Monday, 17 September 2012

Birthday Extra: Marx Playsets and Little Green Armies: Ed Ice Berg's Toy Memories

Woodsy,
Sometimes I feel like my entire life was wasted - at least in regards to hobbies. Starting as an early teenager I got interested in HO scale model railroading and that's where I stayed for decades. I never really did much with it and switched to 3-rail O-gauge/tinplate trains in the early '90s. In 1999 I wanted to feature my portable 3-rail train layout with a Little Green Army Man theme using Marx Army trains. I wanted to populate it with vintage toys and so started haunting the local antique malls and toy stores. It was this layout (see attached photos) that REALLY got me into toy collecting. With the passage of time I had forgotten the awesome fun toys I had grown up with: Marx playsets, Little Green Army Men, bin toys of all sorts, Tonka trucks, G.I. Joe's (the original 12" action figures).
 
 
THESE were the fun toys - no spending hours meticulously detailing rolling stock and structures that people wouldn't notice or appreciate anyway - just simple toys straight from the box or packaging with minimal assembly. It was during this searching for vintage toys that my past awoke in me and suddenly I started to remember all those magnificent childhood toys and the fun I had with them. Their memories had been buried deep within just waiting for the day to be reawakened. Well, the rest is history. It's been twenty years now since switching to tinplate trains and between the vintage trains and the vintage toys I've never had so much fun with my hobbies. It ultimately led to my blog and led me to you guys.
Oh, BTW, I still actually have my childhood toy chest! It has a pirate motif. Perhaps one day I'll drag it out and take some photos.
Ed ICE Berg

3 comments:

  1. Outstanding memories and observations Iceberg! Its a good thing you wasted your earlier collecting time...how much sweeter is the re-discovery of lost treasure?

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  2. QS: And the re-discovery keeps on comin'. Sometimes it's not always toys that I actually owned but memories of old commercials and Sears & Montgomery Wards Christmas Wishbooks that bring me back to simpler times.

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