The Toys that Raised Us
story by Morgana Carroll, photos by Andy Rios, and design by Lizeth Hernandez
What was your favorite toy growing up? The one you couldn’t leave home without? The one you would constantly sneak into school to show it off on the playground? The one that still sits on the shelf today, proudly watching the child they raised turn into the wonderful person you are now.
Toys make our childhoods. The time we spend with them is what forges who we grow up to be. With such a huge impact on nearly everyone, we venture to ask; what was your favorite toy as a child?
Building blocks of childhood
Carter Merritt, a freshman studying geography at CWU, says while growing up, the toys that built him were LEGOs. Merritt would get LEGO sets of popular media he liked, such as “Star Wars” and “Lord of the Rings,” but he wouldn’t always build the sets according to the instructions.
“I just love the imaginative aspect of it,” Merritt says. “I wouldn't really typically build the sets, I would just build my own creations...I bought sets, but I would kind of disassemble them and take what I want from them.”
The LEGO sets came with minifigures of the iconic characters from his favorite media, as well as accessories for them to use. Even if he didn’t always build the sets, he could still immerse himself in his favorite universes without even having to turn on the television.
Merritt also remarks on how much he liked to make storylines.“I took that boat from that [Lord of the Rings] set,” Merritt says. “And I put all these random LEGO characters from other sets on it, and I said I was going on a voyage and I sailed it all the way upstairs.”
Freshman Quinton Pacheco may be spending his time studying business now, but in his childhood he was an architectural prodigy, building spaceships with his LEGOs. “I just liked making things,” Pacheco says. “So I didn't really choose anything else.”
Rosalie Palmer, a second year early childhood education student, says their favorite toy growing up was Lincoln Logs.
“I think the reason why [I liked them so much] is because I grew up with all brothers,” Palmer says. “Building things and being chaotic were very normal for me. And so I got what they grew out of. I got the Lincoln Logs, and I got the LEGOs and all that stuff.”
Palmer still reminisces on the structures she made with the wooden toys. “The one thing I always remember clearly is [when I used] the whole tubs of Lincoln Logs to build one gigantic tower,” Palmer says. “Like the ones in New York or Seattle, the high tall ones.”
Role Mo-dolls
Another CWU student who liked to play with toys that she could create a storyline for was Giselle Furlan, a freshman studying psychology. For Furlan, the staple of her childhood was American Girl Dolls.
“I made friends with this girl and I found out she uses these dolls and she did stop motion videos,” Furman says. “She's now majoring in film, and that's where she got her film start; a YouTube channel where we would establish these stories. We got really into that and we had this really elaborate game that lasted years.”
For Furman her American Girl Dolls were multifaceted. While it was fun to pretend they were another character, the name on the box they came in also had meaning.
“They had books that came with them,” Furman says. “They were historical dolls, so they would teach about time periods like the Great Depression, slavery and all these different American history [lessons]. You would read these books that are tailored to kids, but they were pretty historically accurate.”
Ingrid Bajaras, an undeclared second year, says that her favorite toy growing up was a “Dora the Explorer” doll. “I had this Dora stuffed animal, which was my favorite,” Barajas says. “She's life sized, kind of, she was huge.”
Bajaras said the reason she liked the stuffed animal so much was because Dora was Hispanic, just like the child that owned her. “For me, Dora was Hispanic, and I'm Hispanic,” she says. “I would watch her on TV. And so my mom got it for me. I just fell in love.”
Senior Lecturer in English and women's gender and Sexuality studies Ruthi Erdman recalls how much she loved her GI Joe doll growing up. “I remember begging my parents, when I was about five years old, for a GI Joe doll,” Erdman says. “GI Joe was marketed as a toy for boys, but I desperately wanted it for reasons I cannot now recall.”
According to Erdman one of the main appeals of the doll was how much of an action figure it was. It was much more articulate, had many more joints in its silicon body than Barbie dolls, which allowed him to strike many more poses than other dolls could.
One memory Erdman still carries to this day is a family trip to California where her cousins threw her GI Joe doll into a tall tree, causing one of his hands to break off. “That hand is still missing," Erdman says. “I played for years with a one-handed GI Joe.”
Creature Feature
Assistant Professor of Communication Studies Josh Nelson-Ichido still has his favorite childhood toy in a place of honor on his office wall, surrounded by other toys and figures from Nelson-Ichido’s childhood and adult life.
“This is one of the original Kenner Jurassic Park toys for Velociraptor,” Nelson-Ichido said. “I was obsessed with dinosaurs when I was younger and ‘Jurassic Park’ came out when I was still in elementary school. And it was perfect. I loved it and the Raptors just kind of captured my imagination.”
According to Nelson-Ichido one of the draws of the velociraptor figure that set it apart from the other dinosaur toys was the fact that it was portable; he could take it with him wherever he went. Nelson-Ichido recalls a fond memory of playing with his “Jurassic Park” toys in tandem with some other familiar faces.
“I'd say if I had any other ones that might go along with it or challenge that one would have been my ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle (TMNT)’ toys,” Nelson-Ichido says. “I had a big collection of the original ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle’ toys my brother and I did. We had almost all of them. So that was a big one and then Jurassic Park came out and then went to dinosaurs. And it wasn't unusual to have a play session where we had both ‘TMNT’ and ‘Jurassic Park’ toys involved.”
According to Nelson-Ichido the reason why our childhood toys impact us so much is because of how much it allows us to explore our imagination, through a means that we don’t have in the real world.
“I can't as a kid just automatically find a velociraptor anywhere that can then be my friend and do everything as they go on adventures with,” Nelson-Ichido says. “But the toy allows me to tap into something I'm very passionate about at a young age. That feasibly I couldn't do but doesn't limit me to that exploration. It encourages me to suspend disbelief and it provides me an avenue to really kind of revel in the ideas of the things that I enjoy.”
Erdman remarks on how gendered the toy market was when she was growing up in the 1960s and 1970s. “Baby dolls and Barbies were the approved toys for girls,” Erdman says. “But when my parents tried to give me a baby doll when I was maybe three years old, my big brother, 4 and a half years older than I, was immediately enchanted with my baby doll and claimed her as his own baby. He wouldn’t give her up. My parents let him have the baby doll and bought me another one...which I didn’t play with much.”
Erdman says that while it’s not as prevalent as it was in her childhood, toys are still very gendered today.
Plugged In
If Bennet Nield, a freshman in financial planning had to summarize his childhood in only a few words, it would have to be the Nintendo Wii.“Wii Sports specifically,” Nield says. “[Also] Smash Bros. and Mario Superstar Baseball, that’s a fun one.”
Wii Sports appealed to Nield as a child athlete, because that meant the game didn’t need to stop when the sun went down. “It was cool to take sports and put it in the digital world,” Nield says. “You could play with friends and it could be dark outside and you can play the same way.”
A Personal Connection
I still have my favorite childhood toy with me today, though I wouldn’t so much call him a toy as much as I would call him a friend. Duke, a stuffed golden retriever with a blue collar with a bell hanging off of it, is my longest companion. I keep him in a place of honor either on a shelf or at the foot of my bed. He is dirty and could use some repairs, or as my mom puts it “is well loved.”
