Little people.

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As I am older I have changed a little... but when I was a child right up to my late 20's or 30's, with my toys or models, be they trains or cars or boats or planes etc with toys, or with my model railways I never santed little people in them. I would try to take them out if they would come out. For some reason, my toy cars or trains etc had to have all the people taken out. I didn't want people in them.

Even with my model trains this continued. Ok, I had a few people for my model layout, but not many.
Now I have changed a bit because I don't mind so much now. Somehow, I like the thought of little people enjoying my trains! The ones I kit or scratchbuild. But somehow this is different since I changed to narrow gauge. Somehow, I now need them

But as a child and right up until I would describe myself as an adult where I didn't actually feel that I was an adult until I entered my very late 20's to my early 30's.... Don't ask me why. I just didn't. I never thought of myself as an adult before then. It wasn't that I lacked intelligence. It was more that I had not grown up? If anything the railway job matured me because I was expos3d to life. Before that, and yes... I had worked my way up to be the head of a bicycle department after having had a few jobs... but somehow I felt I was still in my teens. And it wasn't that I was sexually immature. It was more about how I thought of myself.

But why did I not like people being in my toy cars? Some toy cars that had fixed people in them lost their heads as I attempted to try to stop them looking like people. I never did kmow why I did this other then I later found out in my late teenage years that I had prosopragnosia. (Faceblindness).... So does it have something to do with that? I don't kmow.

Anyone else not like people in their toys or models? I do remember one exception from my teenage years onwards. I didn't mind lego people in lego cars or buildings I made.

I think people in trains are cool, actually.

Interesting read, MG! When I was young(say 3-7yrs, I did the same). I had alot of brothers, and though quite a feminine little girl, I loved making elaborate dirt roads and caves etc for my toy cars. Because my earlier cars, vehicles didn't have people in them, I felt that people did not belong in this little, though elaborate world I'd painstakingly created. I didn't like playing with others, either though. That was like an invasion to me. Once, my mother invited a little girl to play with me and I did everything to avoid her... and to keep her away from me, poor girl! I also viewed the cars as "people" objects, with their own personalities and stories. The myth that autistic children have little to no imagination couldn't be further from the truth, in my mind. From the ages of 8-10, I placed dolls(barbie type, though with mother, father and baby), in larger people carrier type vehicles, but then come age 10, I decided I had to be grown up and put ALL dolls and toys away for good. I was needed to cook, clean and be a little adult by that age, due to the loss of my mother. I chose to put away these toys/interests though, as I knew I needed to take on new family responsibilities, and felt much more mature probably than your average 10 year old in every way. I too have faceblindness, but don't feel that this is why I didn't like having "people" in my vehicles(I too ripped out the heads of a man and a woman in a metal blue car(it was a Japanese import I found at a market) that had the passenger taking photos with a flash(battery operated and kinda cool !) Nice to read you don't mind the "little people" so much nowadays ...

Very kind .... I just might be tempted to contribute some mountain goats to the landscape on this train layout you're workin' on ... if you've got a spare hill or mountain available ...

So could I(I have proper mohair -goat hair) for creating miniature animals, home-made collector bears etc. We could have a "goat farm" lol!!

Haha. Could have a few goats on it.

I had a doll house. No joke: I put batteries in the garage, ran wires up to the bedroom ceiling and installed a light. There were no people in it. I played with animals and cars, and board games by myself. I drew mazes and did puzzles.

My NT son plays with figurines and soldiers as did his NT father. When my NT son draws, he draws lots of people: the family, people, good guys, bad guys. My AS-like daughter played with office supplies and now crafts and draws and draws: no people - just animals and objects. I did the same.

I thought this was going to be about leprechauns!

I never minded seeing the little figures of people in models and whatnot, but what creeped me out when I was very small were full-size wax dummies of people in museum exhibits.

There's a movie called Madame Tutli-Putli if anyone isn't creeped out by small figures--it's a very intense and rather disturbing stop motion film about a lady who takes a trip one night and...the rest just happens. Though it's a modern movie with soundtrack the sound is mainly effects & score, so it is much like watching an old-time silent movie. I find that rather refreshing.

Miniatures and models always fascinated me when I was little...I feel like getting back into model railroads (right now I'm trying to build an engine from scratch & some old junk parts I found.) So I can see how tiny people would make sense.

Wow. I was exactly the same as I child. I hated toy cars with human figures in- even to the point of getting my parents to cut them out if they were moulded in. My games around them revolved around the cars being alive themselves, rather than being driven by people.

The first bicycle my parents bought me had a logo on the frame of a boy or an elf or something and I hated looking at it- mum had to cover it over with a bit of card before I would use the bike.

I was never keen on human figure toys like Action Man (I think this was the UK version of GI Joe?). Tanks and planes were fine.

Lego minifigures only came along towards the end of my (initial) time with Lego but I didn't like them. I did have a few of the first Star Wars figures but I preferred the droids and aliens to the human figures to be honest.

I had no problem with playing with "army men". Those little plastic GIs that come in those little bags from the dimestore, that hang next to the bags of "toy dinosaurs".

In fact, when one time I got hold of some little fire crackers I decided to exploit live ants in the back yard as real live "army men". The little fire crackers were just the right size to fit into some ant holes. So I plugged a few ant holes with the fire crackers, and lit them, and watched them explode. I then gleefully searched the resulting smoking craters left in the surfaces of the ant colonies expecting to find an impressive "body count" of dead ants. I think I found exactly one dead ant. Bummer.

I built vehicle models as a boy, and never bothered with dolls for them. As an adult, I made one model to illustrate a design, and used a stock plastic head of the same scale from a RC aircraft. I re-sculpted the helmet to match the activity, and quite surprised myself by greatly improving the facial features as well.
I have also made my own flat, articulated mannequins to scale for tracing on drawings to get the clearances right, starting with the statistics on human dimensions.