Toys or things you wanted as a kid that you were never allowed to have

inspired by:

i went to disney world a couple times as a little kid, all i really remember was the character 'figment' from epcot and a deep and unfulfilled yearning for these dog leashes wired to hold their position so you looked like you were walking an invisible dog

― :) Mrs Edward Cullen XD (max), Monday, December 1, 2008 9:38 AM (26 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i asked for a rock tumbler like every christmas but my parents never got me one, which is probably good because why the fuck did i want a rock tumbler?

nintendo

http://www.csdm.qc.ca/pec/codes/atari2600.jpg

The Mousetrap game.

http://www.justdoughit.com/images/topBanner.jpg
http://www.justdoughit.com/images/middleBanner.jpg
http://www.justdoughit.com/images/bottomBanner.jpg

had nintendo never upgraded to the genesis :(

POW POW POWERWHEELS

http://www.tomfotherby.com/Images/Toys/crossbowsAndCatapults.jpg

i can't believe you can still buy this shit. one of my childhood scars is gonna get healed real soon.

Anything with little pieces that would invalidate the function of the toy or game if they were lost (Legos the exception)

A Lite-Brite (see above)

An Etch-a-Sketch

The Playmobil Victorian manor house

~~~~~@A BOYFRIEND@~~~~~

more than an hour of television per day

a yellow combine harvester.

i remember my mum telling me off because a friend of the family idly asked me what i would like for my birthday and i speeled off something like "YELLOW COMBINE HARVESTER UPSTAIRS IN RATIGANS PLEASE THANKS"

why the fuck did i want a rock tumbler?

Forward planning?

http://upload.moldova.org/movie/movies/s/shawshank_redemption/thumbnails/tn2_shawshank_redemption_2.jpg

the best chemistry set
steam-powered model railway

http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/B00005NK20.02.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

fuck yes! chemistry set! with one of those really really unsafe alcohol burners

Another one for a lite-brite here. Also really wanted a chemistry set, or maybe it was an electronics kit, when I was maybe 8 and made a lot of fuss, but when I got one aged 12 was totally "oh. well that's dull" about it. Sorry parents!

http://upload.current.com/uploads/Ic1BWo.jpg

http://bsalert.com/f-store/toysecuritycheckpoint.jpg

bugger

Oh god I wanted a Mr Frosty too. I wanted everything ever. I'm not sure if this thread is traumatic or just an embarrassing realisation of my greedy materialistic 8y/o self.

i mean i haven't seen a bottle of methylated spirits in literally years, all i can remember is how impossibly violet the stuff was, that and the invigorating "getting stuff done with grown-man chemicals" smell

My gfriend had a Mr Frosty - apparently they were shit. This hasn't cured me tho.

"oh. well that's dull"

They are. When I was ten I got the deluxe 300 in 1 huge version. Later I got hold of a breadboard and removed all the components. There really aren't a lot of parts in them at all. I mean, dismantle an old radio, there's more stuff there. Not that my parents were going to a soldering iron to a kid...

i wasn't allowed toy guns for a long time, until i started making guns out of legos and my parents gave in to the futility

i was feared to death of toy chemistry sets, i would have cried if someone bought me one of those.

Mr Frosty Yes!

had nintendo never upgraded to the genesis :(

― ice cr?m, Monday, December 1, 2008 11:10 AM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

NES pwned genesis WTF

http://www.dalsconetoys.co.uk/acatalog/b22.jpg

the finale of this tale? my parents bought me the RED combine harvester for the following christmas!

My gfriend had a Mr Frosty - apparently they were shit.

That's what my mother said, except not using the word "shit", but obviously that was all part of the conspiracy to deprive me of a bearable childhood.

I don't think I even opened my chemistry set or electronics kit. I didn't even pay it enough attention to remember which it was. I found it, severely faded but still shrinkwrapped, at the bottom of my wardrobe a few years back.

^^^ kind of hard to tell, as in the UK both would have come with a cassette narrated by Johnny Ball.

mr que otm

Games console and/or home computer FTW
Also for some reason, and totally out of charater, one year I wanted a "Biologie 2000" set (it was French) that included a whole (dead and pickled) frog to dissect.

sparkly high heeled shoes (okay, they would have been totally inappropriate, but wow I'm jealous of my 6 year old daughter's sparkly dress up shoes from Target)

Ah, I think my Invisible Dog from Disney World is in the attic waiting for my cousins to play with it...starting with the systematic freakout of all the real dogs they know.

I got all the things I wanted with x 1000000 pieces to them: Spirograph, Lego, Lite-Brite, etc.

i never got a scalextrix bridge piece
or a remote-controlled airplane

