Toys have been around for a long while, over 2500 years to be exact. Sometimes they are taken for granted, and it’s easy to overlook the big role they played in our lives. They serve as a way to pass time, a reliable source of entertainment, and maybe their most important purpose, to occupy children’s attention.
Children can be wild, tapping into seemingly unlimited energy at times. Toys have been used to divert that energy and put children’s vivid imagination to use. As teenagers, these toys are often long forgotten, but when recalled fondly and easily reminisced about.
For Cascade High School students, the top three favorite childhood toys were cars, dolls, and Legos.
From Hot Wheel Cars to Tonka Trucks anything with wheels has captured the minds of children. “I used to get my hot wheel cars, I had a huge bin of them, and I’d take them out and line them all up, I would just sit there and look at them, like a mini car show,” said sophomore Jackson Feeney. Freshman Eli Fortney loved cars as well: “I loved my Tonka Trucks; they could carry stuff for me and more importantly I could ride them around.”
A common theme in some of the favorite toys was something along the lines of dolls, whether that be American Girl Dolls, Polly Pockets, or Littlest Pet Shop. CHS students enjoyed collecting all the little knick-knacks, putting them in their houses and brushing their hair. There comes a sense of satisfaction in the process of collection that CHS students seemed to especially feel with dolls. “By far the best part of playing with all my Littlest Pet Shop, was making up all the stories. We had come up with storylines for the characters and go from there,” said senior Alaina Wall.
Legos were also popular with CHS students. They’ve been popular since they came out in the early ‘60s and with so many endless combinations and possibilities, these bricks have captured kids' imagination since their release. I remember as a kid dumping out the big bins onto the floor and building for hours and dreading the time that my mom and dad had stepped in saying there were too many pieces and it was time to put them away. “I love Legos, it was so fun to not only build them but then you get to play with them. It was always so satisfying, finishing a 14+ set as a 9-year-old,” said junior Dawson Chase.
Walt Disney once said, “Every child is born blessed with a vivid imagination.” But just as a muscle grows flabby with disuse, so the bright imagination of a child pales in later years if he ceases to exercise it.” Toys were and are the perfect thing to keep that imagination active.
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