Depending on who you ask, I think I’m supposed to ponder the life and death of Jesus at Christmas, but mostly I ponder things like, “Why did we get snow two weeks earlier than average this year?” or “How much business can I get done this week? Will everyone be slacking prior to the holiday?”

OK, technically I did think about Jesus a bit – earlier I read that traditionally you’re supposed to take down your tree the day after the Epiphany. The Epiphany is on January 6th. And the Epiphany is the day the Magi showed up to see the baby Jesus and the power of God was made apparent in the baby – which begs the question, does that mean baby Jesus wasn’t totally powered up for most of the first week of his life? That would certainly explain how a mortal could carry the son of God slash God Almighty for nine-months.

But mostly what I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about were my favorite / best-remembered toys as a kid. I’ve talked about my beloved tiny groceries set, as well as the superhero cakepan. I’ve found and replaced the cake pan set, but the tiny groceries are an unsurpassed toy. They don’t make sets anywhere near that massive anymore.

So now I’m obsessed about two other items that have resisted identification;

The first is a die-cast space-buggy. It was maybe three inches long, painted a metallic green. It had a plastic windscreen canopy, which I seem to recall was yellow. And the kicker was that it shot yellow plastic missiles from a launcher on its top. Was it Corgi? Matchbox? I have no idea, but I still remember that buggy. Without a good keyword, Google searches turn up nothing.

The second, in in many ways the most important, was an illustrated book of fairy tales. It was remarkable for two things. It was a collections of fairy tales by a variety of authors. It wasn’t simply Grimm tales – there were additions by Anderson and even better, Wilde. And it was illustrated, though the word doesn’t cover it. It was painted in detail – I remember bits and pieces from a variety of stories, but I keenly remember a number of illustrations from Aladdin and the Magic Lamp. The cave of jewels wasn’t just a pile of gems. The illustrations had whole trees filled with gem-like fruit. And the image of the stone closing in on Aladdin. Gah. I have to find this book. I need it and I need to pass it on. I don’t know that any collection of fairy tales has been as good since.

But what can I do when I don’t know the year it was published. I don’t know the name of the illustrator. All I know is that it was a white hardcover.

I’ll keep looking, but these have been a challenge for over a decade and probably will be for another.