Toy Show

The October toy show, held at the Skyway in Toronto, was another of those annual joyous occasions that has overtaken birthdays or Christmas in the excitement stakes for me now I’m in the autumn of my life. It is a pure coincidence that the October show fell close to my birthday, but it gave me the same excitement as those birthdays of my youth, and of course the chance to buy back the old toys that have long since disappeared from my life.

My mum and dad repeatedly said that “Christmas isn’t the same anymore” when I was in my teens and I think they were referring to those days when “me and my brother” Robert were very young and mad with excitement at having our pillowcases stuffed with goodies from the still believable Father Christmas.

It was a time of visits to T.J.Hughes and Lewis’s in Liverpool town centre, to their Christmas Festivities and fairy Grottos, to a magical place with a fifty foot Christmas tree and fantastic lights, to Saint Johns market with it’s tangerines, pomegranates, figs, dates and mixed nuts.

Granddad saved up sixpence a week so that Rob and myself could go to the company Christmas Party, to “win” a fancy bagatelle or Astroray and to eat cake and jelly off little paper plates while wearing daft hats. The evening then spent with the plink of steel balls on tiny pins and the daring shooting of cigarettes out of granddads mouth with the dart gun.

Then closer to Christmas, when visiting the Aunties and the Uncles, there were the great Christmas disappointments, the underpants, the socks, the pen sets.

But mostly the good stuff was had, and the pillowcase full of loot on Christmas morning was the grand finale of Christmas fare, the stuff that has vanished in the mists of time, the stuff that appears magically at the Toronto toy shows and of course, if all else fails, there’s always ebay available to offer an expensive, but essential, nostalgia fix.

As my mum said, "You can’t take it with you", which is so true, however I also have to agree with a toy vendor at the show who said "The one who ends up with the most toys, wins!"