Topic idea came when I saw an ad for PediaCare freezer pops - basically frozen cough medicine in the shape of a popcicle.
So what specific items, toys, products, and such do YOU wish existed when you were a kid?
The internet.
Or maybe not. I stayed inside the house enough as it were and I rarely leave it now unless I have to so maybe it was a good thing that I didn’t get online until '99.
A school that wasn’t six miles away, in the snow, uphill, both ways.
When I was young we didn’t have school. I had to get up at 4 am to work in the acid mines.
Your school was only 6 miles away? You had it easy!
Back when I was a kid, our school was 10 miles away. In the snow. Uphill. Both ways. And that was before shovels were invented! Every morning, we’d have to lick the path free with our tongues as we walked!
And we liked it!
I don’t envy any of the crap these brats today have, not even the internet. As much as I’ve been addicted to it for the last 8 years or so, I still think my youth was much better without it.
Let’s see: crappy cartoons, wuss toys, city-enforced curfews, bicycle helmet laws, can’t drive alone until 16 and a half or 17 in a lot of states now, draconian school attendence and behavior policies, dress codes, bad music…
Nope, fuck 'em. Gimme my youth any day over the “privlages” these kids have.
Let’s see, I guess never having to worry about where your next meal was coming from would be my first pick. Oh yeah (tis the season), getting more than a couple pairs of socks and a chocolate bar for Christmas would be nice too.
Yeah, I’m coming up pretty dry myself. (The freezer pops taste awful, by the way.) I feel like such a curmudgeon, but with WhyBaby on the way I’ve been trying to make baby registries, and I really don’t like any of the beeping, whirring, making “music” that isn’t, video, lights flashing plastic crap. Even the old classic “stackers” are too stimulating now.
Things I like? Wooden blocks. Stacking cups (OK, plastic’s fine for those). Wooden spoons and mom’s mixing bowls. A squishy huggable stuffed animal that doesn’t squeak, honk, roar, play “music” or vibrate. Hand drums and tamborines in a few years.
For older kids, Legos are still OK, if you can get away from the sets wherein you can only make one thing and if you lose the specially widget shaped lego, you can’t make it anymore.
WhyKid is 12 in January, and we’re having a bitch of a time shopping for Yule and his birthday. We finally caved and let his uncle get him a Gameboy when he had surgery this summer, but I told him I wouldn’t buy any games for it - he has to save his own money for that. He’s outgrowing Legos, doesn’t like books (blasphemer!), and he’s not quite old enough for clothes to be a pleasant gift. Luckily, he’s a Farscape addict, so we got him another box set of DVD’s, but it’s not exactly a stellar toy.
Anything I think is new and cool ends up breaking in less than an afternoon of play. It’s pretty depressing.
At least you had tongues!
We had to melt the snow by shoving up our anus. Every morning. And we lived in Dead Horse Alaska.
But we were happy. Oh so happy!
CD Burners
If I wanted free music I had to wait at the radio for the song I wanted and then record it onto a casette tape. It really sucked.
Oh, and the Internet. Well, there was the Internet when I was younger but it wasn’t in every home like today.
Add: We didn’t know we were poor!
To answer the OP, not a damn thing. My childhood was better.
I have to agree that there isn’t a single toy I wish was around when I was a kid. The best I can come up with is portable CD, MP# and cassette players, because I grew up in the pre-Walkman era.
But I do envy Shirley for being able to melt snow by shoving it up her anus. I had neither arms or legs, and had to clear the path by squirming like a worm until I had moved all the snow out of the way.
Things kids have today that I wish I’d had? Boobs at age 12! Hell, I’m *still * waiting.
Like all the other geezers, I’m going to chime in and say that what kids have now is too damn much. Parents, as a group, self included, have mismanaged the video explosion (yes, I know some have managed it much better than others, and I’m pretty sure I did OK if not outstanding in that respect). My kids, 12 and 15, feel ‘neglected’ because I refuse to add any sort of video to the car - granted, I’m pretty sure I felt the same way about something that my parents wouldn’t get at that same age, whatever it might have been.
Jeez, I read this post and I can see my own father saying this three decades ago. I’ve become my parents! Help me, please.
I’m not sure I agree with you guys on this one. There’s a lot of cool toys I would have loved when I was a kid. Bikes are certainly better (lighter, more gears) than when I was a child. Them roller-blade things look pretty cool compared to the clunky metal strap-on-over-your-sneakers skates I had as a kid.
The saddest commercial I see is the one where the mom is holding a toddler, saying “Let’s read a book” and it turns out that means holding out some battery powered “book” for the baby to poke at.
What about the feel, look, smell of a real book, cuddling up while your parent reads to you in the voice you love? And they have the nerve to say that these products instill a love of reading!! Reading is a quiet, imaginative activity, not full of bells and whistles. (No offense to parents whose babies love these, of course.)
That said, an iPod seems really fun; having all your favorite songs on demand is amazing. In my day, you had to go and reposition the record player needle…
I’d have loved to play in one of those plastic “ball pits”. :eek:
I’d rather shove snow up my anus that play in those petri dishes jokingly referred to as Ball Pits.
You were lucky to be alive! Every morning, three hours before dawn, my Father woke all 12 of us up from sleeping in the cold frozen mud puddle we called our bed and stabbed us until we were each dead. God Bless than man! He made me what I am today!
I would have liked a Gameboy.
It would have saved me many a wasted hours sitting bored in church on Sundays.
I always wondered what those flaps in the ass-portion of long underwear were for. I thought it was just for pooping through. Now I see it goes both ways.