Childhood Christmas Gift You Never Got

[Jester]

It is a cliche of movies and tv shows, but it is there. That one thing you wanted as a child, that you hoped to get, either for your birthday or for Christmas (or Hanukkah, or whatever), but that you never got.

What was it? What, all these years later, do you still think about from time to time, that you wish you had gotten but, for whatever reason, you never did?

[Aethian]

Honestly? And that I still want one too...(which is sad)

A Easy Bake Oven...actually considering getting one for myself as a self Christmas present.

[BookstoreEscapee]

Honestly? And that I still want one too...(which is sad)

A Easy Bake Oven...actually considering getting one for myself as a self Christmas present.

I had one...I ended up baking my teeny little cakes in the real oven.

[Aethian]

Yea but do you see the lightbulbs they use now? They use the new lights and the cooking times dropped.

[BookstoreEscapee]

Can't say as I've looked at 'em recently.

I must be getting old...I think I want a hand mixer...

[Aethian]

OOooh get a mixer that can also be a hand mixer because they are usually made a bit stronger.

[BookstoreEscapee]

OOooh get a mixer that can also be a hand mixer because they are usually made a bit stronger.

Problem is I don't have much storage space for appliances. (Like none.)

[Mike Taylor]

(It helps to read this as if it were a narrative by the guy from A Christmas Story.)

Let's see. In July of 1982 I was a HUGE Star Wars fan and one of the things I'd had my heart set on for months was the AT-AT Walker. I'd been wanting it since before the previous Christmas. The days leading up to my birthday, I talked about it nonstop and had even rearranged space on my dresser for it so I could show it off.

The day comes and we head down to Montgomery Ward (remember when they were around?) and I'm all excited about bringing this massive, four-legged piece of awesomeness back home to use my action figures with. Well, it seems dad his own ideas about what I (really HE) wanted for my birthday. No sooner do I have the box in my hands, my dad and mom start in about "It's just a big hunk of plastic. You're not going to play with that." Yeah, the kid who lived ate and breathed Star Wars wasn't going to play with an AT-AT! Riiiiight.

After much arguing and badgering, they convince me to pick something else. Across the main aisle from the Star Wars section is an endcap with this wondrous device sitting beneath at TV set. It was an Atari 2600. I knew a number of kids who had them and I'd had fun playing it with them. That got shot down with dad saying, "I don't want y'all cooped up in the house all summer watching TV." (Same dad who would veg out in front of the same TV, mind you.) Same arguing back and forth. I go back to the AT-AT again and get the same discouragement.

Dad goes and starts walking over to the bicycles. The plot is REVEALED! Mind you, I'd finally shown interest in bike riding rather late compared to other kids. (Dad's bicycle teaching techniques consisted of terrorizing me into doing what he wanted, at least from my perspective as a kid.) The interest was enough to occasionally borrow a friend's bike, but not enough to actually want one myself. I was fine with walking to my friends' houses. I think I'd have eventually asked for one on my own, but dad forced the issue. I was getting a bike and that was it.

So, I eventually settled on this black and rust orange BMX bicycle as it was closing time and dad was losing his patience. So we headed home with the bike and me heavily disappointed.

We would end up getting the Atari the following Christmas, plus an even NEWER bike (one that I actually wanted), but the AT-AT never came home with me. By the time I'd expressed interest in it again, the excuse was "You're too old for toys."

[Jack T. Chance]

The things I wanted for Christmas as a kid but never got include, but are not limited to...

• Masters of the Universe Castle Grayskull playset
• G.I.*Joe U.S.S. Flagg Aircraft Carrier playset
• G.I.*Joe Cobra Terror Drome playset
• G.I.*Joe Space Shuttle Defiant Launch Complex playset
• Star Wars Millennium Falcon. Han Solo was my favorite character, but my parents thought the Fastest Hunk of Junk in the Galaxy was too expensive to buy me one. I was devastated. My favorite science fiction spaceship, and I couldn't even have one to "fly" my figures around in.

[42_42_42]

Barbie Dream House

I knew even as a little kid that my parents couldn't afford to buy me one, so I always asked Santa for it.

[Ben_Who]

You know, I used to write these long, elaborate, coronary-inducing beg-lists every December 1 and very rarely got anything I wanted out of them. And despite the alarming parade of disappointments that made up my annual Christmas, I can't think of a single thing on those lists that I wanted so desperately that I'm still disappointed to this day. (If there was, I would have bought it years ago.)

Love, Who?

[Dreamstalker]

Kenner Real Ghostbusters firehouse and Ecto-1
Dino Riders T-Rex

Every year they would be on my list (I would also write horrendously long lists when I was a pup), every year ignored. I think my grandmother would get me Barbies instead.

[Diablo]

Anything other than the board game operation. I don't know why, but I had a family member that from my age of 6 till 15, gave me that board game every freaking year. He was completely clueless about the fact that I already had multiple copies of the game. I actually never played or open any of them;when I was six, much to young to play a game with such same pieces, my parents donated to a local toy drop box. This began a tradition of every year getting the same board game and I would usually donate it to a drop box on the way home from Grandma's. I still think my parents though have two or three copies of the damn thing lying around somewhere. I found out later that my uncle was a bit touched in the head (he wasn't trying to be funny, he was just insane), but as a kid, it was like everyone was having a joke at my expense every year. I really grew to hate going to Grandma's for Christmas as a kid just because I would have to sit in front of everyone, unwrap a present that I knew what it was, listen to everyone chuckle and ask me what it was, and then walk over to my uncle and thank him and fight that urge to kick him in the shin.

[Teysa]

I wanted an Easy Bake Oven too. I also really wanted a doll house when I was a kid. Who am I kidding? I still want a doll house. I just don't have anywhere to put it.

[Broomjockey]

You know what? I barely remember the things I did get for Christmas, let alone things I wanted but didn't get. Usually all my best presents were spur-of-the-moment purchases, rather than for an event.

I wonder if this is why Christmas and my birthday don't mean much to me gift-wise. That's... actually a really messed up way to defeat Christmas commercialism.