Teeny Manolo – Favorite Classic Toys

October 6, 2008 in Everyday Tips
Tags: Chutes and Ladders, Easy Bake, Monopoly, Toys

Glinda over at Teeny Manolo lists her favorite classic toys. While not all of these qualify as being “without noise” (I haven’t played Operation in – oh – 25 (cough! cough!) years and I can still hear the buzzer clear as day), they certainly are a far cry better than much of what’s produced today (The good people at Cranium being a notable exception.)

I have to say, I don’t think there’s anything on her list that I would object to (although, like someone commented on over there, I do think Monopoly - and I’d add Risk (although admittedly for an older audience) – definitely deserves to be on there.

One thing we discovered quite by accident is that many of these classic toys have been
“improved” since we were all kids – and improved is in quotes for a reason – updated might be more accurate, since in many cases the new version is far from superior to the original.

For example, our son J a “new, improved” Easy Bake Oven when he was 2-3 years old. At the time, they had tried to get rid of the light bulb and replaced it with toaster-oven style heating coils.

J really liked playing with it as a standalone toy (not plugged in) – just sliding in pretend food on one side and scooping it out on the other, we were dismayed to discover upon trying to cook with it that the cardboard pretend mac & cheese and pizza he’d been playing with probably would have tasted a lot better than the real product.

I guess that’s why the folks at Hasbro have come to their senses and replaced it with the a “new” lightbulb-fueled oven and snack center.

And maybe we’re idealizing our memories of just how good cooking over a light bulb could be, but it had to be better than what we ended up with with their last iteration of things.

Don’t tell J, but we ended up hiding it in the back of a closet for a while, and then gave it to goodwill at the end of the year. Maybe we’ll try again with the “classic” version soon.

Candyland is another example. We actually went out and repurchased the “classic edition” of Candyland for the boys, also relegating the “new and improved” version to the goodwill pile. It’s well worth the extra couple of bucks to get the original, even if you have to buy it in a special “collector’s edition” tin like we did. The board was just so much less cluttered in the original; even as adults we found it hard to follow the game board of the modern version, and we knew what it was we were supposed to be doing in the game.

I’m reserving judgement on the new Monopoly Electronic Banker Edition (especially at – gulp – $80!!!), but I can’t imagine it improving that much on the original to be worth it. (Unless it comes with a special “hide-your-money-under-the-board-so-people-think-you-are-broke-when-doing-a-deal-with-you” function).