Your most memorable Christmas toys

[rk911]

Not really toys. In different years...in no particular order

-A chemistry set
-A microscope
-A reel-to-reel tape recorder

 

[Sojourner]

What great toys do you remember getting for Christmas?

Oh, so many... what magical memories.

The best ones were the little electronic gadgets I got in my preteen years, like this Coleco handheld football game:

I still remember, quite vividly, that "factory fresh plastic" smell when I opened up the box and held the game in my hands. For me, that (along with a few others from the mid/late 70s) was basically Peak Christmas.

 

[Starsky]

My parents bought me a Crosman 760 BB gun which was my favorite Xmas present by far. The Mattell(?) Dareplane Stunter was my favorite toy.

 

[EarlyandLate]

When I was very young, I received a Buddy L Coca-Cola truck. I played with it a lot and outside too. My elderly dad got it out of the basement a few years ago and did an amazing restoration of it. It now resides in the guest room I stay in when I visit and I have played with it with my little great niece.

 

[O2Bfree]

When I was very young, I received a Buddy L Coca-Cola truck. I played with it a lot and outside too. My elderly dad got it out of the basement a few years ago and did an amazing restoration of it. It now resides in the guest room I stay in when I visit and I have played with it with my little great niece.

My dad had several Buddy L toys that he kept all his life. Two sit-and-ride trucks and one very large steamshovel. Before we moved my folks from their last house, we had a big garage sale. My Mom unwisely let an early bird in, and when he went down the stairs to the garage, he spotted the steamshovel in the hallway. He asked about it and was told it wasn't for sale. He left, then came back with $600 cash and begged to buy it. Mom had to shut the door in his face. I got curious and looked up the steamshovel online. Found an Antiques Roadshow episode where they'd valued it at $6000!

But the value dropped over the years. By the time my dad passed and mom decided she wanted me to sell the toys, the prices were $1000-$2000. I got $1500 for it. I just looked on eBay and the steam shovels are offered for around $300-$600 dollars. Maybe the market is saturated because of all the boomer parents dying and their kids selling off their stuff.

 

[cyber888]

I remember my first gift as a 5 year old kid from a god father.
It was a 12 inch Red shinny Volkwagen buggy toy Car with two D batteries that would automatically back-up when it hits a wall. That was more than 50 years ago, but I'd never forget it.

 

[c998877]

The only Christmas gift I remember is when I was 10: Donny Osmond album with Puppy Love on it. I played it so much I believe I can still sing to all the songs.

 

[GaryInCO]

My most memorable Christmas: I grew up on a farm, in an ooold farmhouse. We had a basement, sort of, but it was one step up from a cave. Rough irregular stone walls, the works. Big enormous central-heating furnace, which used to burn coal (which got dumped into the basement), but had been upgraded to oil. It was not much more than a hole in the ground.

One year when I was about 10 our parents told us they were storing our presents in the basement, and DO NOT under pain of death (or worse, losing the presents!) go down into the basement.

Christmas eve (when we opened presents), we got all our presents under the tree. Then our folks mysteriously blindfolded us, and took us down to the basement. They whipped off the blindfolds and... pool table !!!!!

Somehow they had upgraded that hole into a pretty passable (if cramped) game room. It was so tight that my dad and grandpa had to remove the stairs, then lower the pool table down on ropes! There wasn't really enough room even for the small 7' pool table they got, because the furnace intruded within about 20-25" of the table on one corner. So that was a special "course hazard" and we had a shortened sawed-off cue to use in that corner.

The ceiling was also tight, about 6'2", but that didn't bother me until years later when I hit 6'4" !

We played the heck out of that table until we went off to college.

 

[Koolau]

Christmas when I was 9 I got what I asked for. A J C Higgins (Sears) single shot .22 cal rifle. I still have that rifle and it's still in perfect w*rking order after 67 years. IIRC, the catalog said $9.88 (no tax back in those days.)

 

[GenXguy]

Fort Apache and Lincoln Logs.

