An ancestor bequeathed to us a 19th Century toy, a Noah's ark. Two of the animals were missing their mates. However, the rest of the passengers survived into the 1950s when, paradoxically, they all perished in a flood. On loan to a Humber River valley play school, they were swept away by Hurricane Hazel.

Those who have, or have had, young children or grandchildren know that December is toy buying time. Eaton's Toyland or Simpson's Toytown of happy memory, Toys'R' Us. Kids Can Do and other such contemporary shops come to mind. Most of us have been there and done that.

Birthday gifts past a certain age are seldom meant to be played with. Rather, they are cashable, wearable, readable, drivable, auditory or portable. They may be 'toys' in the broader sense of being, essentially, luxuries but they are not playthings as such. The pleasures of childhood are a special reason for spending and enjoying. They "take us back".

As the year draws to a close, lists are being drawn up of those who have left us in 2008. One such will be Richard Knerr, 82, the inventor of the hoola hoop.

Together with the frisbee, he and his associate, "Spud" Melin, produced other quirky toys that amused boomer kids whose older bothers and sisters were already 'into' rock and roll. Everybody seemed to want to gyrate their hips and fling their arms about back then. Well, why not? Happy days were here again.

The point of the hoola hoop was to keep a plastic ring spinning around one's neck or hips in defiance of the law of gravity. Initially it went by the name 'Wham-O' and sold 40 million of them. By 1960 sales had reached 100 m, a popularity no other toy had yet attained. Although the product sold at five times the cost of manufacturing it, it produced a paltry (by contemporary standards) profit of only $10 thousand.

The short-lived hoola hoop craze gave way to the frisbee fad and then to something else now forgotten. What was it? Was it the rubber ball on an elastic tether that was bounced off a paddle? Whatever it was, it and other things kept Knerr and Melin solvent.

For the record, the frisbee originated with Yale University students who played catch with flying empty plates made by the Frisbee Company in Bridgeport, Connecticut. The hoola hoop, suggestive of Hawaiian dancers, actually began in the Australian aerobic classes of a friend of Richard Knerr. The credit goes to Maori aboriginals whose ancestors sailed off to the islands in crafts whose names are still preserved in legend, as are Santa Maria, Pinta and Mayflower in North American annals. How many Canadians remember the name of Jacques Cartier's 1534 vessel that first entered the St. Lawrence River? It was Grande Hermine. And John Cabot's 1497 ship to Newfoundland ? The Matthew.

All of the above reminds me of the 1960s popularity of Ruth Handler's (Matel Inc.) "Barbie" that weaned little girls like my two daughters away from baby dolls. Nobody needs to be reminded that Barbie is a full-figured young adult. The rest of us grow old but she changeth not. I have never forgotten our young Alison's Christmas morning delight with her Barbie that rode horseback and wore cowgirl 'chaps'. Her male partner never swam into our ken, if you will excuse the pun.

The 1945 Slinky toy predated our children but it certainly held the stage until their arrival. The metal coil that, once set in motion, navigated our staircases end over end fascinated us all. I confess that I wish I had one still. Batteryless, the coils responded to gravity. It was devised by an engineer who had watched a tension spring fall from a table. Such a spring is used to cushion automobile suspension on rough roads. Still, the transition to a Slinky was a bit of genius.

Farther back in the 20th Century lay the initial popularity of the yo-yo. Perhaps distracted by other things, I haven't seen one in play in years. You may remember that it consisted of two disks connected by an axle around which a string was tightly wound.

An adroit operator could raise and lower the device, swing it about his head like Earth circling the sun and make it 'sleep' while spinning at the end of its tether. There was the common variety yo-yo and the glossy kind that was sported by the most proficient 'yoyists' in the schoolyard. How we lesser ones envied their skill! "Earth hath not anything more fair", we thought for awhile.

Interestingly, the yo-yo was not a modern invention. It was known and pictured in Greece as long ago as 500 B.C. Much later it came to be known as a 'bandalore' (sometimes 'whirla gig') in Northern Europe It was 'commercialised' in North America in the 1920s where there were local, regional, national and international competitions. The twin disks hummed, gyrated, ascended, descended and slept and then left us for the place into which old fads fade away. Will the yo-yo have a second coming? Only another generation of school children will make the decision.

Looking even farther back into toy lore, I see a drawstring bag of marbles and alleys. They were used only by boys. Girls did other things, like hopscotch and always in their own schoolyard. In that context an alley was not a back lane; it was a larger glass version of the lowly marble, the multicoloured queen of a game played on one's knees.

With the thumb a player shot a marble/alley into a circle drawn on the ground, hoping to knock one that was already there beyond the perimeter. Those so expelled were 'keepers'. The holder of the most marbles after an agreed number of shots was the winner.

As a worker with words I have wondered about the origin of the word 'toy'. One guess is that it comes from the German 'zeug' meaning, among other things, an instrument or tool and pronounced 'tsoig'. A 'spielzeug' is a play tool, a toy. In English the single syllable 'zeug' became 'toy'.