What was your favourite toy? when you were a child.

I drew pictures of horses in a book and had to decide each day which one I would 'ride' to the corner shop. One was called Arabian Night, but I don't remember the others. I think Velvet did something similar in National Velvet . Unlike her, I didn't go on to win the Grand National though ....

During the war there were few toys available. I had a toddler trike that my uncle made me, and he also made me a green engine. Luckily he was excused military service because he worked in a machine tools factory. Somehow or other my mother managed to find me a big black tricycle, second hand at the local bike shop. I was very privileged. I never had a proper bike until I was 9 when more bikes were being produced. It didn't even have gears, but I used it regularly until after I graduated from University.

I loved my tin spinning top. It had a handle at the top which you pumped up and down to make it spin. As it spun it made a lovely humming sound. However my clever Dad made me a kaleidoscope from pieces of glass and electrician's tape which was filled with cut up pieces of foil from Roses chocolates. The patterns were FANTASTIC!. It became my favourite toy.

I only saw the bit about spinning tops and was about to say how much I loved kaleidoscopes when I read the rest of your post, Hunt. Another thing I loved [and have been trying to find one for my grandson] was a torch that changed colour.

This wont be PC but I had a black baby doll made of hard plastic, it was like Bakelite, her hair was fuzzy and when you turned her over she cried (sounded like a lamb ) and she had a crack down her fore head where I dropped her. I think she is still in a box somewhere.

I used to love my Rayleigh three wheeler bike - which was, of course, passed on to my sister when I outgrew it.

When my son was about four/five I saw an advertisement in the local newsagents for a Rayleigh three wheeler (this one was yellow and purple), so we bought it for him. It was also used by my daughter, then passed on to my two nephews. It has sat in the garage now for many years and I can't wait to get it out for my sixteen month old grandson.

A pink hand knitted doll called Nellie, which my brother eventually through out of the car window- I cried for days.

My brothers' electric train set.
Cricket ball because we had such fun playing cricket with Grandad.

My roller skates. They weren't posh things attached to white boots like nowadays: they sort of screwed onto your shoes using a key. I would skate round and round the streets where I lived - got faster and faster. Loved it.

Then I grew up and went ice skating with a group of friends one day, including my boyfriend at the time, None of us had tried it before, but when I got on the skating rink it just felt similar to my long forgotten roller skates, and I realised that all I had to do was push off as fast as possible and I'd stay upright. It worked too.

Suddenly i saw boyfriend scowling at me. Asked him what was wrong and he accused me of taking sneaky skating lessons to show him up!!!! He was soon no longer my boyfriend, and I have to thank those roller skates for showing me what a dickhead he was.

Nothing wrong with a black doll - it is not a caricature like a golly.
We had no toys during the war except what could be made at home - all materials were needed for the war effort. My father made my sister and me some doll's furniture from off cuts of damaged planes, which he was helping to repair. He also made a duck that 'walked' down a sloping board.
We used a lot of imagination - pillows were children, the bed was a boat and they all had to be rescued.
Believe it or not we also used the back of a mirror that was just down to the wood, the drawer from our mother's sewing machine and a statue of Mary which I had won at school (probably blasphemy). They represented the children in our plays, which my sister composed.
She also cut out paper families and made me clothes for them, with tabs to go over their shoulders.
Most of the children in the terraced streets would play out if the weather allowed - tig, skipping ropes, two balls and even football for the boys if they could make a ball someway. We were all equally poor, so there was little envy. The girls would make 'houses' out of bricks and use slates for plates.
The boys were a nuisance and would break up our game - I think they resented the fact that we ignored them.
Being a bookworm, I spent many days in Peel Park Library - once they got used to my speed-reading they would let me read a whole book and then change it for another. Nobody had a radio until we got an old one that had a battery which had to be changed at the rag and bone yard. We were then considered posh.
My older sister had a baby when I was 10, in 1950, and I adored her. I used to pick her up from the aunt who did the child minding. I would make her a bottle and change her nappy - she was better than any doll. I suppose the social workers would step in these days but I was very responsible.
Needless to say, when my own girls were born they had every possible toy, and eventually a horse each and we had a house with stables,paddocks, a tack room and a hay store. Posh? Not 'arf!

I would like a kaleidoscope! I always coveted one but never got one.

Oh goldengran I am here I was thrown from a travelling car and have been searching for you ever since

Books! never had enough of them Remember a fat tome 'Children's Everything Within' which my daughter now has.My mum got it by collecting newspaper tokens.
I never had a teddy.When I bemoaned this my son bought me one when I was in my 40s! It's now my favourite toy .

nellie

My red Triang scooter, dad fixed a horn on the handle bars to warn anyone that I was around !

I think it was books for me. I used to build things with them as well as read them, and I would take my book up a tree to read so as to get out of the way of my little brothers.

Otherwise, it was playing outside that I enjoyed most. We five children had a big trike, a little trike and a scooter, and a pair of roller skates between us (they strapped on over your shoes), and a "tenfoot" (back lane in Hull) to play in until I was nine, then we moved and had fields and trees and field ponds. We had a lot of tree dens and made bows and arrows, catapults, built dams across ditches. We did lots of games like hide and seek, especially a variation of that called Rally-O One Two Three!

Anyone remember that elastic skipping/hopping game? Can't remember its name, if it had one, but you had a large circle of elastic which two people would put around their ankles and then whoever's go it was would do the skip/hop/jumping stuff in and out of the elastic which was sometimes crossed over.

Skipping rope, balls, and trikes/bikes.

And my dollies. (which included stuffed animals. they were all the same to me )

Bags! I would have loved to have played with your lot!

I used to shoot "arrows" at a tin tray.

I used to build lovely dens in hedgerows or with bales of hay [at harvest time] and play "house." We had a secret society. Went looking for things to put to rights...buried dead birds [pongy] rescued hedgehogs, "grassed" on a wicked couple who went away and left their dog to starve in a garden shed. We heard it whimpering and scratching at the door. Finally put 4 pennies in the phone box, and called the RSPCA. Sadly, the dog couldn't be saved. We hadn't discovered it soon enough. Danced in the beautiful garden of a friend - we wore sheets Grecian-style, put flowers in our hair and danced barefoot to the sound of a friend playing her recorder. Friend's mum would bring home-made lemonade out to the summer house. Magic!

soop - I want your childhood!

bags - it was called elastics

I remember all the moves.

I'm not sure I could do any of the moves nowadays

Apart from trees, skis, ice skates, sledges and lake. Oh and those wonderful home made carts, with bits of wood, old pram wheels, bits of string - we would tear down the hill on them and have abominable crashes - but can't remember any of us being seriously hurt, apart from grazes, bruises and the odd stitch or 5. Great fun.

They were called bogies in Salford - old pram wheels were always in demand, and orange boxes.

I had a sort of self assembly garden, it had large squares of grass, smaller small oblongs for crazy paving and then squares of plastic earth with holes in and lots of flowers to plant, it amused me for ages as the variations were limitless. I only know of one other friend who had one of these and we are the same age 62 so perhaps only available for short time. Id love to know if other gransnetters enjoyed the same.