With a two year-old child born on New Year’s Day, and Christmas coming up, gifts have been on my mind. I’m trying to remember what gifts gave me the biggest thrill as a little tot. I remember getting an eighteen-wheel Shop-Rite truck with doors that opened up. I remember getting one of those hand-held electronic football games. I remember my first stereo (an all-in-one turntable and radio). I still remember my older brother showing me how to find WYSP (94.1) and WMMR (93.3) out of Philadelphia so I could listen to some rock and roll with good reception. It’s hard for me to remember any gifts from when I was really young. Finn is obsessed with Thomas the Tank Engine, so that makes it easy to know what will make him smile. What were the coolest gifts you received as a child?
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
A little red Radio Flyer wagon. I loved the thing from the time I got rides in it til I was hauling stuff and kids around in it years later.
Hate to admit it, but in later years the most memorable was probably the Daisy bb gun. Mea maxima culpa.
yeah. That’s a good one. I got one of those for Christmas one year. I still remember riding it downhill in a wooded area among huge boulders. We were kind of insane.
Three words: Calvin and Hobbes.
We got a Radio Flyer knockoff, but it was still pretty cool. The puppy was awesome! Me on the left with my little bro. Obviously not a Christmas photo, but some months later after grueling trials at the wagon test track.
Awesome shot.
Oooh I got a sled of that sort once. Radio Flyer maybe? Something like that.
flexible flyer?
The scar over my eye still shows, from where I smacked a tree riding on one of those things. Completely totalled it, and nearly totalled me.
my brother hit a tree on one and snapped one of the rails.
Yah, they do not steer, at all.
especially when airborne.
I remember very very vaguely going sledding when I was 5 and very quickly going down a long hill (probably all of 200 yds, but long to a 5 YO). I didn’t hit a tree, but it seemed like a long time until my mom and dad caught up with me.
You’ll put your eye out!
Get the little guy a box of blocks, or if you have a table saw, cut some yourself from 2x4s. Blocks are great at this age.
The man is already awash in blocks.
for that matter, get him a table saw of his own. what could go wrong?
I was thinking more along the lines of a hatchet.
all young children enjoy sharp, heavy objects like hatchets.
…although my Sam is partial to chainsaws.
Chainsaws are cool.
Galaxy Explorer lego package when I was 7 or 8!
WOOT!!!
For a little guy like Finn, the big legos are cool. He is probably not strong enough to pull apart the small ones.
My favorite gift was a giant box of legos. It wasn’t a particular set (not sure they even had those yet) but it had all sorts of pieces for making cars, windows and doors that could open and close for making houses, and even trees and fern like things for landscaping.
One of the grandparents gave my youngest son a plastic wagon filled with the big legos–duplos maybe. He would pull it all around the house and loved to dump it out. My son was 2 at the time and that was one of his 2 favorite toys. The other was a little basketball hoop on an adjustable stand with a little basketball small enough that he could hold it. His older brothers would perform dramatic dunks that resulted in staged crashing to the ground that guaranteed good, belly laughter!
When mine was a little older, inching away from Thomas, we discovered Peep and the Big Wide World.
http://www.peepandthebigwideworld.com/
They are wonderful–and educational on the sly. I wish he was still that age. Frankly, I’m tempted to watch one myself right now!
His favorite Thomas guy was Cranky the Crane, for some reason.
That is such an awesome show.
“I know what this is. It’s a duck ring. It’s a ring for a duck to stand in and be admired.”
Ha! I forgot that one. I love Quack. To hear my wife tell it, that show perfectly mirrored the personalities in our house. My son = Peep. Wife = Chirp. Me = Quack.
Anything made by Lego. As a kid, it’s all I really asked for, other than perhaps one Sega or Playstation 1 game (Playstation came out right before I was in second grade).
I still have my Legos…they’re in chests around my room. Probably spent well over a thousand dollars on those sets.
I still have mine too! Many >50 years old now . Sitting in the kids closet.
Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” LP. Best Christmas EVARRRRR!
I sat there all day listening to it, wearing my parents’ giant headphones, over and over, next to the Christmas tree.
I got a pink jewelry box one year, which I STILL have, over 50 years later. This will probably not work for Finn (not at age 2 anyways, keep your mind open for later).
he’d probably love it. But he doesn’t have any jewelry to put in it.
This is an easy one.
The Christmas I turned eight (1963) my sister and I got matching Bakelite five-tube table radios. Hers was blue, mine was yellow. I have no idea what she thought of hers, and at first mine came under the category of “yeah, that’s an OK present.” I spent a little time during the day listening to the three stations you could hear in the daytime in our town in eastern Washington.
Then the sun went down. And like stars coming out in the night sky, other stations started to appear as I turned the knob through the formerly vacant spaces between the three locals. And those stations were from exotic places like San Francisco . . . Denver . . . even – gasp – a FOREIGN COUNTRY! (Well, it was Canada, but it was still foreign.)
I ran up and down the stairs to the front room, breathlessly telling my parents what new discovery I had made, until they told me to write them down and tell them the next morning. I can still remember which TV program I interrupted for these world-shattering announcements.
