What Was Your Favorite Childhood Christmas Present?
Growing up in the Atlanta suburbs during the 80’s was a blast.
I had an amazing childhood.
Never had TONS of money, but my parents always made us feel loved and safe.
This is not sappy, at all.
Some of your responses should be.
But my favorite present of all time was my Stretch Armstrong.
He was said to be unbreakable.
But my brother Eddie and I soon found out that bb’s through the crotch were not covered by the warranty.
So what were one or two of your favorite Christmas presents from back in the day?
Carlos
RAIN IT DOWN
It has to be the Big Wheel. I used to put my little sister on the back and pull the hand brake in a hard turn and send her flying.
wow. Me too.
Had the Stretch Armstrong too. But my favorite had to be the X-Wing Fighter. I instantly became Luke Skywalker with all the powers and huge destiny.
Close second is the BigWheel. Pullin 180’s on the driveway NEVER got old!
Man! I miss those days! What a great childhood!
Seriously. Amazing
An Atari 5200. That’s the one that I remember the most. That was a good day.
That was a good day.
Back in 1972 when I was 4 and my younger brother was 3, we each got our very own motorcycles. They were a single mold blue plastic with black detail that had an engine that would go about 1 or 2 miles an hour. We looked so cool riding around the living room in our matching PJ’s until I ran mine into the Christmas tree and laid it flat out… We rode them outside after that.
Awesome. Great memory
Easy, when I was 8 I got a full GI Joe Battle ship that came with a bunch of GI Joe men, some guns, and two awesome cars that towed the ship (kind of hard to explain, but it was awesome).
I remember my dad buying it at the store and telling me it was for my cousin. I was so bummed, I wanted that thing so bad. In fact I would sneak into my parents bedroom and look under their bed and pull it out and just stair at it and then want to open it so bad.
Another big one was when I was about 12 I got my first drumset.
It was a old school ludwig that my dad bought for me.
It started my career on the drums and I have been playing ever since.
sweet.
do you still have that old ludwig set?
Nope, I passed it on to another young aspiring drummer.
It was an 80’s set, so not what you are thinking with the whole vintage thing (at least I think that was what you were getting at).
If it was from the 70’s or 60’s I would definitely still have that thing.
Honestly, I was just happy to get any presents when I was growing up. I’m that way today…I just feel blessed to get anything.
If I had to pick one thing from back in the day, it would have to be a Nintendo Entertainment System. I would play John Elway Football for hours.
Dude. that game is legit
Circa 1989:
Times were tough this particular year and we weren’t going to get any presents. While at the local park, my father and I fell from a faulty swing which broke in mid-air. The city was afraid they were liable for my broken arm so they paid me off.
As an 8 year-old with a city check and a broken arm, I not only bought myself a bike, I bought my whole family presents AND bought groceries. I was like an 8 year-old Santa Claus.
Best. Christmas. Ever.
That rules. Seriously.
Wow, I feel like I should be watching this story played out on ABC family channel or hallmark
That is so cool! Nothin like God giving presents from the city coffers!
I love how your first instinct was to buy everyone else presents AND groceries… what 8 year old thinks of groceries! That’s awesome!
My favorite Christmas gift was a teddy bear that my dad bought me when I was 4. I named him Terry Teddy. He has been everywhere with me including to France for a year in Montpellier (when I was 21). He was the best present because I could always sense how proud my dad was to have chosen it for me all of his own. We did not have a lot of scratch when we were growing up so we appreciated everything. He is a brown pot belly bear and is still squishable though has had surgery to fix various seams through the years.
My purple Members Only jacket was pretty boss too!
Merry Christmas!
What year were you wearing that Members Only jacket?
Tyco RC Hovercraft. It was awesome even though it had to charge for 4 hours for 12 minutes of play. That’s right, 12 minutes.
wow
My Easy Bake Oven was my favorite toy.
I just bought my kids one
The Millenium Falcon, man was that sweet! And a Frogger watch. Why did we stop making the video game watches, they were way better than today’s portable video games!
Seriously. I had a Dig Dug watch
my brother had stretch armstrong. i kinda crushed on him. stretch, not my brother.
so…we were poor folk and my mama bought and thought wisely. one year, i got two gifts…the best two gifts ever! a box of chicken in a biscuit crackers – OH Yeah! and a small roll of bubble wrap. hours of entertainment i tell ya! i was the happiest 11 yr old on the planet.
That is brilliant. I’m going to try that one. But honestly. Bubble Wrap is expensive now.
Hands down- Ninja Turtles pencils- didn’t take much, huh?
