I remember my mother plopping me down at the kitchen table and setting me up with one of these play-doh machines to keep me busy while she did something like escape from my incessant 4-year-old-ness:

(This is the new-fangled version.  You can tell by how the background is expertly photoshopped out.  And by the fact that the kid isn’t wearing a turtleneck, which, if you look at all the retro play-doh toy-boxes, every kid is wearing.)

The Fuzzy Pumper Barber Shop, which, hands down, is the best Play-Doh toy name ever.  (I had the monster one, too, which I can’t seem to find online.)

The Play-Doh Ice Cream Shop.  Not to be confused with the newer Play-Doh Magic Swirl Ice Cream Shoppe (2 p’s.)

(Again - no turtleneck = new version.)

I had one that made people, too.  I got one of these for every gift-related holiday, and boy did I love them.  My favorite thing to do with play-doh, however, was to mix the colors together until I achieved a beautiful poop brown color.  Sometimes an uplifting gray.  And then I’d whine for new play-doh, and then proceed to do the same thing again.  I apparently had terrible short-term memory.  Another favorite play-doh wasting pastime was to shape the “doh” into some sort of shape (a red blob, a blue blob, pretty much any color blob) that I thought would look good hanging on a nice chain (aka. piece of string or yarn) as a necklace.  I’d leave it in front of the heating vent behind the couch, where I’d promptly forget about it, and wonder why I didn’t have any play-doh left.   

Play-Doh was awesome.  And for my mother’s sake, I hope it was cheap.