-pony
-trampoline
-swimming pool

Mr. Frostys were shit. I had more fun grinding up crayons in mine (then cooking the shavings in the EZBake oven).

I even got a Betty Crocker EZ-Bake oven but I could already do real cake from mix so that was stupid to buy me. My toys phase was replaced by clothes/culture when I was 10 and I am VERY glad for that. Otherwise my Farrah Fawcett styling head would never have got PUNKED.

skateboard

Crossfire, and I mean the proper full size 70's one, not the crappy 90's version

Yeah, I'm trying to think of what strongly wanted thing was denied me. I think i've probably blocked whatever, but my parents strongly encouraged my budding dorkling interests: rocketry kit, chemistry sets, 200-in-1 electronics board(blew out the transistors & the onboard speaker within two weeks, i think), legos, capsela, erector set, plastic fighter model kits, etc.

Also, I had a rock tumbler, and I can safely say it was as underwhelming as parents probably knew it would be. We put some rocks in, left the thing in the basement for a few weeks (ie long enough for me to lose interest), and then magically had shiny/soft/round rocks, which presumably went with the rest of my rock collection, which mostly only existed so I could feed my obsessive borderline-aspie interests in collecting and memorising utterly useless things.

lol - see also Airfix planes, rock "collection" (bits of quartz etc. picked up from neighbouring driveways), coin collection, blah-de-blah

also, "stuff that relatives wanted to buy you that your parents then vetoed" - in my case, an Estes (I think) rocket kit

http://www.pyramydair.com/blog/images/08-28-08-pistols.jpg

http://www.trustedreviews.com/images/article/inline/6108-SpaceInvadersCabinet.jpg

We actually had one of them, which made us the most popular kids in the world! Well, in our street. Actually, it wasn't a Space Invaders, it was a multi-game thing with space invaders and pong and asteroids and some other shit on it. We had the keys to ping the credits button, but used to make the annoying kids that only came round to play with it rather than see us actually put their 10p in it.

http://www.wotever.co.uk/images/spudgun_300.jpg

"too violent"

and the results:

-rocket had a few successful launches in nearby test field(suburban golf course) before being lost with all hands on board in a tree

-chemistry set was bubbling away with some concoction with a too-well-sealed test tube that promptly blew out the plastic cap and brown/green liquid all over the kitchen ceiling

-chemistry set also helping to bring in later pyromaniac phase thanks to handy alcohol burner and frequent requests for gross boxes of matches from local pharmacy

-erector set battery pack teaching the value of conductive heat by sticking a paperclip between the leads and using to set scraps of paper alight

-plastic cement from model kits will dissolve styrofoam plates quite nicely and be easily lit by alcohol burner

Anyway, all I wanted was to be allowed to watch Grange Hill because everyone talked about it all the time and I had no idea what they were on about, because Grange Hill was SUBVERSIVE and if I caught a glimpse of it I would instantly start taking drugs and possibly other terrible things like hitching my skirt up to make it like a mini skirt and wearing blue eyeshadow and pixie boots, rather than the altogher different result of being the spoddy kid whose mum and dad didn't let her watch a KID'S TV SHOW. Still, I was a spoddy kid with a computer game in my room, so a winner was me.

erector set

i feel this may require some explanation

haha i actually knew it was but i thought i'd keep up my typo

Everyone I knew pronounced it "scal-ec-tricks".

When I was six or seven, I would have long involved conversations at school with another boy (whom I hardly knew) about how enormous our respective Scalextric sets were. We were both lying through our teeth, hoping that the other wouldn't call BS.

I had a babyalive doll and it all got clagged up on the indside with the weird food paste.

We've experienced that with real babies, too.

food, shelter

Never had the "Super Van City", but I did get the "Toolbox Town"

Those same neighborhood kids had the Ghostbusters headquarters - there's not really so much you can do with it though, aside from play with the elevator and pour slime through the roof.

Yes, but it would have been a cooler place for my figures to hub out of compared to the cardboard box I made due with.

http://www.millionaireplayboy.com/images/dissect/alienbox1.jpg

Never allowed this, as was too expensive:

In finding that image, discovered Lego hasn't made Fabuland since the late 1980s. Fuck Lego, with their stupid Star Wars and Indiana Jones sets. Bring back the animals!

I had a bunch of Fabuland sets & they were totally awesome.

They've done a Lego SW/Batman/etc., etc.. They should do a Lego Animal Crossing.

