Tomorrow's the Big Toy Hall of Fame Announcement. Let's see how I do.

I don't know what I was doing last November that was so all-fired important that I missed the announcement of the 2019 inductees into the Toy Hall of Fame. So I never did hear the excellent news that the Coloring Book - long one of my favorites - has at last made it in. The Coloring Book was selected alongside Magic: The Gathering (whatever that is), and Matchbox Cars. (I've been more diligent in the past in keeping up with what's up on the toy front. Here's my 2018 post.)

Anyway, I'm on it this year, and later this morning, I'll be on the lookout for the press release announcing the winners. 

The nominees are:

Baby Nancy, one of the first (if not the first) Black baby doll that got the ethnic details right. Baby Nancy wasn't just a white baby doll made with a different shade of plastic. She was unapologetically Black, and had textured hair to boot. This was back in the late 1960's, when it was already high time for little Black kids to have a doll that kinda-sorta looked like them. (I say kinda-sorta, because it's not like I actually looked like Tiny Tears.) Shindana, the toy company that introduced Baby Nancy, closed in the 1980's after bringing out a number of dolls designed with Black kids in mind. But Baby Nancy served her purpose, and today there are plenty of Black dolls on the market. 

Bingo was also nominated. Growing up, I played plenty of Bingo. Somewhere along the line, my family was given a cast off real Bingo set, replete with the hand-cranked number dispenser. But Bingo is more closely associated with old folks in the church hall, hand stamping the multiple cards they have in front of them. So, toy? You decide. (I decided it's really not.)

As pre-teen, I read a few books about girls and their horses, but it was never a big thing in my neighborhood. I didn't know anyone who "rode." The closest association I had with horses was my father's cousin Arthur who was a motorcycle cop in Worcester who doubled as a cop-on-a-horse when needed for ceremonial purposes. The girls in horse books were all rich, suburban, and, I was pretty sure, Protestant. And I wasn't all that interested in their impossibly remote lives. I did watch a lot of cowboy shows, but horses themselves? Meh. So I apparently missed the Breyer Horses "which realistically captured the spirt and magic of the living creatures" and which apparently "seized the imaginations of children." Just not any children I knew. 

Jenga is somewhat fun to play, but it was never going to be the game of choice for someone with such limited mechanical ability and devoid of spatial reasoning. Which, alas, would be me. 

Lite-Brite (1966) came out too late for me, and I don't recall that my sister Trish (10 years my junior) ever had one. Too bad. It's no coloring book, but I would have much enjoyed poking little colored pegs into a black board and watching them light up.

Master of the Universe was a "line of action figures". He-Man, et al. All boys had for action figures when I was a kid was khaki-colored plastic GIs, so this was an improvement of sorts. At least they're colored. And they don't all look alike. My experience with them is limited, but I seem to remember buying Moss-Man for a young friend back in the day. That young friend is turning forty next year, so this was a while ago.

My Little Pony are so amazingly creepy that just the thought of one of them makes me crave the sturdy, WASP reality of the Breyer Horses. But I must confess that, if these had been around when I was a kid, I would have been begging for a little pastel blue or purple, big eyed Little Pony with flowing cream locks and fluttering eye lashes.

With family, with friends, I constantly played board games growing up. Monopoly. Clue. Chinese Checkers. Easy Money. Horse Race. Shoots and Ladders. Parcheesi. Go to the Head of the Class. Candyland. Concentration. Sorry. (See below.) But I don't remember ever playing Risk. There was one strategy game that I played occasionally. I think it was Stratego. Or maybe Battleship. I seem to remember little metal ships.  I'm quite sure that we would have considered Risk too brainy, too elite. Played, no doubt, by the sorts of families who collected Breyer Horses.

Now Sidewalk Chalk. There is a fabulous, and fabulously versatile, plaything. Oh, it's all fancied up now: bright colors, easily wash-off-able. But we were happy with a packet of white chalk. Or, if we were lucky, colored chalk. Sure, it was associated with school. As in, writing on the blackboard, and, later, greenboard. And with getting stuck clapping erasers after school. But in civilian life, it was used - of course - for Hopscotch. And for drawing things, like hearts with our initials and the initials on whatever boy we were crushing on (or our friends thought we were crushing on) at the moment. Whenever I come across evidence that kids have been chalking the sidewalks, which happens quite frequently in the Public Garden, which is just across the street from where I live, it always puts a smile on my face. Even if they're the type of kids who, in my childhood, would have collected Breyer Horses and played Risk.

I spent many hours of my childhood over a board of  Sorry, which was right up there with Monopoly and Clue in terms of frequency of play. What could be better than being crazily aggressive and screaming Sorry! at the top of your lungs, when you really weren't sorry in the least. (A similar thrill was achieved when playing the card game "I Doubt It," when you could challenge someone by pretty much calling them a liar.)

In my humble, gray-haired opinion, it's way too soon for Tamagotchi, the digital pet, to make it into the Hall of Fame. Plenty of time to get to virtual anything, once the old-timer toys and games (think Chalk!) are enshrined. 

I love the game of Yahtzee, and still play it occasionally with my sister Trish. Like the best games, success relies on a combination of skill and luck. 

But only three toys or games are going to make into the Hall of Fame for 2020, so I have to go with:

• Baby Nancy (it's time)
• Chalk (simple, classic, inexpensive)
• Sorry! (all those childhood hours devoted to this game)

Sorry, Yahtzee. Maybe next year.

Anyway, the winners will be announced later today. We'll see if this is my week for picking winners.