Crafty – Ahoy Pirates ! (cardboxing a pirate ship)

The last months were all about HarrHarr! – Pirates!
For Tornados Birthday, I prepared a treasure hunt, we then went to SeaWorld on the following weekend (pirate show) and by Halloween, first at kindy and then at a neighbour’s party, we knew our dressup/moustache routine. We played A LOT of pirate games with the Lego and the Fisherprice men too, but we only had small or makeshift boats (shoe boxes) ..
Then I started a project and it did not look too bad – but I could not find anything for a stable big mast! This weekend I finally dug out a tube from a (broken) play tent. I think the red sails are a good effect.
Obviously, it’s not a very true reconstruction (oh, Fisherprice has a really awesome set)  but I am very glad to say that Tornado was, again, very happy  with our homemade and recycled cardboard version, especially, because I tried to satisfy his wishes for certain features, like the outlook on top of the mast, an anchor on a string and, a trapdoor for the “cabin part”.

Cheap as craft – Cardboard City

When I was little, I had a dollhouse. It was an old, rather simple model, more like a transformed bookshelf with a hint of a roof, but my dad repainted it and my mum put new carpets and curtains in, and I had it for years.  I am hoping some girl still plays with it today, my family’s wanderlust had my mother give it away before she could pass it back to me for my own children, but I am sure the house got a new home.

Now I have a boy, and this boy – as explained in a former post – has a big passion for all kinds of little men in uniform, Police, Firemen etc. Now the series Imaginext from FisherPrice offers only limited housing for the different sets we have. We do have the big fire station, but I have never once seen the Police Station found on the internet. And I am a bit on a tight budget, so one day, when my son said “I really need a jail !!” I just made him this:

I know! It’s rather simple. It’s not rally all that awesome. I used a cardboard box I had just brought home from the shops and only material I had at hand. The bars at the window are toothpicks…But for my boy not only it was a lot of fun to assist me building it, he is playing with it ever since .

I was so pleased with his joy about the jailhouse that I gave into his request to make him more buildings and have since then worked on a whole city (my favourite is the church, actually it even has a bell with a string in it now!)

It’s fun, it’s easy, it’s cheap – anybody can do it.

What’s the last thing you have done from scratch for your kids ?

"imaginext". About Love and Hate and Fisher-Price

In the 70s,  when I grew up, the new toy on the block was Playmobil (curiously, Brandstätter, the German makers, decided they had to make smaller toys because of the ongoing oil crisis and the rising prices for raw materials), they did not have as much as they do now, but it was quite popular. Their pirate ship was totally awesome.

My friend Marc had one and he was making a big deal about it.
Rich kid show-off.

My (poorer) parents then chose to buy me PlayBig, the knock-off copy cat (which was actually more exact in details and proportions of the figures). They had to stop production a few years later. The Playmobil man is in the middle with the dumb but steady smile because he knew he would win -  big time.

I believe I had gotten this set with the road construction. I wasn’t too thrilled. Fortunately, my brother had lots of Lego and matchbox cars, and it did not really damage me for life. I have actually grown up to a person who tries to be unimpressed by brands and ‘originals’ which is basically what you have to do when you don’t have enough cash to always get the latest thing in fashion. Now that is something I will try to transmit to my son.
Or make lots of money soon.

Fast forward .. 30 years (yep!). Playmobil is hard to get in Australia.

After seeing how happily my boy played with an old Fisher-Price fortress and the knights that my husband found in his shed from his now teenage son, for his 3rd birthday, he got him this :

It was the beginning of a love/hate relationship with the “Imaginext” line of Fisher-Price for me.  Over time, we bought him – or he made us buy – the following sets all themed on emergency and rescue :

My fav’ is the police horse, just check out this face – it means business !

So I love these toys it because :

• my son would spent HOURS playing with his “little men” – even without me, and i finally got stuff done for myself. Toddler’s mum in heaven.
• they would not break easily (at least not at first)
• they were themed on emergency and rescue professions, something my son was – and still is – very interested in, bless him
• the details and the facial expressions were kind of cool (raised eyebrows, sunglasses.. ) – much better than the Playmobil idiot smile.

But I hate them because

• we kept losing the removable jackets and other accessories and this caused tremendous distress and drama. I have lost many hours of my life searching for them (allowing him to take 3 firemen on an overseas journey was one of the biggest mistakes I ever made)
• different to the old knights that are simpler in conception but survived years of play and then more years in storage, they are now losing their arms and I keep having to repair them with superglue. and then repair them again because he takes them into the bath. The printed on faces also come off. The are now a miserable bunch of disfigured amputees really
• you just can’t always get the set you want in Australia it seems..
• instead of expanding the city theme, they have broadened their range of toys first to to superheroes, robots and merchandising stuff (toy story3) like everybody else. there are also knights and pirates now, but I would have liked to expand the collection on more contemporary – and real life – stuff. (there is already a lot of superhero stuff going on in my son’s life anyway.)

But he still plays a lot with them and we have started building stuff ourselves to enrich the experience (i make a ‘cheap as craft post’ about it)

And now I see they have come up with this :

A-dorable aliens ! I want them. But I can’t have them.
Because my son would take them from me.
Because he is totally mean and takes all MY toys.

What’s your toy story ?
Any toys that mean a lot to your child AND to you.. ?

***

PS : I do not want to withhold two curiosities I found while researching pictures for this post.

This dad posts about a campaign by UNICEF. I feared this was part of the now huge range of Playmobil series, but I think it’s a good idea anyway :
http://daddytypes.com/2007/12/03/aww_playmobil_child_soldiers_c.php

The operation scene seems to be one of the more recent conceptions. I thought this website was rather curious…http://www.dimensionsguide.com/dimension-of-a-playmobil/