Lego changed ownership in the mid-80s and all of a sudden entire castle walls were one large lego with bricks painted on the side. It was a bummer and we were kids and we still knew it was fucked up.

As for why all the toys mentioned are from a certain era--it's sorta the same story. Toys actually got lamer in the mid-80s through the mid-90s (thanks in part to a Battlestar Galactica toy that some kid used to choke or blind himself).

It's only when the kids of the 70s started having kids of their own, that this reissue madness set in. I used to frequent Toys R Us out of curiosity and just felt horrible for people younger than me...

Toys have definitely gotten better again, especially thanks to Todd McFarlane and all that he has (sorry) spawned....

the best chemistry set

unfortunately, once your older brother has had one of these, your parents will never be so foolish again :(

I remember really wanting a Cabbage Patch Doll but that year they were all sold out and my parents couldn't get one so they had a friend get me a soft one which were a lot more $$ and limited edition or something but when I got good ole Trixie Alice I hated her because she wasn't like the "normal" ones my friends had. /spoiled brat.

(xxpost)
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/209/469563364_a753aa3aed.jpg
I used to have one of these. Actually mine was in better shape than this example - might be worth something if I'd kept the flipping box and hadn't snapped Buck's legs off. Anyway, it's a Buck Rogers Starfighter for anyone who isn't an old fart. It's one concession to safety compared to the TV version is the bar joining the two points at the front. It still fires tiny missiles that might not be a real choking hazard, but certainly hurt when they went in your eye.

1. shoes with flashy lights in the heels YES
2. meccano

I wanted some lego light-and-sound or whatever it was called, as well, which I didn't get but my brother did. Except he was pretty uninterested in the whole Lego phenom so it was mine mine mine finders keepers etc.

I think there's a technology aspect to toys getting better. Now it's very cheap to make a toy with a button that you push and it says one of a hundred different phrases. But up until the last decade, electronics like that were very expensive and fairly rubbish.

A fucking Atari. My parents got me a Bally Astrocade instead.

omg just rememberd, i always wanted either Scramble/Firefox (forget name) or Astowars. Instead I got Frogger!

Astrowars, sorry my typing got a bit frantic due to a huge surge of memory comeback

I wanted Astrowars as well, but after seeing a friend's version - basically the same but in a flat case instead of a wedge shape - I decided otherwise.

http://www.marxtoymuseum.com/_borders/greenmachine.jpg

http://www.23mag.com/mags/bab/bab8210.jpg

http://www.acclaimimages.com/_gallery/_images_n300/0174-0601-2415-5119_young_woman_and_her_palamino_horse.jpg

^^^
i insisted it had to be a palimino. like i had a chance of getting any kind of horse.

Why are Mr. Frosty and Snoopy Sno-Cone so commonly desired by us and denied by our parents? Seems like such a random choice, and yet I really wanted that dang Snoopy Sno-Cone maker too, but never got it. Could the strong desire for Snoopy Sno-Cone have anything to do with the fact that the TV commercial for it aired for years on end?

I believe my wife actually had one of these and that it caused a worrisome amount of finger scrapes.

I also wished for and never received a video game system. One of the first things I did when I left for college was buy a Sony Playstation - ha, take that mean oppressive parents!

On the other hand, I did have some pretty sweet Star Wars toys including that AT-AT. It still lives at my parent's - my son got to play with it recently and my heart was filled with fatherly pride!

I think my brother may have had that Ghostbusters playset.

RADNESS UNLIMITED!

Hate to break it to you upthread but we had Crossbows and Catapults and it was awesome.

I also had a secret and shameful desire to smell the hair of a Strawberry Shortcake doll. I knew it was wrong because it was obviously a toy for girls, but there was something intensely fascinating about the idea of hair that smelled like fruit.

also: chemistry set, atari, http://lisadickerson.files.wordpress.com/2007/09/barbietownhouse.jpg + the car and i spent a few years in the 80s begging for a marantz gold hi-fi. i mean look at this fucking turntable. its beautiful:

http://www.oaktreeent.com/web_photos/Stereo_Turntables_CD/Marantz_TT-1060_Gold_Stereo_Turntable_web.jpg

i remember some store at the mall having thwm on sale for $1986.00 because it was 1986.

i had a mr frosty and to those of you who were denied - yes, it was as great as you imagined.

Yep, I had Crossbows and Catapults too and it was pretty great.

Also, Dark Tower! Kill those Brigands!

(xxpost) You could probably find that in a thrift store/charity shop now. There seems to be a turntable in every one I go into.

