The Lego 8865 Test Car:
I built it according to the manual, but kept modifying it until it was vastly more capable than the original. 4-wheel steering, reverse gear, brakes, an electric motor, styling improvements, etc. I still have the pieces, though, so it’s not long lost. Maybe one day I’ll build it again.
Hah, I had the triangular Aerobie boomerang I think. Took a while to master it, but I imagined myself as the feral kid from The Road Warrior once I had it figured out.
Would this cheer you up?
When I was five or so, there was a book I used to get from the local library so often that they decided to give it to me to keep. Then literally weeks later we had a housefire and I lost it forever. And I cannot remember anything about it!
I think it had a lot of pictures of things in rows, like a frieze, which for some reason I liked to… do something with. Count stuff? Learn things, Richard Scarry-style? Hunt for secret hidden things like a proto-Where’s Wally? No idea.
So I guess I’ll never be able to find a copy of it if I can’t even figure out what was in it. But it’s a vivid edge-of-my-memory itch despite that.
The scribe for a K&E leroy lettering set. Used daily for years.
You would set it down between letters/maps or whatever you where doing. The down side got worn flat (mylar is actually a little abrasive.)
I swore I kept it when I left that job. But I can’t find it. 
I can’t think of one of my own, but do you get the BBC Repair Shop programme (or maybe you have a local equivalent)? There’s almost always one elderly toy (teddy or doll or rocket or car or trainset) in for rescue with a touching family story attached, for a vicarious burst of nostalgia.
Love that show! Lately we have been noticing the people bringing in their items have relatives with famous backstories. One woman’s father was John Clive — one of those actors who were in a million things but you didn’t know him by name.
From Then to Now – a Little Golden Book that was, I think, my first book about dinosaurs. My copy disappeared eons ago (appropriately enough). I still have a lot of my old dinosaur books (including The Big Golden Book of Dinosaurs and The Little Golden Book of Dinsaurs), but not this one.
For a long time I couldn’t even find it on the internet, but now it’s on a lot of sites:
My horse books, especially the Marguerite Henry books. I loved those books so much. I think I most of the Henry books in hardcover and loads of paperback horse related books. I still have them all!
Next to the aforesaid house which I grew up in, there was a tall lilac bush. It was right next to the front porch, which didn’t go the full width of the house, and right in front of my upstairs bedroom window, and tall enough to be in front of that window.
I used to sit under that lilac bush, between it and the house, and play – something. Whatever it was, it was important to me; but by the time I was in my teens, I had no idea what the game was – only a clear recollection that it had mattered.
When I was in my late 20’s, I took LSD once. And I thought about that lilac bush and that forgotten game – and I had the very strong sense that it had had something to do with that particular spot; and also that if I’d been able to go sit under that lilac while tripping, I’d be able to remember it.
Unfortunately, the lilac was (I hope still is) in New York State; and I was in New Mexico at the time. And my parents had sold the house some years before – I didn’t realize at the time how much I would miss it.
My mother had NO nostalgia and threw out so much of my stuff. I did save a teddy, Mr. Bear. He is still with me. I’ll see if I can get a picture later. But I do have some of her in me in that I don’t have anything I am so attached to that I can’t do without it.
When I was five, my father gave me a bracelet with letter blocks that spelled, “Daddy Loves You 
” I wore it a lot but, as I became a teenager, it seemed too childish for a cool teenage girl. After I lost my parents, it became a true treasure again and something I will have until the day I die.
I had a wee Transformers toy when I was really small, younger than kindergarten-age - probably just four or five. It was a little red van, no bigger than your thumb. It was my absolute favorite toy - I remember how loose and smooth the wheels felt, how fast it ROLLED on a tile floor.
