around" (in the metaphor from TMBG) and yes. There is something I derive a comfort from in them, a comfort I can't quite pinpoint - it's not JUST nostalgia for a cheaper time when, as I said, walking into a shop with $5 in my pocked and knowing I can buy two Smurfs,, and the happiness that brings. (And yes, stickers are kind of the same way, too? Collecting stickers was big when I was a tween and it was actually one way I was able to interact with some of the girls who might otherwise not have been friends with me, we could trade stickers and talk stickers and show each other our collections and it was a point of connection). 

Maybe it was the idea of connection? Of wearing (at least at a YOUNGER age than 12 or so) a t-shirt with Hello Kitty on it, and having someone else say "oh hey you like her? I like her too! Want to be friends?" and it was sometimes just that easy as a kid (and why is it so hard as an adult?). But also, the imagined connection between the characters in their own specific world - like you knew that Funshine Bear and Cheer Bear might roll their eyes over Grumpy's grumpiness, but they'd never actually exclude him or mock him for how he was. Maybe a lot of those shows/books/whatever modeled a better, nicer world, one that I wanted - but one I never really got.