How did you interact with dolls or action figures as a child?

[Mia]

Curious as to how other females or males interacted with toys, specifically dolls and or action figures as children. In my online research, females lined up clothing and the dolls themselves, something I never did.

What I did was send them on adventures, cover them in mud, make clothing out of grass and leaves, and remove their hair or cover it. I built homes and huts and shelters for them to live in and small boats.

How did you interact with dolls and or action figures?

 

[Tom]

I was into the more classic Toy Soldiers, but GI Joes came out when I was a kid. I didn't take to it as I was mostly interested in setting up large scenes and enjoyed the visual aspects. I did get a Joe, but quickly became bored with it and just threw it up in the air over and over in the street till it was just parts scattered around.

 

[watersprite]

I did not play with dolls. Later on I inherited my sister's plastic dolls whose name begins with 'b'. I found um, creative ways to dispose of them involving twine, knives, small firecrackers, stick boats and a resevoir lake. Mia you sound kind of like me as a child. I made carefully constructed ( ) stick and rock houses and put my brother's toy cars and action figures inside them, if he had them out there where I was playing. Otherwise, I just built the structures and found it satisfying. Much Later in life, when my son had Legos, I could play for hours alongside him.

My apologies to those who enjoy those b dolls.

 

[Major]

I never had any of my own.. but my neighbor had a ton of GI Joes and Star wars stuff with an Ewok village (I have never seen Star Wars) and Matchbox cars and we raced the cars on a track. I remember trying to play GI Joes with him wasn't my favorite thing. I was pretty clueless about action figures my favorite possession was my rock collection from all over the states. (which that neighbor stole from me and I was too scared to tell my dad because we collected them together) My other neighbor had Barbies.. and she had a Barbie McDonalds but she didnt ever let me touch it. I didn't give a rats about the barbies but man I wanted that McDonalds. I have a small action figure collection now but they are all rather odd.

 

[illud]

I never liked the girl's dolls, not interested in the skills it'll help me develop like the clothing and so. Althought I had a hairdresser's doll because my cousin had one and her mom thought I'd like the same toy? Later on my parents would buy me a 'b' doll to see what I'll do, and I never played with that doll.
I liked to play with playmobils. I would use an empty basket or box to use it as a room or home. I would use the whole table to make a big set of a small city of my own. I even tried to do "formal" plays, I would had worked on a script and booklet so I would ask a friend to attend at a given hour.
I would use plasticine to make stuff for the toys' world like food or dishes or clothing. I would change their hairs and trousers. During summer I would enjoy to fill in the sink with water so the toys can have a summer day and swim there. I always prefered to get small sets so I can build up a city of my liking. I got some big sets too like a fort and a gas station, but I didn't saw much the appealing to those ones although I had requested them. I made other toys interact with them, like small furniture for collectors, I'll use as their living room set and so on even when sometimes they sizes were not the proper ones.
I remember I tried to imitate what other people did but mostly I enjoyed building a small city.
Other than that, I had baby dolls, and again I would just imitate what other people do socially. I rather play with a meccano set. I had a car set which I would make a lot of changes every month. It was so much fun. Sadly as much as I requested for more sets of those I got few, because again my aunts would insist on me playing with "girl" toys. So since my male friends had those sets I went to play with them as often as I could.
I would also enjoy board games, the sort of question sets about historical events and science, but that's going off-topic.

 

[aggogirlz]

I loved playing with Barbies as a kid

 

[Judge]

Mid 60s...all the kids in the neighborhood had GI Joes. My uncle and aunt sent me one for Christmas...with all the equipment and uniforms to go with it. My next door neighbor made swimtrunks for everyone...and of course I had the skindiving outfit and equipment as well. Then the next year I received a Mercury spacecraft capsule and astronauts outfit for my GI Joe. I thought it was a successful toy to play with all by myself.

 

[Progster]

I never played with dolls. I might have had a baby one that I was given as a small child, but I never played with it. I seem to recall taking its arms and legs off and putting them back on again. I prefered books, or making things, things like Meccano or lego. I was very much a tomboy.

 

[tree]

Playing with dolls. This will take some thought, some restraint, because I can't release
a deluge of memory to show you all at once.

