If you’ve ever been curious as to why neckties and aftershave are considered the quintessential Father’s Day gifts, wonder no more. We also found some great modern-day gift equivalents just for dad.
Vintage family & old-fashioned parenting
See a dozen cute vintage play kitchens – toys for kids who wanted to pretend to cook, and have fun with mini appliances and plastic food.
Candy Land, the vintage board game that made millions of kids dream of an ice cream & lollipop world
Here, take a look back at some of the game pieces, cards, and several game boards for the vintage Candy Land game. Which ones do you remember most?
A bouncy new baby is wonderful – but quite a burden, too! In the early 20th century, baby window cages like these were promoted as making babies more fun since they were easier to care for.
100 years ago, public swimming pools were vital for summer survival After the concept of public baths faded from favor, but before post-war homeowners started
If you want to have a little more fun with the holiday, pick a decade and try for a Mother’s Day celebration with vintage flair! We’ve rounded up a little inspo for your effort.
Here’s a look back at some sweet vintage Mother’s Day cards from the 20th century, including a few of the 240 million greeting cards for mom that were sold in just one year, back in 1959.
Anyone obsessed with vintage Strawberry Shortcake probably dreamed of these pieces of sugary sweet delight featuring their favorite gal – dolls and toys, of course, but also bedding, wallpaper, roller skates and more.
With 3D lenticular printing on the covers and full-color stop-motion animation-like illustrations, these vintage Puppet Storybooks were irresistible to kids!
Barbie wasn’t just a doll – she had an empire! Look back at Vintage Barbie play sets, complete with friends and family, fabulous dollhouses, pools, pets… and lots and lots of fashionable clothing.
50 years ago, the coolest vintage banana seat bikes for kids also had bright colors, high handlebars and slick rear tires. Check ’em out here!
Do you recall playing with vintage clicker and Clacker toys trend of the early 60s and 70s. Inexpensive and fun hard plastic balls on strings, their popularity spread like wildfire over the course of just a few years.
Remember how yummy baby aspirin tasted? Flashback to those fever dreams of yore with this collection of everything vintage baby aspirin.
Step back and time and enjoy these charmingly vintage Christmas scenes celebrations from the 1940s through the 1970s.
That 90s Toys R Us experience is over forever, but you can join us in reminiscing with this collection of the toys kids pined for back then.
The official pictures of kids with Santa – once called ‘sitting on Santa’s lap’ – has been around for generations. Here’s a look back at this Christmas ritual!
In the 1974 holiday classic TV special from the Rankin-Bass team, The Year Without a Santa Claus, brothers Heat Miser and Snow Miser memorably performed their signature tunes.
Let Christmas stocking stuffers of yesteryear inform your Christmas list THIS year! We’ve rounded up over 30 vintage Christmas stocking stuffers we loved in days gone by.
Called ‘the world’s greatest toy catalog,’ vintage FAO Schwarz toy catalogs like this gives you a peek at what children of all ages loved to play with back in the sixties.
If you were a mid-century suburban kid you likely had a tubular metal swing set like one of these! Check out this nostalgia trip back to the backyards of your childhood.
When you were a kid, there was nothing else like the joy of old-fashioned treehouses or forts: a little getaway that you built (maybe with some help) that could be a clubhouse or castle or spaceship or simply a place for a little peace and quiet.
Follow us backward through time, and check out dozens of the old roller skates that were so well-loved in the heyday of roller skating!
These cute vintage 60s dolls seemed to offer something for everyone – from the mod Swingy doll to more traditional baby dolls, and mini doll sets to talking toys!
With these vintage Disneyland tickets, visitors could enjoy their choice of dozens of Disneyland rides and attractions in Fantasyland, Tomorrowland, Frontierland and Adventureland.
Tiny Tears was a very popular baby doll back in the ’50s – and the big selling point was that she cried ‘real’ tears – and wet her diaper.
Remember these classic Fisher-Price preschool toys, like the vintage corn popper, colorful xylophone, music box TV and chatter telephone?
These little vintage kiddie swimming pools were the perfect size to help introduce babies and children to water fun in the safety of their own shallow wading pools!
