Your Favourite Childhood Christmas Presents?

[pete9012S]

What was your best ever childhood Christmas present?
Do you remember receiving it? Do you still have it?
Here are some of mine. Some I have and some are sadly long gone...


Action man tank - one of my best presents ever. Already had an action man.
The excitement when I received this on Christmas morning was off the scale!
Don't have it now, sadly.


The Mighty Tonka - a fantastic gift.
Still have this in good working order.


Got this at the same time as the Tonka - so well built.
Still have this one in good order too.


My Raleigh Tomahawk - A fantastic gift.
Grew out of it eventually -


Rupert 1973 annual - couldn't really read when I received this, but the pictures told the story well.


A fantastic present - in cartoon form.


This gift caused great excitement - the first Famous Five annual I had ever seen.
Super!
Still have all the above annuals in well thumbed condition.

What were your favourite Christmas gifts when young?

[Julie2owlsdene]

I used to love my Annuals. I used to get, Rupert, Bunty & Diana.

When really young my favourite was my new doll and pram. That was back around 1962. The prams in those days were Silver Cross, very well made and sturdy prams. Very rare these days do you see a little girl pushing her dolls in a pram.

[Moonraker]

Very rare these days do you see a little girl pushing her dolls in a pram.

My granddaughter loves her dolls, pram and pushchair!

[Lucky Star]

Some great presents there Pete. I loved my Annuals and read them till they fell apart. I got a transistor radio one year which delighted me no end and in fact it is still at home in my parents' house in perfect working order. Other than that a bike was a great year and I had lots of Action Man stuff as well throughout my earlier years. In 1977, the year Elvis died, my Grandmother gave me Elvis - Christmas Album. Again I still have that at home in my parents' house and it too still plays perfectly.

[pete9012S]

Some great presents mentioned guys.
John, yes, I remember the sheer joy of being bought a radio of my own - that could even work with headphones under the bedcovers.

How on earth did I forget these three absolutely amazing Christmas presents?
All are long gone, and to buy them now would cost a small fortune!


Amazing build quality - the rockets of this toy and the one below often got lost!


What a cool toy - taking this to school on 'toy day' earned a lot of respect, and new friends!


Space 1999 transporter. A more functional toy, but still very well made.

[Boodi 2]

I got at least one annual every Christmas and I can well remember reading them under the bedclothes by the light of a torch in order to ensure that my parents would not notice! When I was very young my favourite gift was a teddy bear with a deep growl. Unfortunately teddy did not survive as I loved him so much and brought him everywhere with me that he eventually became shabby, threadbare and was consigned to the bin. For nostalgic reasons I tried to replace him but while I found a smaller bear in a similar colour I was unable to find one that growls!!!

[Katharine]

Gosh, I don't know about favourites, probably all of them.

I particularly remember waking up one Christmas morning to find a brand new baby doll next to me.

Over the years I got a lot of Sindy doll furniture, and of course lots of Enid Blyton books. As my birthday is the end of November, birthday and Christmas tend to merge together in my memory and can't remember which presents I got for which occasion.

I think I probably still own every present I ever received as a child, apart from two baby dolls, one sadly got broken as it was rather brittle plastic, and the other I took to school with me, and it 'disappeared'.

Perhaps the presents that particularly stick with me, I think I've mentioned before. A local lady used to sew dolls clothes to fit Sindy type dolls. She would advertise in the local paper and my parents would ring up and make an appointment for us to go and view them. They were mostly priced about 50p/75p, which I think the most expensive being a wedding dress for £2.50. I had a budget to stick to, and would agonise over which dresses etc to choose. I never did blow the entire budget on the wedding dress, instead opting for several dresses etc instead.

All of them are packed away in the loft, I haven't viewed them probably for 20 years now - I hope they are still ok.

[IceMaiden]

All of them! Some particular stand outs though-

Humphrey the hippo. When I was really young, around three, I wanted the Silentnight hippo! That mattress company had a mascot of a hippo in blue and white striped pyjamas with a canary friend and they bought out a huge plush cuddly toy version, which I wanted beyond belief. They were only given to people who bought a mattress and my mum tells me she had an awful job persuading them to sell her one on it's own! She managed though as Humphrey and Birdie are up in the loft, and he's even still got his pj's.

Another year I got a doll that I particularly loved because unlike my other dolls that were plastic, this one had a soft body and face made out of some flannelette type material, with a sweet face and long blonde hair. I got a surprise a few years ago as I found out she's actually a Mattel My Child doll which are now fetching quite a bit (seen them sell on ebay for £300+!). To think I dragged her all over the place with me! Though I did keep her clean and tidy because I liked her too much to get her dirty. I still have her in my room although sadly missing her original clothes (also selling for a pretty penny).

Polly Pocket Dream World. This was a real favourite. I spent hours and hours playing with it. It's up in the loft and when I last looked all the tiny figures were still there too.

Tomy train set. My auntie bought me this one Christmas. It had a battery powered train, magnetic carriages, a viaduct, station and level crossing, but what I really liked was the track as it was solid chunky plastic that snapped together, far easier for a small child than the fiddly Hornby type tracks. I didn't get to set all of it up too often though as it took up so much space.

