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Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Playing With Food


I was driving home from the grocery store yesterday and the deejay on the radio was spinning moldy oldies and asking trivia questions. One of the questions was: “What was the first toy or game advertised directly to children on television?”


I’m terrible at trivia and usually rely on Mrs. C. to fill me in on the Zeitgeist, but I couldn’t help shouting out answers. The Hula Hoop! Play-Doh! Cootie! “Wrong,” said the deejay when listeners phoned in these answers.


I’ll pause here before giving the correct response so you can yell an answer at your computer screen.********************************************************


Okay; the correct answer is—Mr. Potato Head!


I was surprised, too. But the deejay wasn’t about to let it go at that. He wanted to impress his listeners with more facts. Such as: Originally Mr. Potato Head didn’t include a plastic potato and kids were required to prowl through pantries for a real one. In 1952 this prompted complaints because of food shortages. Also, parents whined about the smell of rotting potatoes left in the box and stored on shelves or in closets.


This conjured up a memory I hadn’t thought about for over fifty years. Mr. Potato Head was actually an instructional tool, providing me with knowledge I might otherwise have missed. I grew up in the Santa Clara Valley, famous enough for its orchards to be mentioning in several Jack London novels. I should have been very familiar with how things grew, but I wasn’t, even though a pear orchard spread for miles behind our back fence.


I remember being six or seven and reaching for my Mr. Potato Head box on the top shelf in my closet. My best friend and I were expecting a rousing hour or two of jamming plastic features into the spud I’d grabbed from a bag in the pantry. But when I opened the box I was shocked to see that the last time I’d played the game I’d left a potato in the box. Only it didn’t look like I remembered it.


In the darkness of my closet, the potato had grown long roots that swirled around the inside of the box. It also had little buds growing on it. I showed the potato to my dad. He examined it carefully and said, “Let’s go plant this in the backyard.” He grabbed a shovel from the garage and divided the old potato into half a dozen pieces. We planted them along the side of our house. Several weeks later we were the proud owners of six little potato plants. I watered those plants, shooed away neighboring pets wanting to pee on them, and plucked bugs off the tiny leaves. But in the end a marauding gopher denied me my platter of homegrown French fries.


I learned nothing from playing with a Hula Hoop (couldn’t keep it above my belly) and the only thing I learned from Play-Doh was that it didn’t taste as good as modeling paste, but at a tender age Mr. Potato Head taught me a valuable lesson, one that I’ve carried with me until now: Although I appreciate the labor of those who produce food for my table, farming sucks!



When you were a kid, what was your favorite game?

27 comments:

  1. I sure do remember Mr. Potato Head. But my ancestors grew potatoes -- or tried to. And I knew right from the get-go that farming was not in my future!

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  2. I think my dad wanted to be a farmer because we always had this huge garden with corn, tomatoes, beans, etc. It was really annoying going out there to pull weeds and whatnot. Then deer or raccoons or whatever else would eat a bunch of the stuff anyway.

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  3. I called out Slinky mostly because I can still remember the jingle. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXhBJycQ7y0

    I also had a Mr. Potato Head which required real potatoes. I think they were far more interesting than the plastic one they have today. Various spuds gave different character to the faces. Your dad sounds like a wonderful teacher.. taking the opportunity to show you what you could get from that rooty potato rather than the simple lesson already learned about not leaving potatoes behind in your room. :)

    My favourite game as a kid? - there were so many. Some were based on local television game shows, so I don't think they'd be familiar to you. Others like Snakes and Ladders and Life are classic. I did a lot of crafts as a kid - and I loved my Silly Putty.

    Fun post, CC. :)

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  4. Oh, I remember Mr. Potato Head, and Mrs. Potato Head, and...was there even a baby Potato Head? I loved my hula hoop and frisbees.

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  5. Hi chubby, I also remember Mr Potato! I loved it. I also remember Hula Hoops. Spent hours trying to keep it going, But as far as playdoh...I thought plastercine was the forerunner? Well it was in the UK

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  6. I, too had a Mr. Potato head but it wasn't one of my favorite toys. Colorforms...loved them. I also liked the activity sets that had books like connect the dots and coloring books that "when you painted them with water" the colors appeared. I loved roller skating with the old skates that still had the skate key. Of course, that was still when all the neighborhood kids played outside from dawn to dusk.

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  7. We've an entire collection of Mr Potato Heads here. I became familiar with that character before I even had regular access to a TV

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  8. Well now that I know the answer I can remember those commercials. I had one too. Grand fun as I recall.

    Have a terrific day. :)

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  9. I'm enough of a child and toy geek that I actually knew the answer. We have a love of Mr. Potato Head in our house. In fact, when our house burned we had a recently purchased Potato Head sitting on our kitchen table. The blinds and lights in the kitchen melted into unrecognizable messes, but Mr. Potato Head was still sitting on the table untouched except for smoke damage! He's a trooper!

