Soviet Toy Horse Moves to the US

It is true that you can never know for sure what your child will be thrilled with. You might be buying something being confident she will love it, and then she hates it for some reason obscure to you but absolutely obvious to her. Or vice versa.

The little pink horse came home with me from the flea market; I bought it because it reminded me of toys I had as a child. It is very typical of Soviet toys - very straightforward, simple, primitive. Very cheap - 45 kopecks which was roughly the equivalent of 45 cents 25-30 years ago. I believe some of Soviet toys were produced at the factories under the Ministry of Defense as a by-product. I might be wrong though - there were many toy factories in USSR - but some toys really looked like they could be used as weapons.

Not this plastic pony, though. The pony is kind and nice, and I would like to own one when I was small. I still feel sorry for a yellow horse - my sand toy which got lost somewhere on a beach. I looked for it for so many days after and found many other valuable things (shells, coins, feathers, pieces of cheap costume jewelry, a broken doll), but no horse. And I have a weak spot for horses. I am indifferent to teddy bears, though...

So, about the pink Soviet horse, I would love to have one as a child - this is just the type of dolls I loved. The good thing about these very primitive toys was that they could be whatever you needed them to be. They left a lot to imagination, and such a horse could be a war horse for a knight, a beautiful mare for a princess, a flying horse from an oriental fairy tale, and so much more! Barbie with her horse is much more discretionary - she can only be Barbie, and even when she is dressed as Scarlett O'Hara, she is still Barbie in disguise. Which is not bad, too - not everyone is so recognizable.

When I brought the toy horse home and washed it, my daughter immediately appropriated it, saying she wanted it to stay. 

...Interestingly, she played with it for a couple of days but yesterday told me she did not need it anymore and I could sell it. When I just started thinking about writing this post (the day before yesterday), she still loved the horse and wanted to keep it, and I was going to write a touching story about how my spoiled child preferred the old simple toy to her beautiful new toys from the US, but this is not the case - Madina ruined the story! I listed the pink pony on Mulberry Terrace (our vintage shop) yesterday night and it sold in half an hour - our record time. Now Madina still has a Soviet plastic dog left - see below:

She claims she will not part with the dog but I suppose this is not true. She gets bored with toys quickly and I do not want them to accumulate in the house so most likely the brown doggie will be listed soon, too. And the pink horse will go to the US - hopefully it will be loved there.