In other words, you remember someone handing it to you or opening it up?
For me, it was a doll Christmas morning called “Baby Party”.
My Care Bear, in 1982. I still sleep with him today.
I actually remember wanting a Cabbage Patch doll that year (I was 3, by the way) but being happy enough with the Care Bear. I mean, nothing is more beautiful than a fuzzy fresh Care Bear in the box! Mine was an over-sized one, to boot. Like 1.5X the size of the regular ones.
I got the CBK the next year and remember that one as well!
For my 8th birthday I received a Kodak instant camera and a Dakin Wilhelm Walrus. I slept with Wilhelm through college; he disappeared sometime after that.
I have memories of various books and toys from before then, but none that are specifically of being given something as a gift.
A special gift from my grandma. She mailed me a box of cookies. It was special because they came in the mail and they were delicious!
I was four years old.
My dad worked at the local Goodyear plant. When I was little, in the early 1960’s, the plant gave small gifts to the children of employees. The workers picked them up and gave them to their kids. Before I could read I got a copy of Robinson Crusoe. There were some pictures, but it was the original text, not dumbed down for kids. Why dad got me the book I don’t know. Maybe because it did interest me in finding out what was going on in the text. I still have the much battered copy. Now when I look at it I can’t imagine not being able to read.
A little suitcase with a fuzzy lamb on it. Second birthday, and my earliest verifiable memory. My grandparents gave it to me when they came to our house to wait for my little sister to be born, which she was about 3 weeks after my own birthday.
A doll, a generic bald doll in a blue dress. When you squeezed her tummy she made a noise, it was supposed to be a cry. To my 3yo self it sounded like “blabb”. So I named her Blabby. She was with me for a couple of decades. I packed all my crap up and out when I left home. I am sure she’s in some of my storage somewhere. I never throw out ‘stuff’. Now I have to go looking for her. Thanks alot OP.
A little drum when I was five or six for Christmas. Totally unbelievably racist for today, with little negro children on the sides. I loved it, but later in the evening, my father and my uncles got a bit tipsy, started to play the drum and broke it. Drama and tears ensued. That’s why I remember it so well.
(Next Christmas, my parents gave me a little children’s drum kit, with bass drum, snare and hi hat, I think for compensation. I tortured them well enough with it :D. Sadly, I cannot close this story with the revelation that I’ve since become a drummer, but at least I play mean air drums whenever I listen to the Who, Led Zep or the Experience (and many others).
It would probably have been “Wendy” (my first teddy bear) before I started school (which was 1948). I “loved” it/her so much the stuffing had started to come out of
it/her, so Mama made a little patch to cover the busted part. I still have that little thing!
There are pictures in my baby books of me and Wendy doing various things, and she was a favorite of my aunts and uncles, too. Special memories!
My brother’s bear Ikey didn’t last all the long. I doubt that he loved Ikey as much as I did Wendy.
I know I got a teaset for my 3rd birthday that I played with for years, but I don’t remember opening it.
When I was 5, we went to stay with my grandparents for a few weeks. I remember being in the kitchen of a strange house, and a strange woman (my grandmother) gave me a gift to open. It was a little outfit she had knitted for my teddy bear. He still wears it.
I was 3. My aunt knitted me 2 dolls, a boy and a girl. The boy had a had, like a cowboy hat. The girl had a skirt. I have a picture of me sitting under the tree with the unwrapped box on my lap. This was in 1960.
A stuffed court jester doll with “jingle bells” on it. A present upon getting out of the hospital when I was a little over 2.
This tin battery-operated train engine. I think my grandparents gave me this (my grandfather worked for the railroad), and I must have been about 4 or so. I loved that thing - it moved on its own, had lights and made noise! My mother was … less thrilled about it. Eventually the battery compartment latch broke. I ‘repaired’ it using a couple of Band-Aids, but it did not work reliably after that, and then my mom told me new batteries for it were ‘too expensive’ (it took something like 3 or 4 D-cells if I remember correctly).
A Peter Pan doll (or I guess we might say action figure now). I loved the Disney cartoon. When I was 4 and a couple of months, I had to go to Detroit to have an operation on my left eye. It was a “get well” present.
I was four or five when I came downstairs on Christmas morning to find a Radio Flyer wagon under the tree with a cute little stuffed Dalmatian puppy toy in it. And not that cheap-ass plastic crap either: All-steel construction (the wagon, not the puppy). I remember pushing my father around the house in it as he preached on the wonders of ball bearings.
A play kitchen when I was four. I remember seeing it sitting in front of the tree Christmas morning. It was a nice one too, made out of particle board with the cabinet and oven doors that opened and knobs you could turn. Lots of play food and pots and pans to go with it. I loved that thing. I played with it until I was old enough to start cooking for real. My little sister played with it and it then got passed through several cousins and eventually given to the church we went to at the time. The church still had it the last time I was there which was about 15 years ago.
Red fire engine. Thing was like 18 inches long. This would be about christmas 1965 or maybe '66.
Next-youngest sibling “gave” me a toy upon coming home from the hospital when I was 2. I’m assuming this was some don’t-resent-the-new-baby ploy by my parents. But my reaction was “wtf, babies can’t give presents!”
When I was three, we lived in a walk up apartment in Hyde Park in Chicago, and my mom had sent away for a shiny red Texaco tanker truck. We came home from the store on afternoon and the postman had put it halfway up the stairs. I recognized it immediately due to the shape of the box. Super exciting and I loved it for years. That’s also my earliest memory.
A set of Bill Ding Balancing Clowns. I see they’re still made, almost 70 years later.