After seeing Toy Story 3 (which is amazing and the best in the trilogy IMO) I wondered…
how did (or do, maybe…) everyone play with his/her toys when they were little?
I used to collect toy dinosaurs when I was very little… they always had silly adventures and did a lot of things. I remember having a really big Velociraptor. I forgot how I named him but he was awesome. I also played with a Pterodactyl, which I aptly named Pero, a lot. He often was one of the heroes, alongside Strut, a Struthiomimus. (yeah, I had such original names for them.) and a large, rubbery Stegosaurus was their personal mean of transportation.
Yeah, nothing all ferocious and stuff… and my dinosaurs did not eat forcefield dogs. More than often I re-enacted videogames and movies with them xD
Some years later the dinosaurs gradually got swapped for dragons, and I continued playing with them in the same way til’ I was about 10. Then they swapped for My Little Ponies. I often played with a select bunch of Ponies (a mom, a dad, the little kid, the silly brother, the little sister, and a sparkly legendary pony thing. Some others, I forgot.) and they slowly changed to Littlest Pet Shop critters, until three years ago. Now I customize them. Sorta like Sid. xD (and don’t tell anyone, but sometimes I make up stories with my toys (even though they’re more like collectables…) even nowadays…)
So, anyone got stories of how they played with their toys?
I must say, I always thought of myself as an Andy, but really I think I would have been more of a Sid. Somehow everything I got I ended up breaking (it still happens to me… I tend to break everything ). I know my favorite toys included Legos (still a favorite… my siblings and I have at least 4 large buckets brimming with them, some classic pieces from when my dad was a kid), Hot Wheel cars, the old Little People… just to name a few. My siblings and I were always very lucky to have so many nice toys, but we always seemed to break them somehow.
I played with my toys in a way very similar to Andy. I used to imagine enitre worlds, characters, and situations, and would act them out using my toys. I even made up two tv shows and used to hold episodes!
No different than Andy for me really. I was just a little less loud…I would often say the voices in my head unless I was playing with someone in the room. I was always the type to not want my toys broken or damaged in anyway. one little scratch or scuff mark would drive me nuts.
I usually built with Lego using only one of the designs on the box. if I happened to build something I liked, I never disassembled it.
Power Rangers were big for me too when I was younger.
Some of my favorite toys were pretty obscure things from places like a dollar store. Never got into things like guns and/or the military. bucket o soldiers never appealed to me. my cousin had one and it bugged me that they had no articulation. this was before Toy Story came out. the closest thing I had to were these astronauts.
I was NOT as creative as Andy was, that’s for sure!
My little sister is three years younger than I am, so I always played with her. When I was playing with my sister, the toys were always more like props than my friends! The toys I loved to play with the most were building toys. Like legos, lincoln logs, and play dough.
A lot like Andy, until I was around 12 or so, except the voices were always in my head, and I moved the figures around on the floor or something.
When I got older, the toys stood still and I envisioned them in my mind as moving- like the dolls were real people who ran around and enacted the scenes I envisioned.
Now I take photostories with my figures, which is actually harder, because the scenes I think up are near impossible to make with 1:6 figures, let alone props, sets and lighting. But somehow I manage, and it ends up looking a lot like how Andy played with his toys.
But I am far far more like Sid- everything got broken or rebuilt. Even now I take a figure and make him or her “better” more articulation or just customization to how I see fit. But none of them are freaky like Sid’s toys. Not yet anyway. -Omar
Funny, thats me exactly when I was around 12. in fact I did that a lot while in school, I would imagine buzz I think since 12 is when people start to look down on actually playing with toys, I gradually just used my head more than anything. I loved to imagine Buzz running, jumping etc on my way to the cafeteria. at that point I still bought toys, but mainly just posed them, no more creating worlds for them to live in. when I did play I too did the prop thing. swords, morphers, etc.
This is totally random but I once bought one of the coolest toys for the money I owned when I was a kid. it was this generic space ranger type thing, (not toy story or power ranger related in any way) and all his limbs disconnected via magnetic spheres. this meant he had nearly infinite amount of articulation. wonder if I’d be able to find him again. I don’t know the name. it was very obscure Im sure. got him at value city.
The original Power Rangers series was amazing. Wasn’t that much into the 5" morphing guys (but it was still a cool feature), but the 12" line was perfect. Detail and articulation was awesome, and even today, I think it was an impressive line.
The Toy Story series speaks for itself, either recreating scenes from the movie, or making up new adventures. I also had a couple 2" figures, perfect for fitting in your pocket, and taking to kindergarten (when you get tired of learning hehehe…).
The beauty of LEGO was playing how you want. With a baseplate, some bricks, and some minifigs, there was just about no limits to play.
