So what did YOU get for Christmas as a child?

Pretty much bike, scalextric, lego on a 3 year cycle.

If I didn’t have to pretend to be an adult I would probably still be asking my wife for the same thing 🙂

Like, WTF…?

Yay Cribsy! \o/

She doesn’t have the booties or bib any more, they’ve been lost in the mists of time.

Most of the big presents were joint birthday ones.

My birthday is early the new year, so I always [benefited | suffered] from that too.

Lots and lots of Lego over the years, I was a boy obsessed. 90% of it was sold by my gran behind my back one day as I was “too old for it.” I turn 40 next year and this still pisses me off.

Grandstand electronic games; Astro Wars, Scramble, Firefox F-7. Big Trak. I still have all these (though the Astro Wars is defunct).

ZX Spectrum, proper rubber-keyed version.

Joint Christmas and Birthday present from my parents and grandparents, an Atari 520STm with Cumana double-sided disk drive. I’m guessing Christmas ’86? Elegant weapons from a more civilised age. My next Christmas present would be this, except it doesn’t exist.

33

A present shared between 3 of us

On the whole small pressies. I remember a secondhand bike my dad rebuilt and repainted. The one new bike I got was from selling other toys and putting together money from everyone that bought me pressies.

I can remeber complainig to my parents tht my friends all of whom were less ell off than us got much bigger pressies to be told that my parents spent money on other things they did not have such as holidays. it was all about priorities for my mum and dad

Smash-up Derby.

To be watched at full volume…

A Supergoose with Araya 7X’s

Best present ever! Still remember opening it today

my sister spent all day building it for me, superb.

Thunderbird one, and Two

A raleigh bike,

Meccano sets 4 and 6, over two christmases,

Lego Technic kits
Airfix models
Bikes
Scalextric
Hornby railway stuff

Marin Muirwoods (grey with dayglo forks and stem) first mountain bike. 😀

Some of mine were pretty big looking back and often bike related:

Meccano
Scalextric
6ft Snooker table
Raliegh Grifter
Raliegh Ultra Burner
Dawes Jaguar road bike
MRD Expert BMX
TV

They are the ones that come to mind. Thankfully my Dad was a pretty good bloke allround as well.

I have to admit I keep the presents lower key for my daughter but she is only four, she will be asking for an Ipod touch soon enough.

My biggest present was a ZX Spectrum +2A, which was £150, and I now realise quite a lot for the time!

I loved it though, many hours spent writing programs out of magazines just for the electricity to cut off and lose it all, haha!

Can’t remember half of it tbh.

Generally shared pressies with my wee brother 2 years younger than me. Some of the bigger stuff, speccy 128+2 was shared, as was the amiga, and an early dx266 pc. Other things when we got bikes we got one each, bmxs, and later a mountain bike each. In the 80s early 90s, I had loads spent on me looking at the above. me and my wee brother were pretty much treated like twins mind, always refered to as the weans!

Tbh at 33 I still can’t stop my ma buying me stuff, I tell her every year to stop it and have done for atleast 10years, every year. but she’ll just buy something, think she’s gonny get me a table and chairs this year.

think I’ll need to give her some grandweans before she’ll stop.

it was all about priorities for my mum and dad

As it is for most people.

I had a ZX81 followed by a Commodore 64 in hindsight probably two of the most influential presents I ever had. The stuff I learn’t on those computers has paid for its self many times over. I am so pleased my parents bought them for me as I am not sure I would be where I am now if they had not.

I am 41 by the way 🙂

Yeah my two biggest presents were my Spectrum +2A and my Amiga 600.

I think the 600 was £300 quid or something in 1992. But really well worth it considering Im a Computational Chemist now.

OOOH OOH!

Ref this…

there was a game i had which was very similar, instead of the two hand gunthings they were biplanes? when a ball beairng hit the other one bits of the plane fell off?

anybody remember that or did i dream it as a kid?

i had a spectrum 48k

then the 128k with builtin tape deck.

it was all about priorities for my mum and dad

Did they give you love and attention though? Sometimes better than toys thrown at you to keep you quiet and in place of time and patience.

Let’s see.

Scalextric
Race’n’Chase
Crossfire
A Grifter XL
A Space Invaders hand-held LED game thing
A Bontempi organ
A Commodore 64
A 14″ colour portable
An Amstrad stereo
A Commodore Amiga (joint pressie with my wee brother)

These were the big-ticket items through my formative years.
Lots of socks and garishly patterned jumpers, too. And Broons books.

A bike or 2, they used to last about 3 years before either being nicked or replaced
Lego Techniks, I can remeber the JCB specifically, in fact Lego in general was good
Scalectrix always went down well, I had racing Metro’s first and upgraded to an F40
Subbuteo

Never had computers or consoles which is odd given my dad did (and still does) work in IT.

