I encountered a story last week where a rare Hot Wheels car was discovered. It’s a white enamel Hong Kong Chevy Camaro. The car was manufactured in 1968 and is quite rare, one of maybe 16 in the world. While it originally retailed for 59 cents, it’s now estimated to be worth $100,000.
That’s a lot of money for a toy. From the pictures I saw, it was a bit beat up too, so I can’t imagine if it was still in its original packaging! There is a much higher price tag on mint editions of toys that were never played with.
But that seems counterproductive. If people collect toys and keep them in the packages, doesn’t that defeat the purpose? Aren’t toys made to be played with? Someone asked me once if I actually read all the comics I buy or just put them in their mylar bags to store. The answer, of course, is that I read them all, sometimes more than once. Does that diminish their value? I’m sure it does, but why buy something if I can’t enjoy it?
Toys are wonderful, fascinating things, aren’t they? Think back to your favorite toys as a youngster. Depending on your age, you’re likely thinking about quite a range of toys. Some things, however, cross generations. Most young girls have a doll or two or twenty, and you likely had one favorite that was hugged and played with a lot. Many children play with building blocks of some sort. And there are probably a lot of us who played with Hot Wheels or Matchbox cars plenty too.
I still have some of my cars. They’re largely dented and have paint flaking; all those cars are stored in the back of a big toy semi-truck that Dad brought home from work one day. I’d race them across the living room, set up tracks to do loop-de-loops, and have demolition derbies. I never looked or asked for particular cars; I was just happy to get some new ones to zip around. Since I was born in the 70s, I doubt I have to worry about one of them being worth six figures.
My sisters had plenty of dolls, including homemade Cabbage Patch Kids. You remember that craze, right? Mom figured it was cheaper for her to make some from scratch, and that probably made them safer since they didn’t have the hard, plastic head. Why would safety matter? It could be that their brother would take the dolls and have them wrestle each other, just like he watched Hulk Hogan and Jimmy “Superfly” Snuka do on television.
Some of my favorite toys when I was young were my He-Man and the Masters of the Universe toys. These action figures provided many hours of entertainment as I created stories involving the evil Skeletor and his minions trying to take over Castle Greyskull. Just like with my sisters’ dolls, I also created wrestling matches with my He-Man toys. (I may have been a bit obsessed with WWF Wrestling back then.)
Make no mistake about it: boys played with action figures. We didn’t like it if they were called dolls, even though you could justify categorizing them as such. I also had Star Wars figures, and many of my friends collected Transformers, the robots in disguise.
As mentioned with the Hot Wheels, many of these toys from the 70s and 80s are worth big bucks today. Why is that? Well, most of us actually played with the toys. Thus, they’re in rough shape. Princess Leia fell off the stereo and had her head pop off. While playing with a He-Man figure outside, I dropped a big metal stake used for starting holes in the ground through his chest. These are worth nothing. We took our toys out of the packaging and played and played and played.
I’m sure there have been toys around in some way, shape, or form as long as there have been children. It might have just been a stick or a rock to start, but I’m sure children’s imaginations created scenarios for those items that gave hours of enjoyment. Before the Industrial Revolution and mass production of items, I wonder if toys had even more meaning since they were handmade and unique. If you had a doll, it was the only doll like it. If someone had carved a toy for you out of wood, that must have had a ton of meaning.
And kids played, no matter how they came about receiving the toy. The halcyon days of youth, where there are few worries other than when the next meal is, are filled with endless hours of play. I hope kids will always have toys and those hours of fun; I hope we don’t eventually just hand toddlers screens and watch them melt into the Internet. I’m guessing that many of your fondest memories, as we’ve trekked down the toy aisles of our youth, revolve around special toys and even those moments of anticipation for new toys, like looking through the Christmas catalogs that arrived in the mail.
If you still have some of your toys, dig them out and take a look at them. Maybe take a moment to hug your doll or race your car. And while you’re at it, take a second look to see if you have a rare toy. Even if you don’t, I’m guessing the value of what you have far exceeds $100,000.
Word of the Week: This week’s word is backpfeifengesicht, which means a face in need of a fist, as in, “The brother could only see a backpfeifengesicht when he looked at his sister after she bit off Darth Vader’s head.” Impress your friends and confuse your enemies!