lately i have been fascinated with childhood memorabilia. there's this sensation that overwhelms me when i look at familiar toys, like the urge to laugh, or the urge to cry. a held-in gasp followed by a deep sigh. the more i dwell on it the more it resembles sadness. but there is joy too. it's confusing!
i started feeling this way more acutely after a recent falling out with a family member. i feel like in a rather sad way i'm leaning into this interest a form of reclaiming my memories as my own and not just secondary to someone else's. i don't miss a hello kitty wallet because a cousin liked it, i miss it because i liked it, because i remember the texture of the tacky pvc and how it caught onto dirt like nothing else. and how easily it wiped clean.
it's like i'm finding a sea shell uncovered by waves - like i'm remembering something old for the first time.
muscle memory
touch-based memories are especially strong for me. we used to have unicorn plushies with sparkly blue and pink sequined horns. about a month or so ago, i looked them up and found the exact unicorns: Commonwealth Animal Alley unicorns from the year 2000.even over 25 years later, if i close my eyes and imagine rubbing my fingers over those horns, i can remember the exact sensation.
same with the chansey spin top from burger king - i REMEMBER the feeling of rolling it on the ground! the inner mechanic jostling at my touch! the weight of it in my hand! just the memory is grounding. even though (and it fills me with sadness for some reason to hink about this) the toy would certainly be smaller in my hand now than it was back then, i'm sure if i gave it a good spin, it would be just as i remembered.
parenthood
scrolling down ebay brings back such particular memories...specific toys, specific moments of play, the little stories we'd tell. i was 2 to 3 years old when we had those unicorns. that was 26 years ago. i still remember our little mermaid sheets, our four-poster bed. that one Sinbad snow bird toy that my sibling and i fought over for so long that our dad snapped and threw it into the woods. i still remember how deflated i felt, seeing it disappear into the bamboo. and how strange it seemed to me that he was triumphant about it. "why would you do that", i thought. "what was the point."
lately i think about my parents, who bought us toys. my mom has been candid with me about feeling bad that she couldn't always get us what we asked for. i do remember moments when i sensed our parents' dissatisfaction and frustration at having spent money on things we weren't using or appreciating. in our defense, we were children. in their defense, we were poor. it's tough to raise children in the mountains.
being a child at heart
i ran into some difficulty with one specific toy set. i remembered it vividly -
panes of semi transparent pink and green acrylic, which you could slot into connecting circle and
square shapes. it was k'nex... 
for her.and i LOVED it. i LOVED that shit. it was
so fun. it was SO hard to look it up though -- it didn't show up in any nostalgia bait buzzfeed-lite
articles, nothing in mages, "acrylic panels" only showed construction and craft materials. i made
sure to exclude ai and search before 2021 and everything!
in the end, for all its faults, reddit was my savior. and the first link i clicked had my answer -- the ello creation system. i think i had the fairytopia one specifically since the green leaves are familiar. my only complaint is that i remember there being way more semi transparent pink and green panels, not so many opaque blue ones...
i started writing a section where i complained about another toy that was driving me INSANE because i couldn't find it, only to have reddit save me again - it was a toy horse that would have an apple stick to it magnetically to its muzzle. so cute!! turns out it was part of the Grand Champions Nuzzling Horses line, one of the 2000s versions. the kindness of strangers with better memory and cataloguing skills than i have saved me again. god bless the passionate nerds that make websites like angelfyre.
here and now
nowadays my toys are different. mostly i have plushies, pins, figurines, and stickers i have not placed anywhere. notably these are things that - plushies aside - are meant to be seen, not touched. Puniko i have cuddled with endlessly. i can't say the same for my other Holostars merch.
nala's finally warming up to puniko
— bogos binted (@pepsirosie.neocities.org) November 13, 2024 at 3:13 PM
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many of my childhood toys were given away to other children as i grew older, and for that i'm glad. it's good to know that younger kids than me had the chance to play with my toys, and that most likely they also passed those toys down to younger kids.
there are some things i miss though - the kinds of things only captured within children's toys. the kinds of things you can't hold in your hand. but you can feel them coming back, if you grip the plastic long enough. if i close my eyes, i can feel those sequins. it makes me want to cry. there's something i'm looking for, there, too. i hope one day i will find it.