Inky, we are kindred spirits. I too woke up on christmas morning in 1978 to find a Death Star waiting for me. It was, without a doubt, the best Christmas gift ever. The next year, I was face with the birth of a baby sister, and the joy of being a spoiled only child was forever robbed of me (I’ve since learned to love her though, despite the halving of the X-mas bounty).
Pac-Mac was another wonderful gift, but don’t blaim the spasmatic ghost flashing on the 2600, but on the rushed nature of the game itself. That piece of shit ROM was churned out so quick that it was readily apparent to even the most juvenile of Atari fanatics. It you ever got your hands on Mrs. Pac-Man for the 2600, you’d see a Pac-Man game done right for the holiest of all home consoles.
One of the cooler presents I remember getting as a kid was a virtibird.
Anyone remember this thing?
It was essentially a base unit with a long tube that at its end had a little plastic helicopter. A real little helicopter with rotars and everything.
With a forward/reverse and up/down controls, you could fly around in a circle until your hearts content. You also had a little hook attachment on the bottom of the helicopter that let you fly around and rescue little army men.
As boring as it sounds, it was actually quite fun. I still remember my ‘top secret’ missions I ran to save my good guys from my evil brothers troops.
I also remember my brother walking into the virtibird rotars and having them hit his shins so hard he crumpled to the ground crying. He he heeeee.
A Tyco Night Glow set. This was THE one. The one I will never forget. Man I wanted that thing so bad. Just your average rece track, but ot had glow in the dark stickers on it. I have 3 or 4 pictures of me holding the box and playing with the set. ( I also wanted a Silver Streak train set that year and managed to convince my little sister that she really wanted it. Bonus! woohoo!)
Merlin- that little red hand held game. Thanks to Zette I have a version of it on my PC.
Hungry Hungry Hippos- I must have told anyone that would listen I wanted that, I ended up getting 2.
I wanted a My Child doll for Christmas. If memory serves, this was a year to two years after the Cabbage Patch Kid fiasco. I had recieved a CPK for my kindergarten graduation, and clearly remember saying “It’s JUST what I wanted! I must be dreaming!” One of my parent’s friends told me to pinch myself, jokingly. I pinched myself and cried.
Anyhoo. My Child Dolls were all the rage. They had peach fuzz on their face, and each one came with a locket and a picture of your doll that you put in your locket. My parents, attempting to recreate the wonderment that occured when I opened my CPK, searched high and low. Not only did my father go to EVERY toy store in Burlington, he also hit all of the toy stores in Plattsburgh. He was considering driving to Rutland (second largest city in Vermont, three hours away) when he found a My Child in Plattsburgh. But it was a boy. This was decidedly not what I wanted. Half the fun of the My Child dolls opposed to the CPK was that they had silken “real” hair that you could play with. CPK had yarn. So I wanted a girl with lots of hair.
He bought the doll anyway, and SisterRiddles sat me down, and in her most nonchalant manner asked me if I’d play with boy dolls. I gave her some kind of Pollyanna answer like “Well, sure. I have a Ken Doll, and he takes Barbie out on dates and stuff.” But I was on high alert. Something was amiss. SisterRiddles cared about Prince and moussed hair, not my doll preferances.
When I opened the doll Christmas day, I remember thinking “OK, this is why she was asking about it. Dad is looking nervous. Pretend to adore it.” So I did. It wasn’t want I dreamed of, but it DID have the locket and the picture, and it DID have the fuzzy face. But I think not throwing a flaming temper tantrum at age 6 1/2 was probably the first act of maturity I every did.
I still HAVE mine! That doll was my heart’s desire the year she came out, and I still don’t know how my mom scraped together the money, but Santa came through.
I gave the doll to my five-year-old two years ago. Did you know that some plastic (like the plastic they made that doll’s arms out of) gets brittle enough to break when you move it if it’s been sitting in a closet for over 25 years? I feel a little silly, but I MIGHT just try to find a doll hospital to take her to.
I always wanted a Power Wheels, but never got one. My dad said that he didn’t see the point because I had a bike and could go anywhere I wanted on that.