Oh, I forgot all about Fort Apache. One of my siblings had it, but I can't remember which one. I had Lincoln logs and had fun with those.

 

[Ian S]

By the early 1960's I already had a crystal radio (rocket-shaped) and a little pocket-sized 2 transistor radio powered by a 9 volt battery. A neighbor's father had a Zenith Transoceanic shortwave radio that fascinated me and so I asked for a shortwave radio for my own. I was expecting a Japanese device but lo and behold, Christmas morning, I opened out a General Electric 8 transistor 3 band (AM, SW1 and SW2) radio made in Utica, New York. It was great fun listening to broadcasts from Europe on the shortwave bands late at night. Incredibly, I still have the radio and it still works! Here's an old ad for the exact radio: https://www.reddit.com/media?url=ht...pg?s=ee299bdfeb9dc00c4343858e9b301a3c52e1da9e

 

[sparky08]

Tonka trucks and Lincoln Logs for sure, but for some reason, this came to mind.

Anyone remember The Wizzer?

 

[GenXguy]

Tonka trucks and Lincoln Logs for sure, but for some reason, this came to mind.

Anyone remember The Wizzer?

Ha. I do remember that Wizzer. I'm pretty certain someone in my family had one of those at one point. Might have even been me, because I remember playing with it.

 

[O2Bfree]

Anyone remember The Wizzer?

I remember the Wizzer! I didn't get one for Christmas, but I remember my dad heard about them and bought them for us. They seemed revolutionary.

I also remember some kind of extra bouncy super ball that came out after Wham-O released the first ones in the early 1960s. Again, it was something my dad heard about. He got them for us, and yes, they bounced higher than anything we've seen before.

 

[den75]

Billy Blastoff and a 3 speed stingray bike with a banana seat and sissy bar.

 

[LateToFIRE]

By far, most exciting Xmas gift ever was a Sears Screamer 5-speed "hot rod" bike with banana seat, butterfly handlebars, spring shocks, shifter on the cross-bar, crazy rainbow paint job. I rode everywhere and put many miles on that bike.

 

[GenXguy]

My Evel Knievel Stunt Cycle was loads of fun. And SSP racers.

 

[PointBreeze]

Etch A Sketch. And also my Rock’Em Sock’Em Robots. The best.

Edited to add: Lincoln Logs and an erector set.

Those were 4 of my favorite. Christmas toys, too

 

[nafddur1]

This AMT slot car set (in the mid 60's)

 

[roh3]

Great topic!
I’ll add Hot Wheels cars & set when they first came out around 1968
Later, a Cox .049 Baja Buggy gas powered car!

 

[meleana]

Easy Bake Oven

 

[meleana]

Rock'em Sock'em robots!

My brother had those! We loved playing with them!

 

[GenXguy]

Great topic!
I’ll add Hot Wheels cars & set when they first came out around 1968
Later, a Cox .049 Baja Buggy gas powered car!

Speaking of Hot Wheels sets, I really enjoyed my Thundershift 500!

 

[O2Bfree]

By far, most exciting Xmas gift ever was a Sears Screamer 5-speed "hot rod" bike with banana seat, butterfly handlebars, spring shocks, shifter on the cross-bar, crazy rainbow paint job. I rode everywhere and put many miles on that bike.

Found a photo online. That is one crazy looking bicycle!

 

[PappaChris]

Tudor Electric Football is at the top of my list. My younger brother and I kept that set going for probably 7-8 years. After the first year we would get additional teams. We never got the prepainted teams - the plain ones were cheaper. We would paint them ourselves.

It was among the first electrical repair I recall performing. It stopped working, and we would tap it with our fingers to keep it going. I think I was 12 when I learned enough to open up the switch component and find the problem - broken wire. Fixing that and getting it working again was one of the childhood "milestones" for me.

Same here, had the generic white and yellow teams. My friend and neighbor got the one with the Vikings and Chiefs. Loads of fun!