Decorate your Christmas Tree with Old Toys

Every year around Christmas, I always ended up playing with my toys in or around the Family Fake Christmass Tree.  One year I even made a horrible movie about my toys saving Christmas.  Now that I’m all grown up and married and stuff, I have my own Christmas tree for the first time ever.  What better way to decorate it than with awesome, random parts of your childhood?

Sure, Hallmark usually has a few “nostalgic” ornaments every year, but why pay $20-30 when you can make your own?This article will show you how to decorate your tree Saturday Morning Central style. Don’t worry, it’s easy.  Here’s what you need:

• Old Junk Toys – The more obscure the better. Also, you might not want to pick something you don’t mind putting a hole in.  It may look I make really weird choices, but I wanted little things that may or may not have meant a lot to me as a child, but that remind me of childhood nontheless. 
• Some Little Circle Hook Screws – I have no idea what these are actually called, I just know I found them at Wal-Mart for a couple bucks.  I’m sure there are many alternatives, so get creative!
• Hooks (Or Fancy Clip Things) – You need something to hold the toy on your tree.  Since we have two crazy cats around the house, this year we opted to use clips to hold the ornaments on the tree tighter. You can use plain old hooks if you’d like. I even used a paperclip for one of the examples.

One thing I discovered is that PVC figurines work best, because you can easily screw stuff into them. The Birthday Leonardo above had to be hung with a paperclip, which is awesome too. My batch included a PVC Mario, Gonzo from the Muppet Babies Happy Meal toys, Goro from the first Mortal Kombat movie, Happy Birthday Leonardo (or something), King Kong from the Dollar Store, and a really old wooden Fisher Price Little Person.  Disregard Jeff Goldblum from Jurassic Park.  It didn’t really work out between us.

You could get really creative and do themed trees, or string Pogs together to make tinsel, or even build ornaments out of LEGO. Just remember that no matter what you choose, you have to find a way to hang it on the tree. All I had to do was screw in the hardware and I was set.

That’s really all there is to it.  Next year I plan on buying a small, desktop-sized tree and decking it all out in retro goodness.  Here’s what they looked like in our tree.  What says Merry Christmas better than Goro hanging up next to Mario?  Not much that I can think of.