Day 2

[bironic]

Holy crap, guys. Day one has more than doubled the largest single-day comment count from last year. I'm so thrilled by the turnout (so far: 14 participants, 6 countries), and hearing all these memories, and seeing everybody talk to each other, and just, yay

Comments

[stephantom]

Ahahaha

You know, I don't think it's that uncommon. My older sisters have a pretty absurd story that's very similar. (This is more their memory than mine, since my memory is just hearing it retold, but.)

Their was this doll named Jem that was (like Maxi, I guess) not quite Barbie. She had bigger feet and broader hips and shoulders, so Barbie's clothes wouldn't fit her right. My sisters didn't like her. So... they had this... ritual of a sort, lol. Jem was stripped and the words "JEM IS DUM" were written all over her in pen, and her hair was shaved. And the other Barbies stood around her chanting "Jem is dumb!" And then they hung her upside-down in the closet.

...where my mom found it a day or so later and was a bit alarmed. lol

I never really played with Barbies at all. I was a Playmobil girl. I did sometimes treat certain Little People (as I called them) worse than others, though. But it was always the ones I liked. There'd always be some little kids that were put off somewhere on their own. I'd get mad if family members moved

[bironic]

One girl ostracizes the dolls she identifies with, while her sisters communally humiliate the doll they don't like. I want a psychologist to participate in this post. :D

I remember Playmobil (Lego wannabes!), although we didn't have any, and I remember the cartoon Jem -- she was a rock star with a guitar, wasn't she?

[phinnia]

She was! Freezepop covered the theme song. :-)

[thewlisian_afer]

You know, I always mistreated the dolls/stuffed animals/whatever that I liked the best, too. And you know what? Thinking about my writing/RPing? I never outgrew it.

[roga]

The way my sister and I played with Barbies was almost always the same: We'd dress up our Barbie heroine with as many layers of mismatching clothes as we could, and mess up her hair so all the other Barbies and Kens thought she was really fat and ugly. Then, at the very end of the game, she'd shed all her clothes (well, almost all *g*) and they'd discover she was a beautiful knockout and EAT THEIR HEARTS OUT.

...kind of classic, I think. Possibly based on an episode of Married With Children (more so than on the Ugly Duckling, because like in that episode of MWC, our heroine was often an exchange student). And oddly (or not?), we never got tired of playing the same plot over and over and over again...

[bironic]

Aw. (You didn't mean she'd literally eat their hearts out, did you? Because that would've been awesome.) Did she spurn them for being so superficial or graciously accept their apologies?

[roga]

It varied :-) Sometimes she'd get the guy, who apologized profusely and played doormat for the (projected) next year. Sometimes she'd say to hell with them all, guys and girls, and go on to become rich and successful. Sometimes through business, and sometimes through revealing that she'd been stinking rich all this time and kept it a secret, in a Shakespearean kind of twist, long before I'd heard of deus-ex-machina.

And no, she never actually ate their hearts out. I'm trying to think of other games I played now, if they ever reached that cannabalistic level of disturbing, but somewhat disappointingly, none of my play-characters ever ate each other's hearts.

[elynittria]

somewhat disappointingly, none of my play-characters ever ate each other's hearts.

Mine did! Of course, they were dinosaurs, and the hearts (and other things) they were eating were my sister's Barbies, but it's close enough. My sister still bitches about how my brother and I were always ganging up on her Barbies.

[jadesfire]

*grin* At least this one won't produce quite such a gruesome list. Although the results could be even more interesting, of course.

I didn't really have Barbies, but I had all the My Little Ponies (and the Nursery and the Castle) and most of the He-Man and She-Ra action figures. Like yours, they would be involved in long, complicated and intricate plots, where one of them would be kidnapped and the others would have to rescue them. My Lego figures (I had the Robin Hood set) were subjected to similar abductions. The only problem was that I wanted to be in the stories, and I was so much bigger than them

[elynittria]

I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall to see how you explained the situation to your mother when she rescued you. *g*

A lot of the scenarios I devised for my own toys were abduction/rescue ones, as were the plots acted out by my brother (1 year older than me) and me. A lot of the play-acting plots also involved torture and space aliens; the latter was probably due to the influence of Star Trek (the original series).

[jadesfire]

*grin* It made about as much sense as my explanations ever do. I was six and pretending to be a horse. And when you arrive somewhere, you tie the horse to the whatever. And all I had was a chairbed... My logic has not improved much over the years :)

As soon as I was old enough to comprehend the whole 'plot' thing, I was acting out the stories. Of course, I had to use invisible adversaries, and spent much time with my eyes closed, pretending they were there, but still. I must have rescued/been rescued by She-Ra a hundred times :D

[roga]

He-Man and She-Ra! My sister and I loved those shows so much. We used to play act them, and since I was older --> the leader I got to be both He-Man and the Sorceress, and my sister got to be the evil guy and, like He-Man's cat. (Seriously. I used to ride on her teenie weenie underweight back.) And I was also She-Ra most of the time - yes, I could be He-Man and She-Ra simultaneously, as long as I had an audience.

[phinnia]

I had Barbies but I don't remember what I did playing with them (again with the vast memory gaps.) I do remember playing with bags of styrofoam cups, stacking them into pyramids ... and I had all the posable Care Bears figurines (which kind of rocked) and I'd make cardboard box dollhouses for them. I think I still remember how. A triumph of seven year old cardboard engineering.
The Boy (who is autistic/blind/nonverbal) has odd toy choices. His favorites right about now are those travel toothbrush cases and plastic bottles: he likes to blow across the top. And his trampoline. :-)

[bironic]

There's something to be said for the ability to be easily amused. :)

I don't remember much of what I did with the Barbies the rest of the time, other than brief flashes of posing them in their cars, hot tub, ice cream shop (or was that My Little Pony?) or office settings.

We had the plastic Care Bears too! One had a rainbow cloud car that was just fantastic. For some reason, we tended to play with them when we were playing with Play-Doh instead of when we were inside with the Barbies, unless I'm misremembering that. Hmmm. Your cardboard houses sound very cool.

[musicisbelievng]

(ice cream shop was My Little Pony)
(Care Bear Cloud Car was with Play Doh, for sure)

[bironic]

Was there not a soda fountain of some kind for the Barbies?

Thank you for clarification. :)

ETA: Care Bear Cloud Car was with Play Doh, for sure Ohhhh, you know why? Didn't we have Care Bear Play-Doh molds, where we could do the bears in one color and the tummy-symbols in another? I bet we put the Play-Doh bears in the cloud car.

[nicocoer]

When I was wee, meaning when my parents were together, I had all sorts of things as far as dolls and Barbies go. When we left, I only took a few things, and when we returned from Washington state (after Maine) I had even less

[bironic]

What adventures! And very liberal ones, too.

Did I mention that we didn't have TV at that point?

Perhaps evidence that imagination can soar when kids aren't occupied 24/7 by prefabricated fantasies like TV and video games.