Small dolls, 2 inches tall or less: "Doll house" dolls. The girl doll with her arms up was my favorite. She
could do everything. She took care of the 'boy, girl in a dress, & the baby' dolls. She built houses for them
from blocks & lincoln logs and then lived somewhere else, by herself. I made house boat rafts for her to go
down the (imaginary) river on. I made a dress for her so her missing leg didn't show.

Sometimes I buried these little dolls in the sandbox in a jar, to see if they could survive.
My favorite little one I put in a walnut shell & hung out on the limb of a maple tree overnight,
for the same reason. I didn't name these dolls. They didn't really talk to each other.

Baby dolls: I dressed them and wrapped them in lots of blankets. I played that we had no house &
I needed to keep us alive. I had a vague notion that holding an infant to a woman's chest (through clothing)
helped it survive. I had never seen a woman nurse a baby, but knew that on Christmas cards Mary held the
little baby to her chest.

I had a doll that said prayers when you wound her up. I named her Lucy. At the same time, age 4, I had a
blonde doll who made sounds. I called her CryBaby. I fed them somehow, and that knocked their teeth out.
I didn't mean to do that. I gave CryBaby haircuts because I thought her hair was growing. It didn't.

I got a doll that wet from a hole on her buttocks. This was kind of fun because it was playing with water. My
boy cousins pretended to be grossed out. I thought that was silly because it was only water, not real pee.
I didn't question why the doll peed from such a funny location. It was a doll. Anyway I didn't know humans
had openings down there. I thought it just came out osmotically.

Fashion Dolls: I liked saving money to buy new outfits for my doll. It was too bad her feet only let her tip-toe,
but she did have fancy grown up high heels, the kind ladies are supposed to like. It was too weird playing dolls
with other girls. They wanted your doll to have a name and you should change your own name. I didn't like that.
I collected more than 4 dozen fashion dolls later, when I was grown, particularly used dolls from resale shops.

Paper Dolls: These I still have. I liked to line those up and their clothes. Same problem about playing with them
with other girls. [I keep saying 'other girls.' There wasn't a flock of them. Just the ones next door and the one
across the corner.] They wanted to have names and make pretend with the paper dolls. I didn't get into that.
Inventorying the wardrobe was what I liked.

Sock Doll: I liked to toss her up in the air in the backyard or my bedroom. Flying Lessons. This was better
than doing it to the cat. I thought he would enjoy flying through the air onto my bed. I wanted to fly through
the air and bounce around. My mother said the cat did not share that idea and I should not do that. But throwing
the sock doll was ok. Also making parachute guys out of clothes pins.

Puppets: I liked making puppets, but not using them. They are kind of creepy when they are empty and I don't have
anything for them to say when they are on my hand that they can't say off of my hand.

 

[Tom]

Speaking of Legos, they were a favorite but a rarity in my childhood. Only one friend I knew had them, just a large batch of red and white bricks. He was good enough to lend them to me for weeks at a time.

But I wasn't into building with them, and instead made them into armies. A plain 8 was an infantryman, a 4 centered on an eight was a cavalryman. A 2 on a 1 was a flag. Bumps up was alive, and down was dead.

I collected baseball and playing cards for the same purpose and had really huge battles on the blanket mountains of my bed.

That was probably the main problem with the big action figures for me. They were too expensive to make large armies and one on one combat got boring too quickly. Large armies took time (which stretched out the fun) and involved tactics and strategy.
Had It been possible to have 100 Joes on a side, that would have been pretty cool. And pretty valuable today too!

 

[Nitro]

Never had any action figures,but I played with Legos,Lincoln Logs,Kenner Building sets and Erector Sets.
I honed my early engineering skills with 'em
I still play with Gilbert Erector sets

https://www.aspiescentral.com/media/starboard-view.2490/

 

[Tom]

I still play with Gilbert Erector sets

Now those were cool. I loved building with the motors and electromagnets especially. I still remember that smell your fingers got, an acrid smell maybe. Maybe rust or oil?

