Colorforms are a creative toy that allows kids to place shapes onto a background to create play scenes. Colorforms stick through a vacuum seal between the vinyl piece and the glossy, smooth background board. The original ones were geometric shapes but soon after their debut in the 1950s various kid friendly properties were licensed and turned into Colorforms sets.
The Sesame Street Ernie and Bert Set was probably my first set, though it may have been a hand-me-down from my older brother. There were standard size sets, about the size of a piece of paper, and larger, double sized sets. Snoopy’s Beagle Scouts may have been my favorite as besides the larger size, it also had a pop-up kind of feature with a lot of options for placing the Peanuts characters. I also enjoyed pretending to cook hot dogs and eggs over the campfire. The viny colorforms often relied on a color for the vinyl and then only two printed colors on top.
You may notice some of the colorforms have been enhanced by me using a marker to try to give them additional realism (for a little kid). Similarly, I would cut into some of the backgrounds to allow doors or the Enterprise’s transport to become functional and slip a vinyl character through. Creativity!
