COLLECTION #23: Pick-Up Sticks

It's Toy Tuesday, and I failed to acknowledge yesterday was the one-month anniversary of my blog!

It seems I have lots of 'Toys in Tubes', as shown by previous entries here and here, and this collection is just as fun!

Each generation has their toys that promote eye-hand coordination, dexterity, and strategy: today it's video games.  When I was a child it was marbles for boys, jacks and pick-up sticks for girls. (Although I remember a lot of boys playing pick-up sticks with their sisters...) My brother Gene was a pretty good marble shooter, and my sister Leslie was a whiz at jacks. But I was the master of pick-up sticks. In fact, my original pick-up sticks game is part of my collection: the Pix Pix one was mine as a child. It still contains all the sticks, including the black one!  Note that the Steven Mfg. Co., which made the kaleidoscopes and one of my building toys, also was in the pick-up stick biz!


Whitman, the manufacturer of the Pix Pix line, also came out with a pick-up sticks game. When I read the rules I was disappointed to see that actually 'playing' pick-up sticks wasn't part of the rules of the game, instead, the pick-up sticks were used as markers for the board game. It looks like it was designed for both boys and girls, and I'm not sure if their strategy really worked. But it's a cute game, and a fun addition to my pick-up stick collection.