 

[Nitro]

Now those were cool. I loved building with the motors and electromagnets especially. I still remember that smell your fingers got, an acrid smell maybe. Maybe rust or oil?

Yeah,I agree,they were quite a crusty rusty toy to play with.
I found a slew of antique Gilbert Erector parts at a sale last year with my sights set on building the plane to display my new old stock 1960ish Gilbert branded model airplane engine. It took about 20 hours to design and build the damned thing.
I made a concerted effort to leave as many square nuts exposed as possible on the airplane to add a comedic effect to her.
No parts were modified during the build,much the same as my digger style hemi powered dragster I built to display.

 

[Vinca]

If the doll had hair, I would plait it. Alot of dolls didn't have an even distribution of hair though, so the french plaits wouldn't look very even, which always annoyed me. At the same time though, I enjoyed trying to figure out the best way of plaiting the hair whilst taking into account the distrubution patten of hair.

My favourite action figures were transformers I liked the challenge of figuring out how to change them from one form to another and the repetative hand moevemente involved in the process. I would use the transformers and Thundercats, my other favourite figures to play out action/adventure stories that usually involved the figures hiding, climbing and fighting.

 

[Tom]

Yeah,I agree,they were quite a crusty rusty toy to play with.
I found a slew of antique Gilbert Erector parts at a sale last year with my sights set on building the plane to display my new old stock 1960ish Gilbert branded model airplane engine. It took about 20 hours to design and build the damned thing.
I made a concerted effort to leave as many square nuts exposed as possible on the airplane to add a comedic effect to her.
No parts were modified during the build,much the same as my digger style hemi powered dragster I built to display.

Farm Nuts!

I love those things. The last thing I built was when I was in my mid 30's I guess. I was doing yards sales to get things for my kids (like legos) and found a bunch of 80ish motors and parts and I still had a large antique set from childhood. So I built as old looking as possible stationary crane. The arm swiveled and I could raise and lower the electromagnet and turn it on from a rigged control panel. The old parts have a cool art deco look when built.

 

[Nitro]

Farm Nuts!

I love those things. The last thing I built was when I was in my mid 30's I guess. I was doing yards sales to get things for my kids (like legos) and found a bunch of 80ish motors and parts and I still had a large antique set from childhood. So I built as old looking as possible stationary crane. The arm swiveled and I could raise and lower the electromagnet and turn it on from a rigged control panel. The old parts have a cool art deco look when built.

I got some parts that date to the 1930s,many straight and miter gears,sprockets,pulleys and round shaft mounted parts. There were two battery operated motors and a 1940s 110 volt plug in unit with an exposed gear train that could move a small house and a motor shaft speed drive on it that would take a finger off with the wrong part mounted to it. Imagine if they tried to sell stuff like that now
I have a metal boxed set that is from the NASA moon launch era that is clean enough to be waxed plus a cardboard tube set from the same era. In all,I scored about 20 pounds of parts in three huge boxes for $15
I have more toys now than when I was a child

 

[Warmheart]

Ok, how autistic is this?

From babyhood on, I refused ALL human dolls (knew they would 'reject me') and only played with toy animals.

Babydolls given to me were briefly held upside-down, tolerated only as objects and not "people." Mom tried to teach me to hold the doll upright. I only wanted to stim my fingers against their black fridged eyelashes, which I ultimately pulled out, never to return to the dolls again.

Toy animals were totally safe for me to engage with! They would love me back. I hugged and comforted them, and pretended they climbed, swam, galloped, and merrily cavorted on great adventures!

 

[Nisk]

I grew up with He-Man, TMNT, GI Joe and Transformers. I think I played with them in a normal way nothing like melting them down or rearranging their parts. I was more into taking apart electronics and then re-building them. I almost always got them back together again.

 

[Mia]

Toy animals were totally safe for me to engage with!

I still have my favourite red cow named blossom

I was more into taking apart electronics and then re-building them. I almost always got them back together again.

Funny, I took apart most small appliances as a child, and reassembled them. Things like clocks, irons, toaster ovens, drove my mother crazy.

 

[tree]

As a child and now, when I took/take a thing apart,
it is not normally to put it back together. When
I disassemble, it is so that I can have the parts
to make something new.