Yep – Easy Bake Oven. I just passed it down to my daughter this last year.
He-man’s Castle Greyskull and G.I. Joe’s Snow Cat vehicles. Also Voltron greeted me one Christmas. Man, those were the days. And the trampoline. I could go on and on.
Dance Workout with Barbie on VHS. Hands down—best gift.
but you can tell how well that worked out.
Trivia: Jennifer Love Hewitt was one of the girls working out with Barbie. Her name back then though was “Love” and she wasn’t a very good dancer.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Reiff9nPXWo
That trivia fact is one of the most pathetic things I have heard. I’m just saying
I totally had this too, and it was an AWESOME christmas when I got it. TOTALLY didn’t work for me either though haha!
In the 80’s my dad walked me to the back door and handed me a string and said “wind up this string.” At the end of the string (which ended up being an ENTIRE gargantuan bolt of string) was a Daisy BB gun hidden in the barn. He ran that string into and over nearly everything in the backyard.
Best. Gift. Ever.
wow, that is pretty epic!
Yup. We call it the birthday string. The kids LOVE IT
wow, I wish I knew about this before my son became 15…how cool. (the string thing..he would still be pretty jazzed about a bb gun)
GI Joe fighter jet. It was the F-16 with the guy you could only get with that jet. I think my Granpa was a little jealous.
Best Christmas present ever: I had been saving up for a year for the huge, amazing LEGO pirate ship. Seriously, $100 was a huge hill for a 10 year old. Santa brought it to me, and let me keep the $70 I had saved. It was awesome, and for a brief fleeting time in my childhood, I believed that pirates were indeed better than ninjas.
Rock’em Sock’em Robots…or the Barbie dream house. But, the house only survived until 12/26–then my 2-yo-brother sat on it. Loved the ‘bots tho!
I was like 6 and I got a Fire Engine Power Wheel. I didn’t think Santa had came but it was in the foyer. Apparently santa couldn’t get it up the stairs or through the chimney. It was awesome. And it snowed that year which meant I destroyed my parents front yard.
Is it sad if I don’t remember? I had a good childhood… I just don’t remember the presents. I remember family though. So I guess I’d say spending the holidays with my family.
(sappy enough?)
1978. Millennium Falcon. My Mom was a single parent after my father divorced her. We lived in a one bedroom apartment. My Mom worked her butt off in a nursing home. However, she always made sure I had more than enough – certainly more than I deserved. I still have that Millennium Falcon, or rather, my son still does. I’ll never forget that Christmas.
Grew up in SC in the 1970’s with much love but not much money. Always got stuck wearing ToughSkins jeans and Tuff-n-Ruff shirts from Sears. So one of my best Christmas presents was my first pair of Levi’s. I was 11 and thought I hung the moon. Sadly, Christmas night I sat on my Rubik’s Cube Pyramid and put a nice hole in the seat. Would be cool now but not so much then. Still, I wore those suckers. On a side note, that was the same year I got a Member’s Only jacket. Of course, it was the female version. Oh well…my parents tried.
I’m a 35 year old, metro-ATL-ite, too. And for me the Atari 2600 (I think that’s what it was called) was the best gift TO MY PARENTS! Mario, Pitfall and Zelda kept me and my little brother occupied sun-up to sun-down for a year straight. My folks knew exactly where to find us..parked in front of that old console TV holding a joystick with the rubber-ized cover ripped off (my brother swore it made the joystick better). I miss playing games with my lil bro.
A barbie house. Not the dream house but a hand built in wood by some guy. It was 3 stories tall with an elevator and awesome deck on top.
My dad told my sister and I we better love it and care for it because the guy who built it lost two of his fingers in making it.
He doesn’t remember that little white lie, but my sister and I didn’t know he made it up until we were in our 30’s.
My niece has that house now for her barbies.
(complete with some of the furniture from the original Barbie dream house and boutique)
When I was 6 or 7 I got a Lite Brite… that was the coolest thing ever. Still get it out once in a while when I visit my parents
The electronic Simon. I played it so much on Christmas morning that it needed new batteries by noon. The cool thing is that 25 years later, we gave my son the new version of Simon, and he played it so much that he wore out the batteries by noon on Christmas too!
Spirograph! It was a great art toy with circles you rocked around with a colored pen to make designs. It was wrapped under the tree for 2 weeks before Christmas. Every day after school I lifted the tape and spirographed my fingers off and returned it under the tree. Christmas morning no one noticed when I opened it, all the art paper was used up! I am 50 and just confessed this little secret to my mom last week!
