Toys.

If you were a kid during the 60’s, then you know Arcega’s, PanaCraft, and Toylandia.  Yup, the best toy stores in the Greater Manila (as Metro Manila was called then) area.  Since there was an Arcega’s branch at 11^th Avenue in Grace Park, Caloocan, which was very near our place, you’d probably guess that this was where my Pop brought me during Christmas season.  Ah yes, toys.  A kid’s main reason for living, well, at least during our time.  And man, did we have some great toys! 

Back then, it was to hell with political correctness!  Boys had guns.  Girls had dolls.  Period.  And the guns then were the ones loaded with “perminante.”  Darn, I don’t know how it’s called.  Caps?  It was that rolled sheet of yellow or red paper dotted with a teeney bit of gunpowder that you put in a spool inside the toy gun.  Pulling the trigger makes the hammer hit the gunpowder and “pow”!  I remember once, I placed 5 maybe 6 layers of the perminante in the hammer and the entire plastic gun exploded in my hand.  I had minor burns and I had to endure my fingers getting dunked in blue ink.  Don’t ask me, that’s the first aid for burns then. 

Let’s see now, I remember I had those cowboy type six-shooters that were made of metal.  Then there’s the Japanese made space toy guns.  Oh yes, I had this 007 camera that turns into a pistol.  Cool.  And an even cooler James Bond attaché case a la “From Russia with Love” with a radio, a gun, a silencer, and a knife hidden in the side of the case.  Then there were the battery operated guns.  I had this 50 caliber machine gun run by 2 D cells.  It was really corny because all it did was make a noise.  I really envied Danny’s tommy gun.  It was battery operated but it was also loaded with perminante and it was heavy and it was the actual size thing!  Man alive!  It really looked real!  We all envied the guy.  This was the 60’s man.  Ain’t no Tokyo Marui yet.  Yes sir, if you were a boy, your toys were war toys.  My ninong gave me a remote control tank that really made my Christmas in 1968.  The thing rolls forward, backward, and the turret rotates and fires those suction tip plastic missiles.  I really had a blast with that one.   

Arcega’s had this really wily strategy of putting  adverts on page 2 of the Manila Times several weeks before Christmas.  And every day, I read and studied those ads and calculated the loot, I mean, the aginaldo I was expecting to get against the toy I wanted to buy.  Talk about learning arithmetic and budgeting and I was just in second grade then.  One particular toy I had in mind then was this roller coaster thing.  It sold for P35.00.  Large sum during those days.  No matter how much I tried to do the math, I knew I could never buy the darn thing.  Well, good ol’ Pop came to the rescue and bought it for me for Christmas. 

As for the other toy stores, I wasn’t able to go to Toylandia but I was able to check out PanaCraft in A. Mabini in Manila.  What did I buy?  A canister of “Crazy Foam.”  I saw it on Uncle Bob’s show on Channel 7.  He would feature different toys everyday and all were available at PanaCraft.  And yes, a kid just couldn’t resist it.  You had to eat the blasted foam.

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