One day I was at my babysitter Alice’s house, a dear college friend of my mom’s who would watch me while she was at work. I was playing with my little Transformers toy on the floor in Alice’s bedroom and I flicked it a little too hard and it whizzed underneath Alice’s dresser. I couldn’t get it out. Alice, a sweetheart, looked down there and fished around with a broom, but couldn’t find it… Later, when her husband got home, they even moved the dresser for me. My little toy was just gone. Totally vanished. I was completely heartbroken. I looked for it for years afterward, whenever I’d be at Alice’s house, long after I should have just outgrown/forgotten about it and moved on.
A couple years ago I told this story to a friend of mine in a context a lot like this thread, just “things I miss from when I was little.” Well… I should have remembered that my friend’s Special Interest is Transformers, because without missing a beat she said “Oh! You had Tote!” Not only did she know exactly what tiny 1989 Transformers toy I was talking about, she knew it by name. One Ebay search and ten bucks later, my thirty-year quest came to an end and my li’l red pal has sat on the shelf beside my desk ever since.
This type of question pops up from time to time, on this board and elsewhere. As far as I can recall, I did not have a blankie or an adored stuffed animal or a toy I really loved.
Craved, yeah, I can remember a few I thought I just had to have. Made sure my parents know how much, so it would be likely to manifest as a christmas or birthday present. Or in a couple cases, saved up for it myself. But they were also severly less cool than the television commercial or the ad in the back of the comic book made them sound, so disappointing. A lot of them glowed eerily in the dark and referenced something spooky and ominous, and what I got did at least do the glowing in the dark thing, but they were kind of plasticky and cheaply mechanical and just insufficient.
I had a militant children’s libber’s disdain for things cutely and condescendingly associated with children. That definitely could have driven me away from any adored-status comfort objects, but I’ve wondered if I did when I was quite young. But not that I recall.
Ha! I never heard anyone else say that, but I feel you. When I was a kid I was just plain embarrassed at having to wear clothes with polka dots, or pictures of animals, or what have you. I remember one dress in particular which I’d have thought pretty, except it had a big goofy daisy right on the chest. Ugh!
I never had that for most things – if anything, I wanted to hang on to them longer than you’re supposed to.
But I did have it for books, once I got past the age of maybe seven or eight. I didn’t want to read the books meant for children, I wanted to read the books aimed at grownups. I think this was partly because the books officially handed us in school seemed generally so stupid and uninteresting, and partly because the public library told me I wasn’t allowed in the adult section, only in the little kids’ area (I think most libraries have changed their minds about this since, if most libraries even used to do this.) I had to get my mother or considerably-older sister to check books out for me.
I missed a lot of great books that way. Occasionally now I deliberately go into the children’s section of the library and take books out from there.
Not a toy, but this always meant a lot to me:
It hung in my grandparents’ living room - I remember sitting on the sofa looking at it and imagining all sorts of things. When they died and my mom was sorting thru their stuff, I asked for it, and it now hangs over my desk.
I know it’s not great art - they probably bought it in a department store. There’s a crack in the frame and it is pretty dark. But it takes me back to that sofa in the house where my mom grew up. I’m sure when I’m gone, my daughter will toss it, but for now, it’s mine.
We had a huge box of Lego which we would play with frequently; mixed in with this were the usual assortment of non-lego things; marbles, plastic soldiers, charms from Christmas crackers, etc, and a little plastic model of a VW camper van with metal wheels.
Much, much later, I learned that this model was also made by Lego, even though it was not part of any of the construction sets. I wish I still had that. They are very collectible now and quite expensive to obtain.
We now have, hanging in our hallway opposite the bathroom, a large painting in a very ornate frame. It had hung in my aunt’s house. It depicted a very bleak winter scene of two people – peasants, I assume – who seem to be gathering wood. The forest is pretty denuded and covered in tortured, angular trees that even Bob Ross would have to concede aren’t “happy”.
Got my little fighter jet!
For all I know, it could be my actual toy from decades ago. Looks and feels exactly the same. It was a pleasant moment of nostalgia to fly it around again.