Mrs. Beasley, Chili, Think-A-Dot

I like toys, have since I was a child. Thanks to the InterTube Highway I'm able to time travel and scoff select games and toys that previously came into and disappeared from my life. A few recent acquisitions include an original Mattel Talking Mrs.Beasley Doll that was a present from our Chow-Chow to her Mommy on Mother's Day. Mrs.Beasley was the pride and joy of many young American girls back in the 70's. The Beasley doll came to fame on a prime time TV show, A Family Affair. AFA depicted the lives of a widowed dad played by Bryan Keith. The dad was left with three children. The widowers eldest was a mature young woman well into her teen years who helped to care for her little brother and sister. The family lived in a nicely appointed apartment and the glue that held the family together was a manservant type played by Sebastian Cabott. The little girl on the show had a constant companion in Mrs.Beasley, who always said the right thing at the pull of a string. My wife had a Mrs.Beasley doll when she was a little girl, and she was heartbroken when the doll vanished one day. When I found out my dearly beloved still missed her little doll I set out to find her a replacement. I quickly learned that working (talking) Mrs.Beasley dolls fetch a dear price on eBay and are even more expensive at doll shops when one was available. As the nature of auction sales goes, there is always someone else offering the same item you just got out-bid on, just wait a week or month. I finally won a Mrs.Beasley Doll auction but she was in need of restoration repair. So I bid on and won doll restoration service by eBay Seller SUSIEBZ, paid the fee and mailed out the doll to Texas. Long story made a tad shorter, this Seller (who's real-life name was Susie Beasley LOL!) jumped the shark, taking my wife's doll and my resto service money with her. Nice, huh? Oh well. A pox on Susie Beasley and Haltom City TX. Soooooo- now my wife had a Mrs.Beasley doll ripped from her clutches twice. In an attempt to heal that wound I dropped a bundle of cash on a new, boxed reproduction issue Talking Mrs. Beasley doll. I didn't read the description (hello, I'm a guy) and found out when it arrived that the manufacturer chose to use Cheryl Ladd's voice for the talk. It just wasn't the same thing. so 2005-2006 were unproductive yet expensive Beasley doll years for you-know-who. Well, I recently found an original Talking Mrs.Beasley Doll on eBay for under $60.00, Buy it Now. Darn right I hit the Buy it Now button. Thus, Chili Chow-Chow was able to give her #1 favorite human a nice Mother's Day gift, and it didn't put a dent in her Milk Bone budget. I also lucked out and got a primo example of a manual computer toy called Think-A-Dot. T-A-D is a little plastic device with a few holes across the top where one may drop in a marble. As the marble travels through the little plastic game it hits and trips levers which change what color appears in one or more of the little windows on the front. Yellow or blue, yellow or blue. Much more fun to play with than to describe. That toy fascinated me as a little shaver and I'm glad to have it in my house once more. The Think-A-Dot arrived in nice used condition (it's some 40 +/- years old) and in the original box. I lucked out, scoring this popular collectible for 13 dead presidents. Life is good.