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  10. By brother and I played War with cards over and over. It was good for the aggression, we would shout a lot. Ha.

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  11. Oh potatoes - how I hated helping my dad in the garden with them. Go here to see a card I made him when I was a kid - it features me working in the garden for him. Ha! http://danabugseyeview.blogspot.com/2011/05/wherein-bug-reaches-deep-into-archives.html

    As for games - when I wasn't reading I loved my lite brite & spyrograph :)

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  12. I had an old bike wheel with the spokes and tyre removed, and I used to propel it with a stick as I ran alongside. I had some skates that strapped to my shoes too, but quickly swapped them for a jack knife.

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  13. Silly putty. Hours of fun.

    As a member of the "black thumb society" (i can barely grow weeds), i agree abut respecting farmers but not aspiring to be in their number.

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  14. Favorite game? I don't know. I liked my dolls, whether they were baby dolls or Barbies or paper dolls. I spent hours with them when toys actually worked and weren't considered dangerous. I had a washing machine for the dolls' clothes that I could actually put water in. I had an iron that actually got hot, but not hot enough to burn. I had a small bathtub for my dolls. Being the youngest of five girls, I inherited everything the other girls had. We had some friends who had the real Mr. Potato Head. It was a lot more fun to use real potatoes. The pieces you stuck in the potatoes were sharp and could draw blood. I guess that's why they're boring old plastic potatoes now. Those plastic potatoes always look the same no matter what you put on them to try to change their appearance. Here's to the happier days of dangerous toys!

    Love,
    Janie

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  15. What a rousing story. I love eating potatoes. I used to plant them when I was a kid. One time, I dug one up that was as large as a football.

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  16. we had mr potato head in australia too. i think my sister had one. my fave game was tennis. i'd tie a tennis ball with a loop on it and a long length of elastic to a brick on the back lawn and belt that thing with a tennis racquet all day. it also worked against a brick wall if the wall was large enough. we also played dress ups and read books. my fave thing was probably reading. i had an impressive collection of marbles until Raymond A pinched them.

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  17. Played with a neighbor's potato head and I remember once when we used an apple instead. Seems they were harder to poke.
    Aside from a basketball, my all time favorite toy, I'd say my favorite kid toy was a slinky.

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  18. Yup! I remember having to use a potato...and that I thought it was a real cop out when they started coming with a plastic potato that was so limiting. No fun at all anymore. You could really make some crazy looking stuff with real potatoes! I like that you planted your old sprouting spud!

    I loved Parcheesi, Monopoly, Royal Rummy, checkers, backgammon, cribbage, and all kinds of card games. You could do so much with a deck of cards--including making card houses. Ahhh! The memories! Thanks. :)

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  19. Mr. Potato Head never appealed to me -- I couldn't see the point. I loved playing Hopscotch and also marbles. And Jacks... then there were my first card games taught to me by my Great Aunt--Casino, Gin Rummy, Go Fish and War. She also taught me Clock Solitaire. I don't remember toys being advertised -- what I remember being advertised for kids: Kool Aid (hated it), Marshmallow fluff (sickly), Cereals with toys or toys you had to collect box coupons and send away for. And Hostess Cupcakes. What about m and m's: They melt in your mouth, not in your hands!!!

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  20. When I was little, I loved Lincoln Logs. When I got to be about 12, my favorite was scrabble, and I still enjoy playing "Words with Friends" on Facebook, which is similar to scrabble!

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  21. My favorite? Legos. Books.

    Though I like potatoes and think they've gotten a bad rap lately, my memories of helping with the potato harvest on my parents' farm are not so great. It was back-breaking, tiring, hard work. I remember being jealous of classmates whose parents didn't have a farm; they could do their homework and then play. My siblings and I (and other kids from farms) would have to help first and then do homework.

    We all turned out OK, though.

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  22. I forgot to ask: How did you get a photo of the television that sat in our living room till I was a teenager? It got one channel. We were the last people in the U.S. to get color television.

    Love,
    Janie

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  23. potatoes are about the only thing that will grow well in the chalky soil of our back garden and we usually have a crop of about a bag full

    there were loads of games that i remember from being a kid, but the one that brings me the most amusment looking back was Daley Thompson's Decathalon on the ZX Spectrum. First of all you had to spend five minutes with a tape recorder screeching away at full volume to load it, then in order to get Daley (a multi Olympic medal winning athelete) to run you had to repeatedly hammer the rubber keys on the computer, which nine times out of ten would stay down due to the poor design

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  24. I loved Mr. Potato Head and still do. My favorite game/activity was Lite Bright. Did you have one? That was the coolest!

    xoRobyn

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  25. I was a Mr Potato Head lover myself.
    Congrats on POTW.

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