By Lori Ferraro
I’m thankful I managed to hang onto as many keepsakes from my childhood as I did – old diaries, cassette and VHS tapes and tons of photo albums all make me nostalgic and happy.
But there’s one album I can’t believe I got rid of.
My sticker album!
In the 80s photo albums weren’t just for pictures of your friends and family, they were a safe place to display your collection of carefully selected rainbow, unicorn, heart and teddy bear stickers.
There were puffy stickers, glittery stickers, scratch and sniff stickers and googly eye stickers – and Boynton cat stickers were among my favorites.
My girlfriends and I would get together and trade stickers with each other – this was usually an after school activity or even more fun at a sleepover party. Stickers were a hot commodity; I would trade four small brown teddy bear stickers and a Hello Kitty sheet of puffy stickers for just one ultimate heart/rainbow/unicorn combination.
The bigger, rounder and bubblier the better.
My friends and I would ride our bikes up to the drug store/gift shop with allowance in hand; ready to buy an individual rainbow/cat/heart off a roll. I would take it home and put it in my album in just the right spot, displaying my latest treasure like a prized possession.
Check out this awesome sticker collection courtesy of Sylvia Drastata (click thumbnails for an enlarged view):
We never used any of our stickers, like “stuck” them anywhere, on our Trapper Keepers or anything…these stickers were too precious to be stuck. They were to be kept under shiny plastic so they could be admired over and over again.
Again, I can’t believe I didn’t hang onto that album that I considered one of my prized possessions; I have two albums full of Garbage Pail Kids in my garage but no vintage Pac Man, Smurf, or Little Twin Stars stickers.
Looking online at the albums people have hung onto and shared fills me with warm fuzzies, I recognize certain ones, remembering that I had them. Like this one:
Sigh…
I’d love to look through that album tonight, admire it, re-arrange it, and call my b/f/f Susie to see if she’s up for a trading session this weekend.