When I was a kid, stores at this time of year would all suddenly be stocked with skipping ropes (pink or orange, smelling like vinyl, slightly powdery to the touch), rubber balls (red and blue with a white stripe around the equator, and a finish that very quickly began to crack and peel), bags of marbles and bags of jacks.

I don’t believe any of us ever shot marbles, or even knew what to do with the jacks, but stores still sold them, adults still gave them to us, they featured in the math problems in our elementary-school textbooks. They were like abstract signifiers of “Play.” Which I suppose is appropriate – from the little I know now about jacks, they were apparently very abstract representations of the knucklebones of sheep. The ones I remember were little metal caltrops (even worse to step on than lego bricks) with a slightly iridescent finish. I liked possessing them, even if I wasn’t sure what for. Probably wouldn’t have had the hand-eye coordination for it anyway.

Funnily, one kind of toy I only ever saw in pictures and old movies – those little push-scooters – made a comeback about sixteen years ago, and even though the fad died down again, I still sometimes see them.

How did pre-1950s children play with their hoops? The illustrations always made it look as though they made them roll by pushing or striking them with a short stick, but it’s just occurred to me it would make far more sense for them to have put the stick within the hoop’s perimeter and pulled them along.