They costed 5-10¢ a piece in the 70s, and the exchange rate of that time would just be a penny. These erasers were such a source of delight for us growing up in then.
First, they were a source of general knowledge. This one taught us the alphabets. There were the flags of all the countries around the world, animals in the zoo, etc.
For those with that little strip of clear erasers, we took care when using them because we did not want the clear strip to dislodge from the rest of the eraser, which they very often did. And of course when we were “old enough” to own a pen knife, we would “trim” the edges of the erasers to make sure we always had a rectangular side for those nifty erasing job, you know, rubbing out the odd comma that you punctuated wrongly. And of course, we always looked in envy the rich kids with those imported erasers that came with a box protector that you push out like a popsicle.
Eraser Kuti Kuti
Kuti Kuti is a traditional children’s game in which two opposing players take turns to deftly flip colourful plastic tokens on top of those of their opponent. But I am sure my peers would have played a variation of this game with erasers.
Armed with a handful of erasers, students would duke it out in a 1-on-1 winner-takes-all battle, with the opponent’s eraser as the prize. Games would last for mere seconds as both individuals take turns to flick their eraser until one piles on top of the other and is crowned the victor, increasing the winner’s flag eraser bounty. It was super fun to be the winner of this king of old school games.
And my mother always wondered why I always needed erasers.
This post made me smile! What a fun childhood memory 🙂 We did similar games with something called “pogs” in the early 1990’s.
We called it “kuti-kuti” in local language. I guess when we didn’t have a smartphone and Internet, we all used our imaginations to invent games using whatever we had! And children around the world are the same – we will find fun and entertainment in all circumstances.