Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Makin' things with light

Thanks to a question on Cash Cab this evening, Noel and I amused our children briefly with a duet version of the Lite-Brite theme song: "Lite Brite! Makin' things with liiiiight ... What a sight, makin' things with Lite Brite!"

Lite Brite is one of those Generation X toys that people my age remember fondly.  Some of them I never owned, but I can't deny that we owned a Lite Brite.  I dutifully made all the the designs that came with it -- you may recall that they were printed on black paper which you inserted behind the pegboard, and when you put the peg in you actually punctured the paper.

You also got blank sheets of black paper on which you could make your own designs.  I remember making title cards for the puppet shows that my brother and I put on for the family.  And if I'm not mistaken, we managed to hold onto our Lite Brite long enough to lose some significant number of the colored pegs that came with it, necessitating the buying of a replacement pack.

Do you have any Lite Brite memories?  Original Lite Brite or later-generation variants are both acceptable.

3 comments:

the secret knitter said...

I remember playing with a Lite Brite, but I don't recall that we had one.

This did remind me that I got Mighty Men & Monster Maker, probably when I was in first grade. It was, I regret to say, the one gift I found in advance by snooping in my parents' closet. Yes, I felt guilty.

Adam Villani said...

Nothing specific, just lots of fond memories of playing with it. I think it officially belonged to my older sister, but I liked it, too.

I do remember never taking lightly the responsibility of starting up a new design on a piece of that black paper. Because it actually gets consumed in the process of putting the pegs in. I felt the same way of using up the little note sheets in Clue and such... I was always concerned that I had to not waste any of the expendable papers that came with toys.

donnadb said...

I feel exactly the same way, and still do about specially printed scoresheets and such. Yahtzee pads, man -- no playing around with those. When you used one, it was serious. We could squeeze 2 or 3 games onto a single sheet using all the columns.