The Star Wars 3" line always provided. I was more interested in recreating scenes from the movie. It was a good thing that there where so many out there, because almost each detail from the film was replicated in one form or another. Though it was fun to play alone, most kids at school had their own collection, so having multiple people over was a blast, especially with playsets. Then there’s the lightsabers… God, those things were fun. They had a lot of variations, like glow-in-the-dark, force training, color-changing, and force-vibration, but the original was always the best, because it was the most durable. I loved my Darth Maul one.
This all stopped when I was about 10, although, I still collect any Star Wars figures that catch my eye.
I was a HUGE fan of WWF. I had a box of wrestlers (still do) & I would make a stage using cardboard, other toys, ect. & I’d type up a match card. I would have like The Rock (C) vs Stone Cold in a cage match. I would set up the ring, use DVD covers as barricades, use VHS tapes as tables, put weapons under the ring, line up the wrestlers I would use, put in my wrestling video game to use it for theme songs, set up referee & announcer, & put my other toys as fans. I had these steps that had buttons. It had Bell sounds, fans cheering or booing, & sound effects for impacts. I loved doing Royal Rumbles. I’d put my Royal Rumble VHS tape in & use its timer to keep track of time. I also set up backstage for interviews & backstage fights. It was a pain to clean up, & I hated it. I had all the match types. For ladder, I tyed a string on a fan with a hook & put the belt on the hook. I bought a Cage for the cage match. & I remember The Rock would always win his matches. Fan favorite
I guess I was similer to Andy. I made my own worlds and characters. I had alot of Hot Wheels, I made there own city and citizens.I also had some action figures and other kinds of toys sucn as stuffed animals. I would brake toys at times because I would throw them around, and then I would try to fix them. I would give some Dragonball Z characters diffrent heads on there bodies. I would also make citys by stacking suff like VHSs.
Well, I was kinda like Sid. I ripped my barbies legs, arms and heads off, and replaced them with other heads and stuff. Which didn’t make my mom too happy. I don’t know why I did so. I guess it was cause I was a weird kid, and that I hated Barbie more than anything…
I forgot this earlier, but we like to play dart guns a lot. For the most part we keep them nice and everything, except for one dart gun that slightly broke (can’t remember how) and we took it apart to see the inside, and now it’s beyond repair. We’ve also nearly broken our lightsabers (and sometimes hurt each other ) because we are WAY to rough with them.
I was a bit like Sid, taking apart my action figures and rebuilding them as new characters, or giving figures more articulation (or as Tim Allen says, More Power!)
Nowadays, like I said, I do a lot of photo stories. Here’s an example-
When i was young there where these toys (and they are still around) called Bionicle I had about 10 of them and there where these comics about them and i would read and then act them out with the toys… there is also movies too. Now I play with Legos only to make Spaceships and robots…
When I played with my Toy Story toys I kind or reenacted scenes. My favorite scene to reenact was when Woody and Buzz were “falling with style.” When I was playing with my Batman toys I would create new adventures. I would usually hit the villian with the Batmobile. I was really rough with toys I didn’t care for, like the toys I just got because I was in a phase.
I got a Buzz Lightyear when I was 4, and it has slowly fallen apart. Recently, his forearm with the laser fell off, and now his head is gone. <img src=“{SMILIES_PATH}/youwhaaa.gif” alt=“o_0;;” title="You
Whaaa…" /> (keep in mind, not all of that was me! It’s been pasted down to my youngest siblings now, and sometimes it’s just inevitable that they’re going to fall apart). I have to admit though, it looks as though he never left Sid’s house!
My childhood was a good bit earlier than most of yours, so I didn’t have action figures to play with, and although I think there were Barbies when I was a kid, I wasn’t that much interested in them.
Mostly I played with little plastic cowboy and Indian figures… about the size of the green army men… who were made so they could fit onto a horse. I liked to take them outside and have them act out adventures in the real woods behind my house.
I voiced my characters out loud, no matter if anyone was listening or not. My favorite thing was making up weird voices for them. My younger sister (ten years younger) did the same thing and it used to crack me up to hear her acting out stories with her toys, because it reminded me of what I must have sounded like.
I don’t have any memories of torturing my toys (I probably repressed them, haha) but my mom told me that when I was really little I liked to bury my dolls. She had to keep buying me new ones because I would bury them and forget where they were. Also, I had a huge floppy stuffed dog who got his head ripped off (my real dog chewed it off) and when his stuffing came out (the toy dog, that is!) I stuffed him with mud. Mom wouldn’t let me bring him into the house after that.
More than often I re-enacted videogames and movies with them xD
). I know my favorite toys included Legos (still a favorite… my siblings and I have at least 4 large buckets brimming with them, some classic pieces from when my dad was a kid), Hot Wheel cars, the old Little People… just to name a few. My siblings and I were always very lucky to have so many nice toys, but we always seemed to break them somehow. 
