As far back as I have memories, which is 4+, I still play with the same exact things. I literally have not changed since being a child as far as my primary interests go.
Anime/Cartoons
At 4 I have vivid memories of being obsessed with Tranzor Z (Massinger Z). The unique drawing style and robot action was really cool compared to other shows even if I didn't know this was my first exposure to anime. I'd make a full costume out of paper and run around the house rocket punching everything with the detachable paper fists. I still dig anime today but strictly limited to the heavy and serious emotional and traumatizing OVA stuff. Giant Robo Eng dub to this day is still my GOAT. I still jam out to Duck Tales and Rescue Rangers and recently got into Pokémon original series for the first time and use it as a primary Little time activity. Something I can enjoy while Little that is really awesome and isn't tainted by nostalgia goggles.
Computers
This one is long, funny, and sad. I had a kids encyclopedia set that had mesmerizing articles and pictures on ICs (we called them 'microchips' in the 80s) and computers. Got me hooked on computers but they were super expensive. A relative got one, 8 MHz 8088 with 256k and the rest is history. We only played video games on it mostly but eventually I'd comb through the manuals inside out until I understood them learning all the hardware components and teaching myself MS-DOS by trial and error. I begged and pleaded every year for my own for Christmas and birthdays but my family couldnt afford to buy a 5-6 yr old a $3000+ toy to play games on. In my desperation I built a 1:1 replica out of poster board and cardboard. And I mean down to the mother board colored in green crayon with individual chips painted in black crayon glued down in rows and even scraps of actual ribbon cable glued down with Elmers to the floppy drives. Recall dragging the entire thing to school for a 1st or 2nd grade show and tell. I put rocks in the 'power supply' part because I knew that was the heavy side. Skills in computers, programming, engineering, and all the skills troubleshooting and understanding electronics and software systems and protocols would be a significant part of my life which remains to this day. I never did get one until I was like 14-16 and old enough to work. Money seems a recuring theme and might have been a factor in rushing to grow up...
LEGO
Never gets old. Same meticulous engineer me counting every single nub and making sure its PERFECT and exactly like the instructions. My introduction to LEGO was a set or two on my 7th birthday. Eventually my most common theme with LEGO would be movie reenactments. Robocop and Aliens were common. Mini fig that gets in a accident or gets dismembered by bad guys and left for dead gets saved and has a mini fig head grafted onto a heavily armed cyborg robot body and storms their base for revenge. Or a dropship with a loading ramp and APC and some mini figs baracading themselves in a base after their ship and APC wreck and fighting imaginary Xenomorphs with sentry turrets and all. Cause there was nothing really to make organic looking aliens and stuff back then.
Would like to build a whole LEGO city like I dreamed of as a little boy some day. With a lake with some boats and 2nd elevated platform for space stuff. Used to drool at the catalogs. Have a Saturn V to put together but kind of want to get another to keep mint and unopened if it ever comes back in stock. LEGO #1 on my shopping list for kid's birthdays.
Electronics
Getting a Science Fair 160-in-1 electronics kit for Christmas one year was life changing. It led to me staining my fingers and clothes hand etching circuit boards and soldering at like 8-9 yrs old and prompting my concurrent interest in the hardware side of all things computers and video games. Of course now everything is simpler with FPGAs and KiCAD and OshPark. Before Nintendo my red LEGO case and electronics kit went with me EVERYWHERE.
Video games
Nintendo NES was the big one once Id finally got my own. Mario, Metroid, Zelda, Final Fantasy type game appealed to me, so Nintendo and eventually Sony 1P stuff. Ive always loved adventures, exploring, stories, and melodrama always have. Something about classical Japan 8 and 16 bit console games hit me in a way that PC games didn't, and I'd always have a preference for the previosly mentioned style console games over PC games. JRPG became my main jam. Still my main thing to do, SMS/NES to PS5 and everything in between. A recent discussion about summoner horns sparked a sudden interest to play FF9 again. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 recently stole the lifetime record for most snot and most tissue consumed while playing a video game.
Other
I remember being into Transformers, He Man, etc and having action figures and play sets and cars and stuff but I must have out grew them pretty quickly as I don't have any memory of playing with them past 4 or 5 and remember they mostly just sat in my room collecting dust? Similar story with stuffed animals, I just remember them as decor. But I recently rediscovered stuffies and practically can't sleep without them now. Coloring was something I always had trouble with. I needed everything to be perfectly straight and shaded and the colors had to be correct and a perfect match to whatever I was coloring was supposed to be. As a child the non uniformity of crayon shading drove me crazy and my last attempt to color as a Little had me looking up official Pokémon palettes and matching the closest crayons with their RGB hex values. Took me an hour to commit to which shade of yellow Pikachu should be since the closest official color on wax crayon on rough white paper didn't even work out looking close at all. 🙄🤦♂️
Exact timeline is fuzzy. For example I know I got LEGOs exactly at 7 and electronics kit at 8 and NES at 8-9 so if I don't remember playing with action figures past 4-5 then what did I do from 5-7? 🤔
Looking back over some of this stuff I'm now wondering if it's a contributing factor to wanting to be little again and how I bliss out just goofing off and playing with real kids doing normal kid stuff like rolling around in the grass for no reason. I was not a normal child it seems. Other kids wanting to dance and scream and chase each other and throw balls and stuff always wierded me out. Did I not know how to just 'play' as a child? 😔🥺
