In yesterday's lecture, Prof Kang mentioned that she tried to be gender-neutral while raising her two young little boys. So she bought them cooking sets to play.

They played them but soon, they were asking for Power Rangers. She pointed out that her boys are probably influenced by their school mates and the media, despite her attempts to not be gender-biased when buying toys.

This led to think what sort of toys I had when I was younger. I had a great childhood in the early 1990s.

When I was still a child, I was given toys, playmates (eh, not Playboy kind!) to play with and loads of imagination to run wild.

I had cooking sets. I learned how to ride a bicycle when I was 8 or 9 years old. I went for swimming classes. I had Barbie dolls (no Ken dolls though I always wanted to buy it). I had frequent fun stayovers at Angie's old place at Hougang. I collected and bought many Sailormoon stuff (dolls, stickers, cards... you don't know how much i like them!). I bought many comic books and fiction like Casper, Richie Rich Archie & Friends, Enid Blyton's and Roald Dahl's and voraciously read them once them were fresh in my hands.

I played make-believe games like being a doctor, being a daughter (to Sarah - my younger sister! Sarah always played my mother -_-"), being a pastor (only in swimming pools when we tried to baptise one another), being a traffic warden and being a driver.

When I played Doctor, we would buy titbits and sweets to use as medicine. Blood in a packet was actually F&N Cherryade in a plastic bag, pasted on the wall by masking tape. Yep that was blood.

That's why I was creative when I was much younger, until higher education came. It dumbed my creativity.

Okay, I shall not digress. But yes, today, as I was talking to Denise, we talked about the things we played when I was younger and we realise that we were all playing with toys that were typically for girls (I hated toys that required building. So yea, Lego blocks were mostly used as food in my cooking games). Then we suddenly talked about Polly Pocket.

Polly Pocket now is produced by Mattel and they're big, just like regular dolls. They cannot even fit into the pockets! It defeats the purpose of being called Polly POCKET!

The versions I played with were produced by Bluebird in the early 90s and they were small and compact. Easy to bring around for hours of fun.

I found these pictures online and these 2 are the exact ones I had! Look at the cross-sectional Polly Pocket dollhouses. You can make the tiny plastic dolls go up and down the house. The mini plastic dolls were about 1cm long.

Strictly not for those with thick fingers (ie. boys' fingers).

I didn't know this Polly Pocket was actually in an European (Parisian to be exact) setting, until now! This fitted well in my palm when I closed it. It came with a miniature dog too.

I remember this one is slightly bigger than the blue one because it was a castle. This one would actually light up! When you close it, it's in a heart shape. If I didn't remember wrongly, this was a Christmas present from Angie's mom.


Oh! The more I say it, the more excited I become! They were absolute joy to play with. Together with Angie and Sarah's Polly Pockets, we always formed neighbourhoods,visiting one another's tiny plastic dolls.

Come to think about it, the plastic dolls were really dangerous because they were really small. Tiny. Minute. Really tiny.
Thank goodness they haven't been stuck in my ears and nose before!

What did you all play in your childhood? Do share!