When I was 6 my parents bought me a 1985 Honda TRX 125 4-wheeler. I don't know how many miles I put on it driving around the old farm, but I do remember that dad would have to put a new set of rear tires on every year!!

So I guess that I have mom and dad to thank for my kinda expensive ATV hobby

 

I also got this steam engine---German manufactured, I think. I hooked up with cables to a machine shop where you could cut wood---it ran on these white Esbitt Wafers. That was fun, as well.

The truly best Christmas present ever was given to me by my wife---I had lost everything that I owned in a fire a few yers before I met her, and my letterman's jacket from college was lost, as well. She called the school and the AD sent me a new one!

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The first thing that comes to mind is my autographed Nolan Ryan ball my dad got me when I was 13 or 14.

 

I remeber it well, Christmas 1991, I got a Kawasaki 220 Bayou 4-wheeler. I must have put several thousand miles on that thing......

 

Circa 1976 I got a blue launcher Evel Kneval bike, with an Evel Kneval action figure. You'd put him in the launcher, and wind him up, then release...

That same year, my next door neighbor got one with a red launch base, we raced them a lot... 1978 we also both got walkie talkies and a CB base station. I had Starsky & Hutch walkie talkies. With my base, I used to talk to the truckers, and anyone else who would listen. It had a pretty strong signal, I remember a trucker telling me he knew I was on a base station. (How'd he know that?) It ran on a 9 volt battery, and 4 AA's.

In 1977, in a bit of a let-down, I wanted a 1:16th scale X-Wing Fighter for christmas, and got a 1:16 scale Tie Fighter, no action figure... (Might have been 1:32 scale, I forget- 1:16 seems like it would have been kinda big), but, it was a fighter that required two hands to hold, then you push a button, and the solar panels would fly off.

I was happy, but, not real happy, but I did have a paper X-wing fighter that came in a cereal box that I enjoyed, until I lost it... I must've spent days looking for that damn paper palm sized X-wing fighter.

I got a batman remote control car, and I had ALL the Tonka stuff, the dump truck, road grader, the Earth Mover, the backhoe. If my aunt hadn't "borowed" those toys from my Mom, I'd still have the Tonka stuff for my son today.

I got him started though, I bought him a big Tonka Dump truck for this Christmas... Waited through Christmas 2004 (8 months old) and 2005 (20 months old) to get him this truck (32 months)! He's still too young for it, but- he has it now!

 

super nintendo when it first came out. for the whole family to share

91 maybe?

 

I had one of those too, I think we got them the same Christmas! Those things were sooooooo fast back then! Mom hated me using it in the house, bouncing the front tire off of the furniture.

 

LOL, yep. And, if you wind it up real good, sometimes ol' Evel would pop a wheelie.

I had a slinky for about 4 hours. Tried to make it walk down some steps, and somehow that damn thing got tangled up like a ball of yarn. When I got it untangled, it was stretched out of place... Ended up having to toss it, and Mom refused to buy me another.

 

OOh, and they were the metal slinkies. And people thought paper cuts were bad.

 

A company called Remco used to make really good toys. I had a plastic (what toy wasn't made from plastic?) submarine that would launch torpedos and---heaven forbid---nuclear missiles. It had a clear top so you could see the interior and move the plastic men around. I think Remco also made that helicopter that I wrote about earlier.

Slinkies were fun, as well.

 

Those slinkies NEVER worked!! Now they make them out of plastic and they suck even more!

 

They still wad up the same way heading for the trashcan.

 

lionel train in 1971

i still have it and it still works.

 

BrotherDave---don't sell that train! My mom sold all of my Lionel stuff at a garage sale and I later discovered how much some of the locomotives and cars were worth!

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Christmas 1955, I was seven years old. Got my first transistor radio. Even had a ear piece to plug in. I think I was the first kid on the block to get one and we were poor folks in those days. I still don't know how my parents came up with the $ to buy it. But I was one proud kid, walking around listening to the local radio stations.