Remember the good old days, back when children’s toys were analog and playground equipment was dangerous, the way God intended?
We sure do, and so does the Hong Kong Public Records Office, which has just released a trove of vintage images of Hong Kong kids from the 50s to the 80s having fun the old fashioned way. The new photo gallery is timed to coincide with an exhibition, starting today, that seeks “to showcase how children’s pastimes in Hong Kong evolved” over a 30-year period.
The new exhibition, snappily titled “Pleasure and Leisure: A Glimpse of Children’s Pastimes in Hong Kong,” is free to view at the Hong Kong Public Records Building from now through the end of the year, and will also include displays of vintage toys from the period donated by local collectors. (There will also be a handful of roving exhibitions, a full list of which is available here.)
Below, for your nostalgic viewing pleasure, is a sampling of a few of the images included.
In an initiative that sounds lame, but looks totally awesome, children in 1962 Hong Kong learned traffic safety rules at “Road Safety Town,” complete with sweet toy rides.
Some things, meanwhile, never change. Here we see some Hong Kong youngsters playing rock, paper, scissors on the street in 1985. (No word on whether the outcome of the game determined who would ring the neighbors’ doorbell before dashing off to hide in some shrubs.)
Speaking of analog toys, the remote-controlled cars seen in this photo from 1970 are so old-school, the remotes are attached with wires. (Remember wires? Wonder what those guys are up to these days.)
This photo, taken in 1981, shows a young Hongkonger trying out the next generation of remote-controlled toys in a local shop. As the Public Records Office notes, Hong Kong in those years was a hub of toy manufacturing, with remote-controlled gizmos among the most popular.
In this photo from 1964, we see kids at a public housing estate playing on precisely the kind of jungle gym you’re not allowed to build anymore. (Note the four-meter drop onto hard concrete, because the jungle gym is all about consequences.)
Here we see kids thronging a so-called “toy library” provided by a public housing estate in 1981. Note the Kentucky fan on the right. (Sure, his shirt’s not the right color, but still, the Wildcats went 22 and 8 that year. Go Cats!)
And there are plenty more where those came from. We definitely encourage you to check out the full collection here.