Lunge, 32

presents as a child..

pretty much anything that my Dad wanted when he was a boy but didn’t get…. whether I wanted it or not…

apart from Lego that is – I was really into technic lego and did get quite a bit of it!

love the pic of the big lego car above – that was proper lego

Never had computers or consoles which is odd given my dad did (and still does) work in IT.

That’s where we were lucky -but never as Christmas presents – my dad would come home with loan machines and demonstrators of early machines (so never ours, but often had them in the house) because he was the manager of the local television sales and repair shop.

I *think* we had one of these…

Which I think was marketed briefly in the UK by a company called Adam Technologies but I can’t find any reference to the UK version anywhere.

EDIT: Yes it was this one.. Adman Grandstand in the UK (But I think that is a Wiki spelling error, I am sure it was Adam, not Adman.

He also used to get digital watches and calculators which were, back in 1976 (when I was 9) soooo cool.

Lego mainly as my dad worked for them…

£50 limit never got us a lot.

Anything starwars related!

Pressies I loved though were second hand grifter,second hand scalextric, second hand Spectrum when everyone else had the floppy version, second hand master system when the mega drive came out…. you get the idea.

love the pic of the big lego car above

Would it be sad that I can still remember that’s the 8860?

Remember a cowboy outfit which was probably 1966. Satsuma’s, a watch one year, lego, Monopoly and Cluedo, Subbuteo and Subbuteo related gifts (teams, fancy goalies etc.) Was made up when I got the ‘Brazil’ Subbuteo team one year. And jumpers for goalposts.

Lego trainset, shared between three

Got it out last Christmas Video[/url]

Over the years , and not in chronological order .-
airfix kits
Battleground toy soldier thing
Sledge
Action man + Tank ( wicked )
Action man + Parachute kit ( crashed and burned every time)
Scalextric 400 set
Hornby model railway OO guage plus miles of track
Monoply: Twice ( mum left it on car roof and drove off . . )
Cricket bat , Outgrew it before cricket season started.
Penknife at 14 ,Swiss Army copy in bright orange

I never used to get christmas or birthday presents. 😐

But i did get a new MX bike every year. 😀

Who want’s lego/actionman/computers when you’ve got an MX bike and get taken racing every weekend. 😀

mostly lego.. or clothes.. or LPs and art materials..
I also got action man stuff one year after mum had a lucky day at the jumble sale.. and some surfwear arrived in a binliner one year from my godfather but I wasn’t allowed to tell anyone where it came from.. 😯

Raleigh Burner
Texas console cant remember proper name (shared)
Yamaha YZ80H when I was 8
next 2 years anything MX related
Then went onto BMX racing so mongooses etc
then road cycling so handbuilt Poyner 531c Shimano Ultegra groupset
Then left school so went downhill from there literally

Not bad for a lad whose mom n dad didnt have a lot but great memories away in caravan every weekend scrambling,campfires & bbq’s

I’m struggling to remember my prezzies – it was a little while ago.
I do remember getting roller skates and a watch one year – I was surprised to get two “big” prezzies! I still have the watch, and being a proper wind up watch, it still works. I have a feeling the roller skates may still be in my parent’s garage – my kids used them when they were younger.
I also remember having a Sindy doll and being disappointed ‘cos I wanted a Tressy – y’know, the one who’s hair grew when you turned a button in her back.

Looking back i had a few of the items mentioned above.

The smash up derby set
that battling tops game
Action Man Scorpion Tank
” ” Artillery Piece
” ” Airplane/boat/car thing
” ” Zodiac boat
” ” submarine
” ” training tower
” ” six-wheeled battlefield recovery vehicle
” ” some sort of jeep thing, not the land rover
(I think i had enough to stage a coup in Equatorial Guinea!)

Had a Raliegh Tomohawk one yr, but i was way too big for me and my dad sold it (broke his heart that, must have cost a small fortune)

All the usual games like Buccaroo etc.

The thing i remember most about Christmas though is how long it went on for (or seemed to).
Me and my sister would have a pillowcase (later a plastic sack) that would be filled with the smaller presents by ‘Father Christmas’ around midnight, usually giggling and smelling of beer 🙂
Then there were the main presents under the tree 🙂

Later that day we’d go round to my Grandparents on my Mum’s side where i had 4 sets of Aunts and Uncles and lots more pressies.
THEN, on Boxing day we’d be at my Dad’s parents with even more pressies – it was ace!!

I look back now and realise we were spoilt rotten, i don’t know if many of the pressies were grossly expensive but the sums must have added up. I was a bit of a strange kid i think, always felt guilty about asking for a big (to my mind) pressie and i the only thing i can remember asking for was a tape recorder around 1979/80.

Ah, nostalgia…

+1 to bikebuoy

A Farrah Fawcett Majors head for styling and fashioning hair. It’s the reason why I knew I just wasn’t cut out to be a hairdresser.

£359 27 years ago but I was 11 not 10.

Edit: As I was a muppet and gave my DOB away. 😳