Turning Back the Hands of Time

I once blogged briefly about the toys i used to play, having a foreigner with me now, i wanted to see if his childhood toys were the same as mine. I found this museum located at Bussorah Street (Bugis MRT, near Arab St Malay Village).

                                        

Greeting you at the museum front is this ma-ma stall full of old school knick knacks. It certainly brought back alot of nostalagia. That straw ball boys used to kick on the left, paper snakes & ladders, that box of sticky tube that you use a straw to blow into a translucent bubble & compete who's got the biggest. Everything was foreign to him, except this.

                             

Which we bought for $1 and scared passer-bys silly by smashing them hard on the floor,

giving a loud BANG.

The 49 year old shop owner VERY enthusistically shoved posed me into his deco around, snatching offering to take photos of us. It was pretty amusing to see how passionate he is in wanting us to have a good time. He must have taken 40 photos of us. It's a 2 storey shop house.

The first storey is a shop selling antiques and memorablia.

In the backyard, you find this..

Then for $2 each, you get to adjourn upstairs where you finally find the "museum".

Do you remember folding this? I never knew how to fold them. But i knew how to fold this flower thing where you write numbers on it, then you recite some chant, and a friend chooses a number and it reveals some random message. Do you know that? I forgot how to fold that!!

Up here, there're rows and rows of display cases with items from when you were a baby. Wooden guns, parachutes, toys you play as a boy. Stationeries you bring to school as a child.

For more pictures on the toy, click here.

I remember my elder brother using this water bottle!

My prized possession when i was young was my.....

and i learnt that my foreigner collected them too! Hahaha, i am surprised. Then again, my younger brother secretly pastes the inside of his wardrobe with stickers. Guess boss like glittery stickers too!

Furry & glow-in-the-dark were the PREMIUM stickers. We bring save up pocket money to buy stickers, bring them to school and trade with friends. Do children still collect stickers now? Or have they moved on to PSP and DS-lites Iphones only?

Pop-up stickers are the next in tier. We only trade in the same category, depicting value. If someone wants a furry, she'll have to give up 3 shinys or something like that.

For more pictures on the stickers, click here.

I remember keeping the stickers that comes with the Wang Wang biscuits. Stickers like these has the lowest value because they're FREE (kids also very smart one k) but still i'd keep them because it makes my sticker album GROW.

The school bookshop is where we spend our pocket money with useless things like country flag erasers.

Dolls with the open-shut eyes always freak me out. Now, the dolls can drink, poop and talk. We had none of those back then!

Before Kinder Surprise came, toys like these were found in snacks. This particular snack taste horrible, but still we buy them for the useless toy inside.

For more pictures on the snack, click here.

You can hardly find the Ding Dang now. The toys are more modern, but still useless.

It's not a large museum, you pretty much see all the large peices here in my blog. Still, it's a fun afternoon to spend there!

I laughed when i saw this. Can you imagine how far our stuff toys have come? This looks hideous to me now ( i actually have seen this before in my child days). The European's childhood is 20% similar to us Asians. Actaully, only the toys from brands like Bandai, Matell, Tomy etc. The other things like Goli (marbles), tongkat, Chak Teh, Five Stones..he has never heard of.

This was another of my favourite past time before Barbie came along!

For more pictures on the paper doll, click here. 

There is really such innocence being a kid, we were actually contented with changing paper outfits on paper dolls. Some of the above photos are found Open The Toy, a blog on new and old toys.

         If i really could turn back the hands of time, i would have kept all of my old toys and sticker albums. Seeing these items on someone else's blog and in the museum fills me with jealousy and regret.

and if i really could turn back the hands of time, i'd not pop 20 Hershey's kisses that'll end up on my hips.

but we can never turn back the pages of time, though we may wish to relive a happy moment, or say good-bye just one last time, we never can, because the sands of time continue to fall, and we can't turn the hourglass over