My Inner Child

So, yeah. A week or so ago I ordered some stuff that was reminiscent of the cracker jack/gumball machine/party favor bag prizes of my youth. As I said - I never had money for that kind of stuff (and didn't get invited to birthday parties) so that kind of stuff was maybe a little rare for me.

And I suppose for some adults, buying stuff that fills some kind of hole that got opened up in childhood is a thing. I don't know, it's always been me. Though for me it tends not to be proxy things like purses or cars, but the literal toys I wanted and couldn't get.

Well, here's the first item:



The "crystal" animal family. I remember things like these as being things like "prizes" at fairs and the like (and look, they have their original box! And I'm keeping the box, it's kind of cool and makes me think they maybe date earlier than I thought....). These were based on an earlier idea - china animals that was a "mom and babies" that were joined by a little chain. (My mom had a set of cats. I finally persuaded her to remove the chain because I felt like the cats wanted to be free).

I also had a little toy mouse almost exactly like one of the baby mice when I was a kid.

And yeah, I don't know what I'll really DO with these other than put them on a shelf somewhere and look at them periodically, but maybe that's enough.

I also got a couple of silly little wobbly toys. Not Weebles (which we never had when I was a kid - we were a Fisher-Price family, but friends had Weebles), but smaller and probably older:



These are REALLY tiny, like less than an inch tall. And they do wobble very well when you poke them, which is oddly pleasing. (I can't do video so you'll have to imagine the wobbling).

I suspect most of these things are things that ceased being made when the CPSC came to the fore; these are totally the sort of thing that would wind up swallowed (though I'm guessing they'd be too small to obstruct an airway, and probably would, um, "pass" easily enough) or stuck in a nose.

And this is the "lucky dip" (two sets - they came bagged together and at first I was concerned, but then I counted the items and found that the two sets were there). I DO think it is as advertised and is old-stock/European. The little rubber baby is stamped "Made in Germany," but none of the other things are marked:



There's a lot of interesting stuff there, across several scales. There's a glass beer mug about the right size for Wilbur, my toy tardigrade, and a larger chalice sort of thing that might work for the Barbie dolls...and some tiny food, and a lot of barnyard animals...

here's a photo without flash, a lot of the white things kind of disappeared in that other one:




(Not shown are the flat-backed primary-colored sheep; they may eventually wind up glued to a pencil cup or something)

Also this weekend I repainted my toenails, with China Glaze "Where's the Party Cannon At" (a Pinkie Pie themed glitter polish):