2026, Family, Kids, pets, Uncategorized

King Of The Toys

31 Comments

As an only child, there were very few occasions when I had to share much with anybody. I always seemed to know that no matter what, any friends or cousins would eventually leave and I would have sole possession of my toys. That made it easy for me to share.

It has been interesting watching our older dog struggle with sharing dog toys and chews with the puppy. He wants her to play with him, but just can’t seem to figure out that if he would just let her play with or chew on a particular toy, he could just get another toy or chew thingy and they could both be occupied. Oh no. Any toy or chew she has, he has to have. Why? Why does he need to be King of the Toys? I suppose it has to have something to do with his need to be the Alpha. Why can’t Alpha characters be magnanimous??

Our older dog is only 4 years old and seems solemn and careworn beyond his years since the puppy came home. I will watch with great interest how things change as she matures and becomes stronger and more assertive. Until then, we shall have to referee the distribution of dog toys

How easy was it for you to share as a child? What were your most precious toys?

31 thoughts on “King Of The Toys”

  1. Oh my – this strikes a chord for me. When I was very little, we didn’t have lots of money and therefore didn’t have lots of toys. But when I was five, I had a Chatty Cathy doll. When you pulled her string she would talk. She was my pride and joy. One day while I was at a friends, my sister (who was about 2 1/2 at the time) got a hold of my doll and poured milk into the speaker area, which was on Cathy’s chest. According to my mother, this was in response to Chatty Cathy saying “let’s have cookies and milk“. I don’t know if that part is true, but the bottom line was the same. Chatty Cathy was ruined and when you pulled her string from that on, she just gurgle gurgle gurgle gurgle. I was devastated and the feelings that are being brought up right now by me telling this story suggests that at the age of 69 I have still not forgiven my sister!

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      1. I think maybe the damage happened at her birth. She was born with that open heart valve and in those days, babies had to wait to have the repair surgery. That meant that the first 18 months of her life she was considered “fragile” so we most likely didn’t have the bonding that some siblings have. But I don’t really know. Most likely it’s just because we have basically zero in common. Always been that way.

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  2. I am the oldest and only girl. There were no kids living nearby, so there was no competition for my toys. Mostly I remember playing with my brother’s Hot Wheels and building elaborate tracks and “marble washes”. We were great builders.

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      1. I’m 3 years older than my middle brother, then 7 years older than my youngest.

        We would build these maxed/tracks that we would send the marbles through like a car wash.

        Funny thing is, I don’t remember car washes around when we were doing that. It was a big deal when a drive thru car wash with a green “hula skirt” became part of life. We were enchanted by that. It was an event to get to go!

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  3. Interestingly, I can’t remember any incidents about toy sharing, except that I sometimes coveted other kids’ toys, would have like to bring home something like Legos, which we never had.

    I’m sure I was a little jealous of my sis when I was “dethroned” at age 4, though. I remember that she ruined my class photo from 2nd grade, tore it in half, and to this day I only have the half with me in it…

    Most precious might have been my Toni doll, which I still have, along with the clothes my mom made for her. I should find an antique doll collector… or sell on Ebay or something.

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    1. Legos were apparently around but I don’t remember them from my childhood. I had similar bricks made from some sort of pressed fiber. Also Lincoln Logs, Crazy (or was it Lazy?) Ikes, and an Erector set.

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  4. I am 8 years younger than my brother. He had cool stuff and I was him when he was gone so I played with his stuff. If he was around he’d yell at me for it. We’re good now.

    And out in the country, I only had one close neighbor, who I didn’t like all that well but he’s all I had. Mom tells a story of him demanding something and saying or else he would go home. and I said, ‘Fine! Go home!’ It always gave mom the giggles.

    Our 2 & 3 dogs are still fighting to decide rank. Humphrey is alpha, they all know that. Bailey should be 2, but Luna wants that spot.

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  6. A memory has surfaced of driving somewhere (in our 1952 chevy) with my mom, and her saying something about how it’s good to share things, toys… I suspect we are on our way to her Coffee Club – where the moms would have coffee, and we kids – all within a year or two of each other, would play. I remember each house, and what the set-up was – Jimmy Carl had a train set up in the basement…

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  7. I have no recollection of an issue around sharing toys or anything else. Not at home, where I a had a sister two years and three months younger than me, or at the boarding school where there were boys and girls both older and younger than me.

    I do recall that my mother had a propensity to give my stuff away without consulting me.

    I had a favorite doll. She had a composition head with painted hair and eyes that opened when you held her upright and closed when you laid her down. I loved that doll; a favorite aunt had knit and sewed all of her clothes.

    While I was away at the boarding school, mom loaned my doll to some other little girl. I recall being devastated, and very angry, when the doll was returned and her ears had been chewed off.

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  8. I was just reading something about resource guarding in dogs, which sounds like what is happening with your older dog. It can be mild, even ambivalent, to fierce, depending on the dog’s personality. It’s common and can be dealt with, apparently, and there are many tips available as to how to approach that.

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  9. we had the brugameiers across the street. they cam over to our house to play with our toys and within 30 minutes they had broken one or two. we learned not to share the good stuff because it would be gone forever. we were never invited to go into their house
    my favorite things were my pedal tractor, my cast iton ricking horse and the record player where i could put on an album and bounce on the couch in the basement

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  10. I’m the oldest of three. I have two younger brothers. The middle one is three years younger than me; the youngest is six years younger.

    My parents gave us mostly toys that weren’t gender specific. I had a Skipper doll, which “the boys” didn’t play with. They had Hot Wheels, and all three of us played with those.

    We spent a lot of time at the lake. We each had our own sand bucket and shovel; masks, goggles, and fins; and a beach towel. These were mostly ignored.

    We were mainly outdoor kids. All three of us had bikes and cross-country skis. We would play outside for hours using whatever we could find and our imaginations. I don’t remember disagreements over toys, but it might be that I just don’t remember.

    I always really wanted a Chatty Cathy. I asked for one every year for a few years. She never came. My parents were intolerant of such “talkative” toys.

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  11. My Chatty Cathy doll was also injured, not by my sister, but by being dropped. She lost her two front teeth. Apparently Mattel had a “doll hospital” back then, because my mother sent her off in the mail and she came back with her teeth fixed.

    My most precious toy was/is Timothy, a Steiff plush tiger my dad brought from Germany when he was in the Army. I still have Timothy; his fur is mostly rubbed off and he looks very well loved. He now resides in the drawer of the nightstand.

    My mother was terrible about getting rid of my toys without my knowledge or permission. She gave away my Barbie dolls with their wardrobe of beautiful clothing handmade by my aunt. She gave away my collection of Nancy Drew books. She also got rid of my marbles collection. I must have been deeply scarred by these losses, because I have a large closet full of bins of my kids’ old toys.

    I don’t remember disputes with my sister over toys, but I was three years older and bossy, and she was pretty good natured. My brother is 5-1/2 years younger and we didn’t have much in the way of common interests. I do remember that we all played together with building toys like Lincoln Logs, Tinkertoys, and LEGO.

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    1. I really had to dig to find this. It has a mythological quality to it:
      … when his four children all asked for bicycles, John D. Rockefeller decided against getting a bike for each, and instead opted to buy only one they would need to learn to share.

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