I LOVED my Spirograph! I sit through faculty meetings trying to “free-hand” Spirograph patterns. I finally bought myself a small pocket-sized version so people quit asking me about the “flowers” I’ve drawn all over the agenda!
Castle Greyskull or Jimmy Superfly Snuka action figure.. i cant believe it, but id actually like clothes for christmas this year.. when’d that happen? im getting old.
Most definitely the Christmas after I graduated from high school – my parents, actually, they signed it from Santa
, gave me my first guitar. It was a total surprise and I was literally speechless.
Ooh, tough choice. I think mine was the Steve Austin (Six million dollar man) “Action Figure” where you could look through the hole in the back of his head & use his “bionics”.
#9 on this list of top 10 toys from the 70’s.
http://www.x-entertainment.com/articles/0400/
I lived in Guadalajara, Mexico back in the 80’s. I remember one christmas my brother got the toy on the picture and I got a robot that had a litte screen on his stomach and you could shoot proyectiles from the top of his head. I don’t remember the name of it though.
An awesome motorized jeep. me and my sis would cruise the streets in it.
Gotta be a Thunderbirds Tracey Island…
officially my best present i received on my birthday, but that’s today and it’s in december so i’m going with it. my brother was born on nov. 30th, 9weeks before he was supposed to be here. he was quickly shipped off to another hospital after his birth and on my birthday two days later i got to hold my brother for the first time. he and i are 13yrs apart mind you, so it was a HUGE deal that he was even around. i still get a little teary every time i think about how 12yrs ago today i held my brother for the first time.
My parents were generous gift givers growing up, even when they didn’t have a lot of money. My favorite present was a 3 year old Yamaha Clavinova electric piano. The thing is a lug, but to this day it still works and would have to be one of the main reasons why I am still a singer/musician.
BUT I’ll turn the question around on YOU Los: what’s your favorite gift you’ve ever given? (and that’s for everyone else too!)
Teenage mutant ninja turtles…turtle power!!
Wow! Great question and great answers.
Hard to rank the best, but I still have my Mattel hand held football game that I played for HOURS on Christmas (and days and years to follow). Little blips and bleeps. No passing. All run. Keep pushing the up arrow until all the blips were at the top and then cut back against the grain and run for the 80 yard TD. Yep . . . those were the days.
Oh man! Just clicked the above link for 10 best toys of the 70s and took a stroll down memory lane!
Evil Kneivel was awesome! So were GI Joe and the SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN (with bionic eye!!). I also remember the match box cars with the track that you attach to the stairs to make a ramp. OH . . . that reminds me!! The electric race car tracks!! AWESOME!! The car goes in a slot on the track and you squeeze the trigger to make it go. You hit it extra hard in the corner to see how far the car can fly off the track!
LOVE THIS QUESTION!! Thanks!
An Easy Bake Oven! It made real cakes!!
American Standard Fender Stratocaster. I still use it almost every weekend. Best present my folks could ever give, and way out of character for them.
Red Nash Skateboard, I was in 3rd grade and LOVED that thing. We couldn’t afford the Tony Hawk board.
Second place goes to a leather bomber jacket in the 7th grade.
Los,
I got a pair of blue-suede dingo cowboy boots when I was in the first grade. I can still see them sitting under the tree that Christmas morning.
I like clothes, I admit it. Man, I loved those boots.
Love your heart too. God bless.
Growing up in the 70’s my favorite was my GI Joe action figures. The big 12″ ones with the fuzzy hair and kung-fu grip, not the dinky little figures they sold in the 80’s. Had the big wooden footlocker to keep all the gear in, they were the best.
The other was my Kenner SSP racers. The cars that had this plastic T-handle that look like a giant zip tie and spun up this big flywheel in the car and then they would race off really fast. I had the Smash Up Derby set. You crashed the cars together and doors & bumpers & stuff would fly off. A total child safety hazard in a dozen or more ways, so awesome!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeLn9D23uMo&feature=PlayList&p=753EAE602CF4E871&index=1&playnext=2&playnext_from=PL
my GI Joe aircraft carrier. 7.5′ of awesomeness. it’s still in the attic.
i thought for a while about this one. hmmm, 1970s in Alabama. Lemon Twist, Doll Head that you could “make up” and do hair, Merlin, Simon, easy bake oven . . none of that comes close to the PING PONG freaking table that Santa busted out in the garage. I lost my mind. I could not imagine HOW this was even possible. I was 10, so I had a feeling my parents were “IN” with Santa on the present buying, but this threw me for a loop. I did not understand how / why they could act so rich and get us a ping pong table. So funny now -