THE YOGI HAS LANDED...

The glare of the flash has made his nose look shinier than it is

One thing I recall a number of friends saying to me over the years about various toys in my collection which they'd also owned as kids is - "It's smaller than I remember it".  It's understandable I suppose, as they're likely comparing it to how it looked in their child-hands against their adult-hands, but this is something that's never really happened in my case.  An Action Man (for example) looks the same size to me today as it did back when I was a child (though I never actually owned one until the fad had passed, when I got a couple second-hand from a neighbour).  Perhaps because I often used to place my toys on the floor (or on a table) and just look at them, and not see the scale of them in relation to myself is what accounts for the size of newly-acquired old toys not seeming smaller to me than they were when I first owned them.

This is the inside of the 6th photo after repair

However, there's always an exception, isn't there, and my freshly arrived cardboard Yogi Bear mask is an instance of such a thing.  I do seem to remember it being larger and the collar being thicker (from top to bottom), but that may be because my memory has been influenced by other (plastic) Yogi Bear masks from subsequent decades that I bought as stand-ins until I could find an example of the original shaped-cardboard one I got from Woolworth's back in the '60s.  I've been having a think, by the way, as to exactly what years I bought the two masks I had (separately), and I've now got a clearer idea in my mind.

This is the outside of the 6th photo after repair

I'm pretty sure I was living in our first house in the new town, so if I got it for Hallowe'en, it must've been 1963 at the latest, as the next All Hallow's Eve was spent in a new house just down the road, which we moved to around halfway through 1964.  We were only there for about 15 or 16 months though, before flitting to yet another home in a different neighbourhood of the town in 1965.  It was there I obtained my second Yogi mask (same as the first), again from Woolworth's, and as my first Hallowe'en in that house was in 1966, that's most likely the year I got it.  But what do you care about such trivial, self-indulgent details?  "Nothing!" you say?  Fair enough.

This is the inside of the 2nd photo before repair

Anyway, Yogi required a bit of repair and restoration, so I've included three photos I took, which you can compare against the seller's.  I had to replace a missing piece from the base under the collar and I think I did a pretty good job.  If you'd like to swell my already inflated opinion of myself and my abilities, then don't let me stop you.  If you weren't going to, I have only this to say... what's wrong with you?  A little insincere flattery on your part isn't going to hurt anyone - especially not me.  Right, that's you told; start composing those paeans of praise immediately.  And if you have any thoughts about the disparity in the size of old toys when you see them today compared to how you remember them, feel free to share.

This is the inside of the 2nd and 3rd photo before repair

Posted in: Cartoons