teenage mutant ninja turtleI don’t know if other parents had this fantasy growing up, but I always envisioned my (future) kids playing with the toys I kept from my childhood. Don’t ask me why I thought this but I had an opportunity to put this to the test the other day.

My 3 year old son had two of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles from the last McDonald’s Happy Meal toy line. He took them to day care the other day and came home with only one. He was a little upset so I remembered that I had several original TMNT’s in the package from the last time the were popular. Yes, I did do a small bit of toy collecting in my youth. I quickly checked Ebay to see if I was about to destroy hundreds of dollars of precious mint condition toys. Fortunately old TMNT’s, still in the package, are pretty much worthless.

I then went into my small stash of unopened action figures (don’t be impressed the stash is pretty pathetic) and presented two TMNT figures to my son. His response to Daddy’s selflessly offering toys from his childhood to him? “Um….lets see what else you have daddy.” Hmmm…..”That’s all Daddy has.” My son then proceeded upstairs to continue watching his Diego DVD.

By the way my TMNTs were way cooler than the one he lost, but being the particular little boy that he is, he only wanted HIS turtle back. Needless to say I was pretty crushed that my toys weren’t good enough for him. Oh well I’ll just wait and try again when he’s old enough for Transformers and GI Joe. I got a ton of them from back in the day.