Even though comedian Pat Hazell grew up in Omaha, Nebraska, he’s pretty sure his childhood was like any other late Baby Boomer’s, full of Slinkys, Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robots and even horrifically dangerous toys like lawn darts and Clackers.

He’s sure because, for about a dozen years, he’s been writing, performing and refining “The Wonder Bread Years,” a slice-of-life comedy that opens at Penguin Rep in Stony Point tonight. And he has seen the knowing glances from audiences and heard their reminiscences.

“There’s a big common denominator, no matter where you live, you still have certain reflections on Halloween or sitting at the kids’ table at Thanksgiving or riding in the way back of a Country Squire stationwagon,” Hazell says.

“The Wonder Bread Years,” the second show of Penguin’s 32nd season, isn’t a traditional theater piece, he says.

“It’s a bit of a field trip where I’m the sherpa guide,” he says, “taking the audience back to a time of discovery and curiosity and adventure and abandon. It’s not a specific date on the calendar. It’s more about the stages when your eyes were opened to wonder and possibility.”

While some of the show—a mix of theater and stand-up that’s not exactly plot-driven—is autobiographical, it’s also universal.

Hazell says when he shows slides of family vacations, something remarkable happens.

“Audiences started to see themselves on their family vacations through the story,” says Hazell, who used to write for the “Seinfeld” and did years of stand-up himself. “It may be a story about my worst Halloween mask of all times, but they look at a sea of kids in their Halloween masks and they remember what they were and what their experience was.

“That’s where the warmth of ‘Wonder Bread’ started to occur to me: That if I put it in a theatrical setting and took it out of a comedy club and made it more storytelling, I would have something special.”

The two-act show is structured on “a day in the life of a kid,” Hazell says — breakfast, school snack — and a year in the life of a kid, from one national holiday to another.

Looking at life that way, Hazell says, allows him to capture “the innocence before you knew bellyflops hurt.”

“Until an adult tells you not to do a bellyflop, that it hurts, you think they’re fun,” he says with a laugh.

“The Wonder Bread Years” also includes that staple of kid life: show and tell.

“They ooh and ahh when I take the stuff out because it’s connected to other emotions beside the jokes.

Like Clackers, those “hard resin balls on a nylon cord that would chip off and hit people in the retina,” he says.

When Hazell holds up Clackers, “People go: ‘I had those, I lost those, I hit myself in the collarbone, mine are hanging on a powerline somewhere.’”

The actor asks each audience to share their show-and-tell stories, making “The Wonder Bread Years” interactive and never the same show twice.

“It’s an homage to the Baby Boomer and a time before television had 200 channels, when there were three stations and if you really wriggled your foil you could get PBS,” he says. “There was an American consciousness of what came on when the new TV season started. We watched the same commercials, for SnakPak pudding or JiffyPop Popcorn. And those jingles are universal.”

Still, Hazell is convinced people may learn something at this slice of escapist entertainment, on stage through July 19 at Penguin Rep’s intimate little theater.

“You think you were the only one who embezzled money in Monopoly? By a show of hands, about 75 percent of the audience admits to sneaking an extra $500 when nobody was looking,” he says.

“The charm to me lies in that: The fact that we have more in common than we have differences.”

Photo courtesy of Penguin Rep: Pat Hazell in “The Wonder Bread Years.”

“The Wonder Bread Years”
Where: Penguin Rep, 7 Crickettown Road, Stony Point
When: Through July 19. Thursdays and Fridays at 8 p.m., Saturdays at 4 p.m. and 8 p.m., and Sundays at 2 p.m.
Tickets: $32 with discounts for those 30 and younger and groups of 10 or more.
Call: 845-786-2873
Web: penguinrep.org
Preview matinee: There will be a special reduced-priced weekday matinee performance June 26 at 2 p.m., with tickets only $16.
Post-Show discussion: Learn more about the play and production and share your thoughts with fellow audience members in a discussion following the performance on Friday, July 3.
Pre-Show tastings: Enjoy complimentary hot dogs before the 4 p.m. matinee and 8 p.m. evening performances on Saturday, July 4.