When I was really little I wanted one of those plastic Little Tykes cars–those red and yellow ones that looked like squashed VW Beetles. My dad told me that he would buy me one of those little cars as soon as we located one with pedals.
He found one for me about 12 years later–at the local Jeep dealership.
I first saw a commercial for Cabbage Patch Kids when I was about 8 years old and, of course, I absolutely had to have one. Unfortunately this was when the whole CPK craze was starting so I never did get one that Christmas. I was very disappointed when I didn’t find one under the tree.
Instead, my mom was able to find a similar type doll – they might have been called Carrot Patch Kids, but I can’t remember for sure. Anyway, the doll my mom got for me was kind of an imitation CPK. It was cute, but I still wanted a CPK.
My mom (bless her) felt so bad that she couldn’t get me a real CPK that she got a pattern from the fabric store and made one for me. The doll’s head was made of cloth instead of plastic, but it looked kind of like a CPK. She let me pick out the haircolor and eyecolor, and even got a book of clothes patterns for CPKs and let me pick the outfit I wanted it to have.
Months later after the craze died down a little, my grandma managed to find a CPK and gave it to me for my birthday. After that I got two CPK premies and a CPK baby. I have them all, still, but I think the homemade one means the most to me.
You had STRING?!?!?! DAMN YOU RICH KIDS!! We had CANS empty CANS and we would just talk into them and try to hear our OWN voices back!
When you were younger huh? like a couple years ago? The Green Machine… Man I wanted one of those too! Never got one. I did have a kick ass Big Wheel though I used to pretend to be Fonzie.
About the Green Machine… this is the one you got to lean back in and steer with levers down by your side… isn’t that right?
Yeah, that Tyco glow in the dark race set was pretty nice, and I remember salivating over that thing when I finally got it. Of course, a few months later, it was packed away, and stored in the top most shelf of my closet.
Any G.I. Joe vehicle was at the top my list too. Especially the really big ones like the Aircraft Carrier or the Space Shuttle. I think both of them were around $100. I tried selling baseball cards and other toys I had, but never amassed the money I needed.
I also had a homemade Cabbage Patch that a neighbor of my aunt’s made for me…my cousin had one named Lucy, so I named mine Sally (Peanuts) I wonder if I still have it…
I also have a homemade Cabbage Patch Kid. It was made around the time I was born…I think the dress it wore actually fit me. Scared the crap out of me though since it was heavier than CPK and had some mechanism inside that made it sound like a cry when it got moved (not a battery-operated thing, just something inside, like those tubes that make a funny noise when you move it…understand?)
I really, really wanted a Transformer helmet. It had a full face mask and a microphone that would distort the voice which would, in theory, make you sound like a transformer.
I never did get one though, but my spoiled cousin did. Half the enjoyment for him was saying “no” whenever I asked to play with it. Naturally, like the rest of his toys, it was broken within a week.
Not in my books. One summer I was managing a pool store, which had several indoor pools in what used to be a sunken area of a bus garage. One day late in the season a transport arrived full with Chatty Cathy dolls. Thousands of them. The boss of the pool chain had decided to sell toys in the off season.
So I spent a long, hard day stuffing the store full of Chatty Cathy Dolls. I went home and returned the next day to find that one of the pool lines had broken, drowning several thousand Chatty Cathy dolls.
Needless to say, I have an aversion to Chatty Cathy dolls.
When I was a wee nipper, I wanted wooded blocks. By school age it was LEGO. No such thing as too much LEGO. The real stuff – just twos, fours and eights. None of those pre-formed specialty pieces flooding the market today.
And yes, cans with a string were wonderful homemade toys in my childhood.
But the most marvelous of all was in grade 2, which I spent in the hospital with my leg in the air. My folks brought me a copy of Winnie the Pooh and House at Pooh Corner by Milne and illustrated by Sheppard (this was befoe Disney got their hands on Pooh). A great, thick book which I treasured then and still treasure today.
My kid sister, however, was a different story. All she ever wanted was a horse. When my folks asked if there was anything else she also wanted, she said “a lemmon pie.” Well, you can guess what she received.
