I received a Marx farm playset for Christmas on the very first year I have memories of a Christmas. I remember that year as much as I do because we have home movies of me getting presents from under the Christmas tree. The farm set had a metal barn and silo. It also had plastic farm figures like pieces of fence, a farmer, his wife and a variety of farm animals. The barn and silo didn’t last too long, but the plastic figures ended up in a wicker basket where my mom stored any toys like this. There were also figures of football players, cowboys and Indians and tons of little green army men. The figures from the farm set didn’t get played with that much. Except for the cows. The cows were probably played with more than anything else in the basket.
My sister and I had a good friend named Nan that played with us all the time. Our parents played canasta every weekend. While our parents were playing cards, we played a variety of games. One of our favorites was a hide and seek game with one of the plastic cows. One person would hide one of the plastic cows in our living room while the other two were out of the room. They returned and started searching for the hidden cow. Sometimes we gave hot and cold clues. I’m sure that we used other toys to hide but the cows became the toy of choice. We even started calling the game Hide the Cow.
When my family moved, the basket of toys moved with us and so did the game. We lost the cows and substituted other toys in their place. But we continued to call the game Hide the Cow. A flexible Easter rabbit toy became the new cow for our game. We taught this game to our children using the rabbit. But we still called the game Hide the Cow.