What is your favorite childhood toy or stuffed animal?

@soulsings

1. When you were a child, what is one or more toys or stuffed animals or dolls that gave you comfort when you felt stressed? I had a doll (without hair) but I loved her dearly also a red fox as stuffed animal. Both gave me some sort of comfort holding them tightly when I felt sad.
2. If you have a picture of one like it, feel free to include. Sadly I do not have pictures, but the red fox had beautiful eyes and kind of smile on his face (that's at least the memory I kept)

I still have it with me, and I'm not even the least bit embarrassed to admit that. It's a stuffed dog that I received from my father when I was six. The poor thing has had multiple operations over the years, and has plenty of mismatched thread, but it still brings me comfort.

@soulsings

my childhood wasn't that stressful, thankfully. i still feel very safe with the stuffed toys lol, it's sad to not have them around!

how about you? @emotionalTalker2260

@soulsings I had a toy Barney that I kept until I was 10, he was falling apart and had no stuffing. My mom had to convince me to stop brining it to school because he looked gross. Eventually both his eyes fell out and I had stuffed him with skittles that melted on a summer day. His body couldn't handle another wash cycle. I told my mom he was broken, and my mom said "but it's okay, you're a big girl now, do you still need Barney?" I said "no" and Barney was gone. I still think I need my Barney though.

I have two stuffed toys from my childhood. One is a Pooh bear that was given to my mom at her baby shower for me. The other is a big brown bear that my dad gave me the night my parents told me they were getting a divorce. I still have them both they sit on a shelf in my closet, and I'm not embarrassed to admit than when life gets overwhelming I take them out to try to de-stress.

@soulsings

I got a stuffed bear with a cute pajama onesie and a hat for my first Christmas. On the onesie was a simple sentence "Jesus loves me". It was my favorite stuffed toy and I took it everywhere with me for years until I grew out of playing with stuffed animals. I still have the bear to this day. It has always made me feel good to just hug if for some reason even when I don't play with it anymore.

@soulsings

i had a stuffed dog looking thin which I adored and I named him bunny! :)

Toy knife, felt nice to play [pretend].

Edited by AffyAvo June 27, 2022 to edit triggering content.

Mine was a stuffed dog, too, like so many here - although I don't remember using it for comfort, maybe because I don't remember things like that from before I was 7 or 8. I know I took it with me on holidays, and that it was important for me, but not quite in which way. And then I probably felt too old for it anyway. From what I remember, I mostly played with my stuffed toys, dressed them, brought them to bed, and later arranged them nicely, but didn't hug them much or anything like that.

I'm assuming it ended up in the trash after I moved out from home and couldn't take it with me for space reasons - it had lost its nose long ago, and being a child, I had replaced that with a green piece of cardboard cut by a hole puncher 😂, so it wasn't exactly something that could still be donated or given to someone else. There are a lot of things I lost then, and I think I'd like to have them still.

When I was little, my older sister made me a frog beanie out of velvet fabric. Many things happened to Froggy - left out in the rain (in the early days he was filled with rice or lentils), forgotten on holidays, wore out etc. Every time he would be remade, first by my sister and then by me. Amazing powers of regeneration. When I met my partner, Froggy got renamed to "Splat". Sometimes I wonder if i should grow out of Splat, but maybe he'll be buried with me.