Anal retentive parents of 1975 who made your kids keep track of all their toys and store them in the original boxes, we salute you. Three Creative Playthings People 'N Places playsets hit the eBay the other day; in over a year of watching, I've never seen one complete set, and here are three complete sets, in pretty great shape, with the boxes.

These injection-molded plastic diorama toys encouraged kids to become familiar with such schoolbook-exotic "cultures" as Africa [elephant, sure, but also mud hut, bush pilot & Red Cross clinic]; American Indian [teepee, meat drying rack, the Last Buffalo]; and my favorite, Eskimo [more bush pilots, more meat drying, the Last Polar Bear--and a geodesic dome!]

They look great, well designed with an era-appropriate mod modernity, but their specificity is a far cry from the imagination-stimulating abstraction of the pre-CBS-era Creative Playthings. That sort of be-anything flexibility was picked up by Lego, which introduced generic minifigures in 1975. [image: wikipedia]

And the PnP sets don't have nearly the be-everything verisimilitude as Playmobil, which was also launched in 1975. [These are just two of several sets of Indians from Playmobil's first year, which only sold in Benelux, but still, you get the idea. image: collectobil]

So before you bid on these playthings, maybe we'd better take a quick poll, and see how kids of 1975 who got sub-optimal CP instead of Lego or Playmobil turned out. Also, massive choke hazard.

Creative Playthings Eskimo People N Places Toy set - current bid: $10+$8s/h
Creative Playthings American Indian People N Places Set - current bid: $24+$8s/h
Creative Playthings African People N Places Toy RARE - first bid, $10+$8s/h