The toys of our childhood are being updated. Mr. Potato Head is now thinner and more politically correct. The renamed “Active Adventures” Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head have very short legs and pants and big smiles. Their faces are a little thinner, but their ears and noses are still over-sized. Few remember that the first Potato Heads (1952) were plastic pieces designed to be stuck into real, edible potato heads. Mr. and Mrs. came with tiny plastic bodies, feet, hands, eyes, noses, mouths, and other parts except the head, which was the stuck-on potato. Mr. was so non-PC, he smoked a pipe.
Photo: Time/Healthland; Hasbro
http://s257.photobucket.com/albums/hh230/fleamarketmutt/Mr%20Potatohead/
I still remember my mother’s shriek when she opened the door of a little-used linen/toy closet in the early 1960s to find a huge, white potato vine trailing throughout the shelves. Called for lunch one day, I had put away my toys like a good little girl…leaving the potato in the Mr. Potato Head box! It hadn’t seen the light of day, but it was a vine to be reckoned with.