Playmobil ghosts

Sometimes your own youth gets you. I realize this more and more. What I find sad about it, is how much has been forgotten and buried in the past and only sometimes comes up again. Or gets triggered.

Like this when I were in the toy-store looking at some new playmobil toys. And then I saw a ghost.

“Hmm”, I thought. Weird. I’ve seen this before. Not quite the same. Something similar.

I had a closer look. Playmobil got a ghost with Led. Illuminated and glowing in the dark. Since I am a bit out of the loop I actually have no idea which theme the ghost belongs to.

But it triggered something.

Later at home I started searching the web for older versions and when I saw it, I remembered.

This was one of those toys I played with for hours. Especially in the evening.

This looks like a much simpler version. In some way you can see that the years have passed. The design got re-invented. The ghost has more details; the overall used technology is more advanced.

The older model was basically a white figure with a cover up that could glow in the dark. The image of a ghost could easily be destroyed by just removing the cover. The scary creature could be made natural; you could look under the hood so to speak and see that the ghost-thing was just a dress. It took away the supernatural.

The current ghost is ghost. There is nothing that needs to be revealed (probably to keep the led intact). But also: nothing can be revealed.

I feel something is missing. With the LED, the battery and the impossibility to remove the ghost-dress, it feels like the ghost of the past - in its simplicity - is/was the better toy.

The chemical based plastic that needed to be charged by a light source: pure magic in the hands of kids. Like the watches that you could read in the dark after sunset.

I remember hours of holding this spooky to my night lamp, charging it and then taking it under the bed-cover. I mean: look at this glow!

Just by the glow you knew that some handy work went into this and you probably should chew on it. What you cannot see on the picture is that the white figure under it even has a beard. A BEARD! A ghost with a beard. What is there not to love about that.

Today this little fellow is probably either on a garbage dump or somewhere below the roof in a box, far away from where I could get a hand of it.

I’d really like to have one of these old ones again. They last for years. I could put it onto my night stand. I think I even miss him a bit. Enough to write about him in order to keep the memory alive.