Following on from my last blog about babies and kids, this has everything to do with one of the things that bridges the gap between the young and the old - Toys!

I have always loved toys and I am not ashamed to admit that I could quite happily live in “Toys R us”. We never had toy supermarkets when I was a kid, only the local department stores, so a place like that must seem like a real wonderland to the young kids today.

Having wandered around some of these places, it’s heartening to see that amongst the new technological toys, the transformers, the Super hero figurines with all their accessories, there is still the ‘old favorites’. The jigsaws, the card games, the board games, the cars, the drum kit (!), they’re all still there and still being enjoyed (presumably) by new generations of kids.

I can still remember my very first “Action man” doll…..oops figurine :p He had short cropped hair, clean shaven with a rugged look and wore the uniform of a Royal Marine Commando. The Xmas morning that I got him was more than just a ‘normal’ day. Action man wasn’t just a toy that you played with for a day or two and then sat aside, he was a friend for life!

As a kid, I used to collect those small metal cars that come in single or multiple packs. I had quite a collection of them and was rightly proud of them. I used to have them stored in a big old box trunk that had belonged to one of my grannies. But, alas, that box trunk and my precious collection got left behind somehow when we moved house one time and they were never to be seen again.

No matter the toy we had, we played together and used our imagination to make more of the toys we had than what they were by themselves. Sadly, it seems that imagination is a lost art to a large extent now. Now there are exciting, fast paced, action computer games - who needs to imagine anything when its all right there to see!? I still think that kids are missing out though.

As a family, we used to play the Monopoly board game, or Cluedo and my dad used to always win at both. No matter which one we played. Our monopoly games could stretch on for hours though and I vaguely recall playing one that we suspended overnight. Of course, dad won that one too in the end!

Toys are something that will never become extinct though. They might change their shape and form, what’s popular might go in and out of fashion but the toys themselves will always be there. From the early days of wooden soldiers, metal toy trains and fixed limb dolls to the modern age of computer chips, ‘living’ dolls and science fiction figurines, toys are here to stay.

Nobody ever told me I had to grow up, nobody ever asked me if I wanted to or not, so my fascination with and love of toys is here to stay too!