A Wave of Nostalgia: Puzzles & Games from My Childhood

This weekend I fell down a bit of a nostalgia rabbit hole. I was doing some decluttering and re-organising of my stuff, playing lots of old mixtapes while I worked and getting frequently distracted by reading old letters, etc.

Meanwhile, my mum was clearing a few more boxes out of the attic - retrieving more boxes of things from our childhood that were packed up many moons ago. Some of this treasure will be (finally) given to charity shops, but much of it is destined for my new neice and any siblings and cousins she aquires over the coming years :)

I remembered a lot of the things that emerged from these boxes, but there were a few that hit me with such a strong wave of memories that it was slightly overwhelming (in a good way!). I thought you guys might enjoy a peek at some of the games I loved in my 80s childhood - maybe you had some of these too?

Picture Pairs & Animal Friends Dominos: I must have been really young when we first started playing picture pairs but those pictures are imprinted on my brain. The watering can was always my favourite.

Snakes and Ladders - a classic!

 

Foxwood Tales and Brambly Hedge jigsaw puzzles: I loved these books (especially the Brambly Hedge series) and spent many happy hours looking at the pictures, and (when I was a bit older) trying to draw some of the charming little things in them.

Teddy Bears Picnic: I had 100% forgotten that this game was a thing that existed and I have no clue what the rules might have been, but when it came out of the box from the attic: POW! So familiar!

 

Something else I'd totally forgotten about: Victoria Plum's Adventures. I loved this book and all the cute pictures, especially as my BFF at the time was called Victoria:

Huff-Puff: My mum tried to get rid of this game when we were deciding what to keep and what to charity shop. "It looks really boring!" she said. "What's fun about building these fiddly little card houses?" But we were having none of it. Building little card houses before the wolf can blow them down = very fun indeed!

Another fave puzzle: I absolutely adored this picture and remember doing lots of paintings with mountains in them just like those.

There was also a box of older-kids games. We spent sooooo many hours playing Guess Who over the years, including many games auf Deutsch with visiting German friends. Once you've learnt the German for things like "does he have a moustache" and "do they have brown hair?" you can have hours of fun...

Finally, rediscovering this card game hit me so hard in the feels I can't even. Old Macdonald Counting Snap! So. Much. Cuteness.