It’s now almost 50 years later and that radio is long gone, but it sparked a love of radio and the spoken word that continues today.
Here’s hoping that someday Finn gets a present that flips the switch like that little radio did.
My night station was WLAC Nashville ~ rythm & blues and many of the great blues performers. My parents would yell at me to turn it off and go to sleep.
Mine was KGO, San Francisco. They were my first introduction to radio drama – I remember listening to Orson Welles’ The Black Museum on Saturday nights.
That and CBR, Calgary. Listening to a station from a foreign country was way cool.
Exactly the same thing with my older brother.
A big old tube shortwave we`d listen to till all hours of the night.
A blues station out of Detroit was always my favorite.
The Beatles White Album in “68. I opened it Christmas Eve, and my folks asked if I would be happy if that was my only gift. I said yes. The next morning they gave me a nice 10 speed bike. I regretted my reply, but it was true.
Ironically, it was this.
So how in the world did I become a liberal???
I was a big GI Joe kid in the 60’s. I remember marching up and down the store aisle for weeks, drooling over this every time we went. I thought it was the coolest thing ever.
And miraculously, getting it didn’t turn me into a neocon warmonger.
I think it’s time Finn got his own drum set.
And a bagpipe.
And I’ll know just the little girl to pass it along to when we’re done… 😉
You don’t need to get a drum set.
For a two-year-old EVERYTHING is a percussion instrument.
(just like cats and cat-toys, but louder)
I can’t remember any toys from that age. My mom says that’s because I promptly broke them all.
A box of good wooden blocks was probably the very top of the list, but micronauts and legos were also high up there.
I do remember the toys I liked most – blocks, an erector set, and a very cool mechanical hockey game that worked kind of like foosball – but I don’t remember whether they were Christmas, birthday, or just stuff I got. Mostly what I remember about Christmas was getting a lot of “practical” gifts like socks that I was supposed to be excited about, but I could not have cared less about. I’m still bitter. 🙂
A kazoo
This toy kitchen set was my favorite gift when I was a kid. It was perfectly scaled, and it came with hundreds of little pieces: plates, silverware, miniature food packages. There was a water tank in the back of the sink, so you could turn the faucet on and get running water. It was fantastic.
http://www.shopgoodwill.com/auctions/Vintage-Deluxe-Reading-Corp-Toy-Dream-Kitchen-Set-8858632.html#
des
Might be a little early for the Finn Man, but when I was five or six Dad got me a big green Tournahauler and a matching yellow Tournahopper. They were big, chunky, rugged metal things, strong enough to support my weight. I got more mileage out of those two toys than most folks get out of their cars.
Tyco Spirit of 76 Train Set..
My parents weren’t much on giving cool gifts but I did get one toy heavily promoted on TV. It was a spacecraft that flew. It looked great on TV. When I finally got it I discovered that the craft had a balloon attached that was made airborn by the “remote”. The remote was actually a battery-powered handheld fan. It was not exactly as it appeared in the ads. Maybe it wasn’t such a cool toy. Sigh.
What a rip-off.
Yep.
I got a little brownie camera (110 film) when I was eight. I cried I was so happy.
he’s too young, but I loved it when my parents bought me the glow in the dark race track. only girl in the neighborhood that had one. loved it. I loved putting it on the bar in the basement and seeing how far the cars could fly…lol
An Erector set.
I built my first chopper with it.
My paternal grandfather bought me an Erector set when I was probably four years-old. And the day I arrived in kindergarten, I was amazed that they had GIANT Erector set pieces. It definitely was a good way to start my school career.
There were a frigging lot of Westerns on TV in the early 50’s and they made an impression on my toddler sensibilities. I found a piece of driftwood on the beach that was kinda shaped like a gun and became so attached to it I couldn’t sleep unless it was in bed with me. So my fourth Christmas I was the only girl in the apartment complex who got a Lone Ranger set that included a hat, a holster with two six-shooters and a rifle. Good grief, there’s a demonic glint in my eyes in the B&W photos in front of the tree. I cannot say why I didn’t grow up to be a member of the NRA.
I remember spending hours playing with a wooden train which I pushed along wooden tracks. The tracks were in sections which you put together yourself. I have seen fancier versions of this set (Brio?), all painted and with bridges and other train accessories, but the plain wooden set I had entertained me for years when I was young.
Slot car set… probably only six feet of track in a loop, but the cars had actual steel brushes on the bottom front which we had to occasionally adjust to insure maximum contact with the steel slot in the track.. the most fun was making the cars fishtail going into a curve, but stay on the track.. and of course doing intentional wipeouts.
A sports store in the local larger town near us had a full size slot car track in their basement.. anyone else out there old enough to remember slot car racing?
I remember it. One of my older brothers had a set. And I played with it. I remember the ads on teevee, too.
Surely you’ve been to Q-Mart?
Q-Mart… no, not familiar.
Looks like they have a full size pro type track.. nice!
Well I meant Booman specifically, as he lives in PA near Philadelphia. Q-Mart is in Quakertown. It’s nothing special, just a flea market.