I also remember a device that was like a cross between an etch-a-sketch and a magic slate, where you could draw on this screen with a special pen, imprint the drawing on a paper then pull some sort of lever to erase it. I can't remember what it was called though.

I don't recall wanting any of the 'must have toys' though. My parents were lucky!

[Anita Bensoussane]

I had the 1973 Rupert Annual as well, Pete.

My favourite Christmas presents were:

1. A wooden dolls' house made by my grandad. My sister and I had fun arranging the furniture and making up stories about the family of four little dolls.

2. A set of Purnell Sunshine Library books full of wonderful stories by Enid Blyton. I've read them many times over the years and they look invitingly bright and cheerful on the bookshelf.

3. A Sindy sideboard, dining table and chairs complete with crockery, cutlery and glassware. These pieces of furniture looked particularly elegant and my sister and I enjoyed serving "meals" to our Sindy dolls.

4. Annuals like Jinty, Misty and Tammy. I particularly liked the creepy, mysterious tales and the stories of family drama.

5. A pair of binoculars. My sister and I received that present between us (just like the dolls' house, the Sindy furniture and most annuals) but the binoculars are now in my keeping and I still sometimes use them on nature walks.

[Boodi 2]

I don't recall wanting any of the 'must have toys' though. My parents were lucky!

On the subject of 'must have toys', when I was young there was a troll doll craze and all my classmates had trolls of various sizes, which they brought to school and spent ages combing their hair (I'm surprised the teachers did not object). Needless to say, I wanted a troll too, but for some reason my parents objected and refused to buy me one. Perhaps it was because they were quite expensive in relation to other toys or the fact that my parents considered them ugly. I was heartbroken and remember begging my parents to even buy me the smallest one which could sit on the top of one's pencil...but to no avail!!! Half a century later I still remember my disappointment about not having a troll to comb, although I don't think it affected me to any great extent and in retrospect they were rather ugly!!!

[IceMaiden]

Oh yes Boodi I remember those troll dolls too! They were everywhere and all the kids had them but I thought they were ugly and quite creepy looking. I remember Cabbage Patch dolls and Furbys being must haves too and I didn't like them either. One of my friends brought a Furby to school, she said it was adorable but I was terrified of it and though it was the most horrible toy I'd ever seen. We even fell out slightly because I wouldn't hold it and didn't want her to take it out of her bag near me .

[Boodi 2]

I well remember Cabbage Patch dolls and Furbys! Obviously they were not around when I was young, but my cousin who was lucky enough to get most of my collection of Blyton books(because my mother thought that I had "grown out of them"!!!) had at least one cabbage patch doll, while Furbys were popular when my son was at school in the late 1990s. He actually had one, but I cannot remember if I bought it for him or if he got it as a gift from a school friend. When he "grew out of it" I gave it to a neighour's child as we did not think it was particularly attractive and it used up a lot of batteries...as far as I can remember, one could "teach" the Furby to talk!!!

[pete9012S]

Enjoying all these great memories!

How could I have forgotten our gang's beloved Wembley (size 5) football!

My Wembley Trophy Football

You wake up Christmas morning
Rushing down the stairs
There amongst your pressies
Is the answer to your prayers

The one-foot square cube
Can contain only one thing,
It’s a Wembley Trophy Football
With its wonderful ring

Whenever it was kicked
It thrilled us younger boys!
From deep inside the ball
Came that brilliant noise

It’s textured orange plastic
Adorned with deep black lines
like panels on a leather ball.
It was the master of designs

Like a real football
It was the Regulation weight
But Regulation players are men
And I was only eight

In my new George Best boots
Winding up for a massive kick
A shudder shook me to the core
Just like punting at a brick

It was unaffected by the wind
And made that brilliant sound
Once they knew you had THAT ball
Kids came from miles around

But don’t sit on the ball
Or it would go all out of shape
And fly wobbling through the air
Just like jelly on a plate

Could be used for great pranks
Like rubbing it in dog ***
Then lobbing it up for your mate
To head it back to you.

No football had the same appeal
Playing your twenty a side game
So I think that ensures its place
In the Football Hall of Fame

© Poet Shot

[IceMaiden]

I've not seen that football before Pete. I've never liked or been interested in football but I remember one year a toy was advertised that was a football with a sort of webbing around it attached to a bungee cord with a plastic handle. It was designed so you could practice kicking it repeatedly basically without it rolling away from you, and for some reason I really wanted one to play with during breaktime because the primary school ball was always inviteably taken. It was something like £30 though, which was a crazy amount for a ball and I didn't like asking for one, so I made my own by putting a cheap regular ball in an onion net from the greengrocers and clipping a retractable dog lead to it! It worked too! I wonder if children still do that, make their own versions of a toy because the real thing is too expensive?

[Boatbuilder]

Enjoying all these great memories!

How could I have forgotten our gang's beloved Wembley (size 5) football!

In the 50s and 60s We used to play with the old 'Bladder and Case' footballs, as they were known, that were made of stitched leather panels and were laced up to give access to the 'bladder'. Now they were the real footballs.

However, they were rather hard on the head when heading them, possibly contributing to the problems that are now being highlighted with heading the ball today.