In Hawaii in the ’70s, Waikiki was more than a beach. It’s a vibrant, exciting, cosmopolitan resort city on Oahu, only a few miles from bustling downtown Honolulu.
Look back at the fun kids generations ago had on dangerous old playgrounds – with towering structures, fast spinners, rickety rides & other unsafe old-school play equipment.
Today’s toddlers ride in style in the sleek and racy, brightly-colored, low-slung plastic numbers like the vintage Big Wheel from Marx – that whiz, spin, skid, slide, race and even roar.
The first vintage Etch-A-Sketch toy was made back in 1960. It was a big seller from early on, and over the years, Ohio Art made several other creative, artistic toys – such as those shown here.
When it came to parenting the ’40s, were moms too easy on their kids? Was being a parent harder than the generation before? Here’s what people said in 1940.
Some of the most iconic images of the Great Depression were the migrant mother photos of a woman named Florence Thompson, taken by Dorothea Lange. While one picture was famous, there were several other shots taken at the same time. See them here!
Remember getting drinks in vintage Dixie Cups? While many of us recall them from childhood because of their cute designs, they weren’t invented simply for convenience.
Do you remember Shrinky Dinks? They were DIY crafts that could be made by coloring on a plastic sheet, cutting out the various shapes, and then shrinking them down using heat.
Imagine, up above the clouds enjoying a cheeseburger from McDonald’s for lunch or dinner. McDonaldland cookies for dessert. That’s what United Airlines’ McDonald’s Friendly Skies Meals offered kids in the 1990s!
George Burns & Gracie Allen were not only married in real life, their work from the mid-1930s through the mid-1950s made them one of the biggest comedy duos in Hollywood. Meet the wacky couple here!
Have a look back at these cute vintage Fisher-Price dollhouses from the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s! Take a look at how they changed over the years, and see which one you remember best.
These vintage Rig-a-Jig toy sets were popular back in the fifties, and were sort of a hybrid of TInkertoys, Lego and an Erector Set. See how they worked, and what you could create with them, here!
More than 100 years ago, see how antique baby carriages like these were styled with beautiful designs, made from wicker, metal and wood – sometimes embellished with wooden spindles and woven reeds.
Put together a half dozen pieces of this DIY fun furniture for kids, and your child will have endless play ideas. Made from just one simple box construction, the pieces are great for pretend games, the right size to use as table and chairs.
Wonder Horses and other horse ride-on toys made kids’ dreams come true! There were different styles & sizes for all ages of children – and for decades, they were among the most popular requests made of Santa. Here’s a look!
Back in the seventies and eighties, these vintage Fisher-Price dolls enchanted millions of little kids. They were available in a few different sizes, styles and colors, and you could get them a lot of different outfits.
A look back: Some of the best buys in antique toys (from 1974) Article from American Home, December 1974 Antique toys are double-barreled delights. They
These vintage Sew Magic & Sew Perfect toys were working sewing machines that let kids do real sewing, but without having to use needle and thread by hand.
Hopefully, these vintage 1970s Playskool toys, dolls, ride-ons and more will bring back some happy memories! They may also remind you of a simpler time, when most toys were joyfully kid-powered.
Gen X kids got to prove that these 1980s fruit snacks – non-perishable packaged sweet and chewy treats – would be big sellers… and the forerunners of the dozens of similar snacks on the market today.
Take a look back at these adorable antique baby portraits from the 1800s, captured in these pictures on cabinet cards, cartes des visite, and other antique photographic prints from long ago.
Somewhere in that golden haze after Sesame Street, there was a little TV show called New Zoo Revue. Take a look back to that oh-so-retro kids’ show here!
To the average American girl, between the ages of, say, 10 and 17, slumber parties are as important as pizza, add-a-beads and Judy Blume.
Originally envisioned as a beer garden, this Florida destination has grown and grown. Here, see what the famous vintage Busch Gardens amusement park was like from the 1950s right through to the 1990s.
These pretty and old-fashioned paper Christmas ornaments are so easy to make, kids and adults can work on them together! As a bonus, they’re very cheap to create. Get directions and diagrams here.
