I always wanted really good handmade furniture for my dollhouse from a cool shop in Monkton, Maryland called The Calico Cat, which supplied (and still does, I think) lots of fabulous things for dollhouses, even wallpaper to scale!!
All I ever got for the dollhouse was stuff my dad made by hand. I was a spectacularly ungrateful child who only as an adult now sees how great it was that my dad actually *made * the furniture for my dollhouse.
I also seem to remember wanting some Barbie clothes and accessories that my mom thought were way overpriced and unecessary. I think that’s all.
I begged, begged for a go-kart. Dad got me hooked by taking me to this tiny little circle track in town. From then on, my I envisioned racing around the neighborhood at high speed, making all the kids insanely jealous.
I also wanted an anti-gravity room. Hey, I was a kid. Imagine my delight when I read about Indoor Skydiving. Seems like a good substitute.
My brother really wanted an EZ-Bake oven for some reason. He finally got one, though I don’t remember if it was a direct present or if he bought it with money given as a gift. Anyway, it’s now about 15 years later and the guy can’t cook to save his life. I, on the other hand, never used that lightbulb oven and cook for myself all the time, including baking.
The moral of the story: Parents, don’t buy your children EZ-Bake ovens for they shall never learn to cook in a big oven.
Of course, the fact that I never had an EZ-Bake oven now has me wondering if I could use a GC as a gigantic temperature-programmable EZ-Bake oven. Preferably one of the new ones with the network capability like the Agilent 6890N. You can tell it’s one of those things where if you have to ask the price you can’t afford it. But haven’t you ever wished you could control your oven from your computer with exact temperatures at exact times? I know I have. Then again, I’m also the guy who hates the uncontrollability of his secondhand Fry Baby and wants a digitally-controlled oil bath complete with probe to control the temperature without having to touch a rheostat.
BigTrak! My brother had one and we had the best time with that thing. We used to chase my grandma’s Pekingese with it. The trick was to try and program the tank according to which way we thought Mr. Woo would run.
Well I don’t feel so bad now, apparently NOBODY got a EZ-Bake oven for X-mas!
My parents didn’t understand that an army of G.I.Joes march on their stomachs!
Aha, maybe this explains my advanced culinary skills!
I never got the oven, but I got the EZ bake packets and little patty pans.
I felt like such a dork, putting that lil pan into my Mom’s big ass oven.
Then again, I graduated quickly to brownies and cookies and still love to bake, so…
I also longed for I can’t think of their name, but they’re like Legos(except you don’t build them)–but there are pirate ships and castles, stuff like that. They are small plastic figures–I want to say Fisher Price, but not the pre-school stuff. Those were just coming out and looked so cool. There was a Victorian mansion–3 floors! With a family and a perambulator and a nursery maid etc! Cool beans. <sigh>
They are still made today–and cost a bomb.
Wow… I haven’t thought about that Star Bird in years. I still have one of the decal stickers on the window of my old room at my parents’ house too.
It’s funny how a child never forgets something they’ve been promised and really looked forward to. Not even when said child has reached 35 and has three small children himself. Just saying, like hypothetically and all, you know.
My mom once promised me a Robin Hood hat and bow and arrow. One of those silly suction cup or foam projectile getups would have done it for me, and any ol’ green felt pointy cap with a feather in it. Never got it. The idea festered in my head until I would linger over fiberglass bow and arrow sets in prize catalogs for selling school schlock, but my sensible Mom would point out that basically I had nowhere to actually shoot arrows. If I went to the park and took out a bow and started firing arrows around, I would soon get taken in (or taken down) by New York’s Finest.
A homeless lady I brought home once to give food to (boy did I hear about that one later from my Mom) asked me what I wanted for Christmas, and swore by Heaven Above that I would somehow get a ROM Spaceknight action figure, which I had seen advertised in the Marvel comics. Never even saw one in real life, not to this day.
Electronic talking Battleship. For a while, I was really into Battleship, and that electronic talking version seemed like something I would NEVER get bored with. Never got one, though.
Now that I’m older I can buy myself pretty much any toy I want, but there’s no magic to consumer consumption the way it was when I was a boy.