And... Dark Tower ad voiced by Orson Welles

fudgesticks...

"Last night, I was pissed out of my mind on that sherry that I also advertise. I can't believe that I'm doing this for money! Did you ever The War Of The Worlds? That was me! I scared the living shit out of millions of Americans! Now I look like the Santa from that rip-off UK Lapland theme park!"

ever hear The...

...because I too am pissed on the sherry that OW used to advertise...

I also really wanted to get Picture Pages as advertised on Captain Kangaroo, mainly because I imagined it came with a pen that made a cool noise when you used it just like the one that Bill Cosby had.

To my knowledge no kids ever actually owned Picture Pages.

WTF? that video won't play when it's embedded. Never mind...

Ooh, Fireball Island

I have a vague memory of really REALLY wanting 'Hungry Hungry Hippoes' for a while, until I actually played it at a friend's place, and it seemed to have baby poo smeared on some of the buttons, which made it less appealing. Not that I imagine it came with baby poo, but even so.

Yeah, Fabuland was the best. Radness unlimited!

the criss-cross-crash race car set

fuck me, they still make it -

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hot-Wheels-Criss-Cross-Crash/dp/B000FVTPTQ

33 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Hot wheels Hot moves, 11 Sep 2007
By Alexandra Welch (UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)
Durability:4.0 out of 5 stars Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars Educational:3.0 out of 5 stars

This is a review from my twelve year old son (I don't play with cars anymore honest).

When I first got my hot wheels criss cross crash set I was really excited and I couldn't wait to open it. after I got it set up I realised I couldn't use it because I needed 4 size D batteries which was a little disappointing. next day my Dad brought home batteries and we began to play, and it was amazing. The batteries turn cogs which when the cars go past them make them speed up really fast. The cars speeded round and round the track you could put on about 5 at once and then they would catch up to each other and start smashing and throwing each other of the track, sometimes they just fell off by themselves cos of the speed. Some cars seemed to stay on the track better than others the hummer (my favourite) wouldn't fit the track at all. The first night my brother and I played non stop for about 2 hours.

The next night I set up the v-drop another Hot wheels track, this is like a vertical drop you can hang over a door or something and the cars do a death defying fall before flying off really high. Cos you can connect different tracks we added the criss cross and v drop together to get really big stunts, most of which didn't work but that was half the fun, the problem was cos we had the track really big and high the track kept falling apart and the cars kept going over the side but when it worked it was class the cars went flying. I like that you can attach the sets to other hot wheels sets. so overall I thought they were really good. The fact that you can add tracks and change the shapes and cars means this toy will keep you playing for a really long time. I think having at least two tracks which interchange means the fun will last for a lot longer.

"but when it worked it was class"

i think thats british for 'RADNESS UNLIMITED!'

Aw, he doesn't mention if his dad was drinking beer while playing it with him, before a coupla hours pass and the dad is just trying to get the cars to launch over empty beer bottles.

Hate to break it to you upthread but we had Crossbows and Catapults and it was awesome.

Yes! I had it and I found it again at a thrift shop which means I HAVE IT NOW... (but all the rubber bands are dried, decayed, and broken. Must fix some rainy day...)

Wish I still had my Dark Tower game! That was so fun.

I don't think i had all the side sets, but I did have the main ones, and yeah, crossbows and catapults was great.

teddy ruxpin ;_;

once at my cranky grandmother's me and my sisters and cousins all got this excited notion that she was going to get us a walkie-talkie doll from america, which may not even have been a thing, but instead we all got a smack and some cold meat for dinner.

a tv set in my room
speak & spell
some relatively fancy Casio keyboard
drum set (never dared to even ask)

sugar
television

I was a deprived child

flamethrower

Around age 10, I was visiting my dad's boss's house for thanksgiving or something. His son had just acquired an Ibanez bass guitar. He played lots of cool stuff on it, including the breakdown from Metallica's Orion. I asked my parents for a bass guitar probably everyday. They finally broke down and decided to ...

... let me take guitar lessons on my mom's acoustic guitar.

Man, it wasn't the same. I eventually "moved up" to electric guitar, but never switched over to bass, as had been "the plan."