Sunday, February 18, 2018

One of My Earliest Memories


Today's post is one of those "just because I feel like it" posts.

I have only three memories from when I lived in my first home, but since my family moved away from there when I was just two years old, I think that's not too shabby.

One of those memories involves the very first toy I can remember getting (shown above). It was called Mr. Joggi. My sister Kathy and I both got one. The toy's hidden wheels, adorned with a series of suction cups, would stick to most surfaces. All we had to do was pull their strings, and then my sister and I would watch the little b@$t@rd$ crawl right up a wall (or, as I can vaguely remember, up a door jamb)!





Mr. Joggi originated circa 1952, manufactured by a company called Tigrett Industries. I've seen three different colors online. There's a blue version, like the one I got when I was roughly two years old, a red one like the one my sister got at the same time, and one that's kind of an aquamarine. I've only seen that last one on eBay.

And speaking of eBay, you know I went on eBay as soon as I thought of it to find the thing, right? I didn't even know what it was called, nor did it look exactly as I remembered it. (I recalled it looking more like Archie Andrews' jalopy in Archie Comics.)

This, of course, is not what Mr. Joggi looked like!

It took a few months, but every so often, I would do an eBay search in the "Vintage & Antique Toys" section, using only the term "suction cup," believe it or not, and eventually, I found the sucker! I bid on the first one I saw, so I ended up with a red one (still in its original package), like my sister had gotten, rather than a blue one like the one I'd owned over fifty years earlier.

Anyone else out there recall any of their earliest favorite toys?

Thanks for your time.

21 comments:

  1. A little different than Archie's. I saw what you did there with the sucker. Earliest toys? Hmmm little kermit figures pop in.

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  2. hmm, earliest toy I would guess it was a doll of some sorts. laughing over the comic - "now to get the feel of the clutch"

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    1. A lot of the old Archie comics had jokes on the cover that were unrelated to the book's actual stories.

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  3. I remember having a toy poodle..a real toy and when he was wound, he would bark and move. I also remember loving this clown I got and when I wound his nose, music came on...I loved it. My mom role me I was about 4 or something. My dad got me both toys. The first pic reminded me of these plastic cars my brother and I had. They were quite small and we used to “drive” them around our parent’s actual car and park the little plastic things in the gas tank area. When my mom went to fill up, the gas man guy gave her 2 handfuls of these little toys to her.

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    1. That must have surprised your mom!

      That poodle toy reminds me of a story I heard about my older sister. When she was about two years old, she was given a toy cow on a string that would follow her. She only walked a few feet with it before it let out a loud "moo." She ran away from it and never went near it again.

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  4. What a fun post! My earliest would be a doll I got for my 4th...one with those huge glass eyes that shut and 'real hair' which of course I shampooed immediately and ruined both hair and clothes forever.

    Thanks mucho for the nostalgia fix! :)

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    1. When Cabbage Patch Kids first hit the market, my then-fiancee and I bought one for her daughter Jenni. Not long after getting it, Jenni drove two tiny nails into its head -- one in each ear -- so it would have "earrings."

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    2. Ha, another little girl with her own fashion ideas for her toys...

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    3. Kids can be creative in some strange ways, can't they?

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  5. Two things I remember being obsessed with - Lincoln Logs, and a building set consisting of plastic beams and girders with panels that clicked onto them so you could design houses. Oh yeah, and models. I just loved building things.

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    1. Yes! Real wooden Lincoln Logs! And the Kenner Girder and Panel sets were fascinating toys! I remember them well! Evidently, someone still makes something very similar, but I'm not sure of the company's name. far as model-building goes, I wasn't a big fan of cars or airplanes, preferring the Aurora monster models so popular in the early and mid-1960s. We seem to have had similar interests as kids.

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  6. A little Thumbelina doll was my favorite youth time toy. She had a knob on her back, and when you'd turn the knob, she'd move her little arms and legs like a real baby. I was in heaven. :-) A few years later I was all up on Archie comic books.

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    1. As I've mentioned on this blog before, the Archie Comics titles appealed more to girls, because they consisted of stories about relationships between people, as opposed to superhero stories where impossibly-muscled heroes and villains beat the crap out of each other.

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  7. I had a baby doll that had a button on her belly. She turned her head and closed her eyes when you pushed it. I have no idea what she was called or what happened to her. But I remember I got her for Christmas. I think I was three. Not too shabby, huh. ha.

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    1. I'm always interested in how early we can remember things.

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  8. My first toy was waiting for me when I came home from the hospital in 1955. It was a stuffed Tramp doll from Lady and The Tramp, made by Gund. I still have my original Tramp but nearly all of the fur has been worn off. I found a beautiful "upgrade" on Ebay about fifteen years ago.

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    1. I'm just impressed that you still have the original, no matter what condition it's in. And speaking of upgrades, a friend of mine wrote a blog post not long ago about a children's book she's owned since she was a little girl. However, her copy lost its cover years ago. I went on eBay, found an intact copy of the book, bought it, and sent it to her for her birthday, which was coincidentally only a few weeks away.

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  9. I don't remember Mr. Joggi. I used to love Lite Bright, Shrinky Dinks, Silly Putty, and the slinky, though.
    Thanks for bringing me a feeling of heart warming nostalgia.
    Be well, Silver Fox.

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  10. I had my share of Silly Putty and Slinkies, too. I say "my share" because a Slinky didn't last forever, and neither did Silly Putty!

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