colorforms

Magnetic cut outs in the shapes of characters that can be moved around a scene. This children's toy requires a lot of imagination and hasn't been spoted in toy stores for about a decade. Apparently, there hasn't been a flood in the imagination market.

I personally had a set of "Mork and Mindy" and "The Smurfs". Jesus colorforms are pretty much my only memory of church.

My mom got me some Jesus colorforms about a year ago (she knows my love for silly religious junk). Yep, Jesus, Mary, Paul, probably Peter, and one other dude whom my iconography skill level was not good enough to identify. I accidentally broke the head off of one of them.

Also, there exist colorforms of Michaelangelo's David and Venus De Milo, which have clothing colorforms to go with them. My mom has some of these in her office, and whenever I visit, I put Venus's dresses on David.

Colorforms were invented in 1951 as an adult's toy. They consisted of five pages of vinyl geometrical shapes: circles, squares, triangles...plus a few other bits, all in primary colors. There were four plastic-covered blank pages (also in primary colors) to stick them on. Still available in some art stores and museum shops for substantially more than the kids' version.

Funny, how adults now play with kids' toys and don't have that many of their own anymore.