Jen's Toy Den
Bloomsburg Fair (2024)
The vendor tables at the Bloomsburg Fair were always a lot of fun when I was a kid. My grandparents would let me pick out a few things every year. I remember getting a 1980 Topps Burger King Philadelphia Phillies team set, a black and white plastic boomerang, a wooden rubber band gun that held 12 "shots", packs of Garbage Pail Kids, and little plastic toys that I'd keep in a blue and white cooler by their back door to play with when I visited their house on weekends. None of these things were expensive by any means, but to me they were absolute treasures.
We found one vendor this year that was exactly the kind of table that I would have gravitated towards when I was growing up. They had a wide and random selection of the kind of toys that I would have asked my grandparents for in the 80's. Nothing they sold was expensive. In fact, I don't think anything cost more than five dollars. Looking through this stand was like taking a trip back in time of happy days in my childhood at the Bloomsburg Fair. Here are some of the things they had that stood out.
These little Fortune Teller Miracle Fish were at just about every kid's birthday party that I went to when I was in elementary school.
The whoopie cushion, hand buzzer, and snapping gum brought a huge smile to my face. I had all three of these when I was a kid, and I annoyed my family to no end with them.
The rest of these things aren't necessarilly things that I remember seeing back in the 80's, but they're the kinds of toys that they sold at places like the Bloomsburg Fair, the Hometown Farmer's Market, and at the drug store in the mall back in the 80's. They're the things that my grandfather would have called "crap" before smiling and handing me a dollar to bring one of them home. It wasn't fancy, but I was happy to play with them, and seeing them still brings a smile to my face today.
