What was the best Christmas or birthday gift you received as a child?

I wanted a Chatty Cathy so bad. I got it from Santa on Christmas morning. Within 1 hour, my brother had decapitated it to find out why it talked. I cried for hours, and to this day remember that “tragedy” fondly. We still talk about it every Thanksgiving. My point is… the family together and doing things will be what is remembered.

Wow, looking back…

I always asked for money, as far back as I can remember. I always get other various gifts, but mostly just cash. Hmm.

I don’t know what that says about me, really.

a slinky. it was tragic for we had no stairs or steps. not even on the porch. if you have stairs or steps a slinky would be wonderful.
lego’s arent really a worthless gift anyways. if you just get a random set, and he builds, it challenges him to use great creativity and vision for what ever he may build. an inexpensive mp3 player may also not be a bad idea.
or a Nintendo DS. it will keep him occupied. and he can learn by playing games such as brain age and problem solving skills by playing mario. :P worked on my parents when i was a kid…

Thinking back, I can only remember one thing that I got for Christmas as a kid. It was a guinea pig. (That was when I was nine years old, btw.)
I don’t remember a single toy that I ever got. But I always remember being really happy on Christmas morning.

It may well be that anything you get him (short of a puppy) will soon be forgotten. My best advice would be to just get him the least expensive things on his list. And something he didn’t ask for as well. If I remember correctly those were the things that excited me the most.

I remember the three toys that stick on my head: The first was a Ninja Turtles Phoos Ball Table (I still own, just not have it set up, it still functions though), the second was a 200$ 3 foot long Lego Space Ship, and the third was The Great K’nex Ferris Wheel.
Why do I remember all these? Because my mom played with me for days after Christmas, building those things, and playing Phoose Ball.

I say if you are looking for something that will be special to him, get something he can enjoy with you. Buy him a big set of Lego’s (not Star Wars, but just get a big bag of them off ether eBay, or the Lego Site) then that way he has to build the stuff himself, thus using more of his imagination, but the important part is: be there with him, help him build the stuff. If he is into challenges, have a contest to see who can make the biggest, coolest spaceship (I personally would lose on purpose, making him feel better, that and I am a Lego addict, so I can pretty much make anything from those little blocks.)

Another option: If you goto the Lego website, there is a program you can download that will let him make his own lego creation, then buy it, instruction and all. That might be an awesome thing too. (The program is a bit hard to understand at first, but if you help him, you both can totally figure it out!)

Onto my previous rant, you could even get him a DS, and your self one too, that way you both can play games, and he has a DS. Me and my mom love that (I know that is weird, I am 24 and my mother is 62) but we still bound over a good game of Nintendogs, or Millionheir.

I guess it all comes down to finding something you both will enjoy, and he will remember it, I don’t think there is a single person here on Fluther that would disagree. Sure, he might not remember it actively for many decades but he will. It wasn’t until a few days ago I remembered the K’Nex Ferris Wheel. My mom was going through old toys for a few friends of mine, and found the instructions for the Ferris Wheel, which got her thinking, and thus, me.

I can’t remember what the hell these were called and it’s been driving me crazy for years, but as a child, the best Christmas present I ever got were these very sturdy plastic tubes and other pieces which enabled you to build a multitude of things. Everything from a working slide to any kind of structure my imagination could think up. I played with them for years and years and there wasn’t a day that went by I didn’t use them. I adored them.

If anyone knows what those were called, please tell me and I will love you forever!

@DrasticDreamer:
It sounds like K’Nex to me. But it could also be… damn it… now I don’t remember. Did these toys have metal pieces? Or were they all wood, with little circle pieces that you plugged the wood stick into? Ha, ha, okay, let’s think the funny sex jokes, rather then type the funny sex jokes, k?

A bike.

@jt: No, they weren’t K’Nex. They were all plastic pieces, literally big enough for a child to slide down (when you chose to build the slide, one of many designs.) I remember the pieces you used to make the slide were neon orange and a lot of the connecting tubes were bright yellow.

@DrasticDreamer:
OMG! I know what you are talking about! I wanted those so bad one year! Never got them though, I just got more lego’s.

Now I have a mission to find out!

@jt: They were kind of like these: http://www.toobeez.com/, but I remember the stuff I could build was a lot more elaborate. And that really sucks, you would have been one happy kid! :)

As a nine year old I was introduced to the value of a toy “experience” through surprise balls. OK, you still got toys, but the real deal was the unwinding, the yards and yards of crepe paper that fell away to reveal numerous treasures (fortunes, candy, toys, game pieces). It was important to have an audience for the unwrapping and to do it slowly. I think of it now like performance art for kids. A few years ago I started making my own surprise balls for the little kids in my life, then for select adults, and lately I’ve helped kids make them for their friends. http://gomakesomething.com/ht/gifts/surprise-balls/

think the set of K’nex like toys my brother and sister and I got one Christmas was kind of awesome. You could build robots, and they could go in water too. I forget what they’re called now but I know I’ve seen them mentioned on another thread. They had big plastic ‘bubble’ chambers for the gears and stuff. That was kind of a key feature.

Anyway, that and my dog. And I still have every book I’ve ever received for a birthday or Christmas present on my shelf. I’ve never lost one to my knowledge.

@asmonet: I’m pretty sure I saw what you’re talking about here: http://www.inthe80s.com/toys/index.shtml.

By the way, though, I agree with jt. Getting him anything that you two can enjoy together will be extremely memorable for him. I remember after I got that building set, I was constantly running to my parents to show them what I built. They also helped me with it and there’s no way that I will ever forget those memories.

My Nintendo Entertainment System. I got it when I was four years old, and I’ve kept it ever since.

I was the oldest of 5 children living on a USAF staff seargent pay, one christmas while shopping with my mom I saw this beautiful stuffed silver poodle with flowers on one ear, it was 20 inches tall and I loved it. But at 25.00 I knew it was too much to spend on just one present (this was 1966), so I never said a word to my mom. But she must have noticed that I kept going back to that isle with the toy dog, because I woke up christmass morning and that dog was laying under my arm when I woke up…I remember crying and asking how did she know? She simply said Santa knows everything.

A bike. It was red.

@asmonet they were called capsela

My favorite gifts when I was growing up were always the ones that led to something else… for example getting a sleeping bag would mean we got to go camping… so there was the gift and then also the anticipation of what was next.

I remember being more excited about other gifts at the time (a bike, a tv, etc) but the one I value above all others now is a big hardback book with all the Winnie the Pooh stories in it. My family nickname was ‘Pooh’ and my favorite uncle gave it to me when I was about 10. My kids treasure it today.

Those wooden things with the sticks are called Tinker Toys. How the hell did I remember that? We didn’t even have them. But my friends did. They were great!

I always got books and made a pile of them and as soon as I could I started reading them.

But the very best thing was this: the year I turned 12, my parents gave me a card that said I was going back to camp for a second year. I said very seriously that I was grateful but I thought that first year was just right and if it was okay with them I’d rather not. They burst out laughing and said, “You just saved us (some amount of money)!” We were all really happy. I hated camp

One year for Christmas, my grandpa made all 4 of us grandkids a toy box & a hutch. He was a master wood worker. I’d lay money that mine are the only ones in existance today. Our daughters & grandkids have toys in the toy box to this day. They are cherished gifts that will always be in the family.

@ dendie .. aww that was a good story.. made me tear up a lil hehe..

well my gift was a n easy bake oven.. i had asked for it but on christmas eve i didnt get it ..(we open our gifts christmas eve.. dont know why.. just a fam tradition) but on christmas morning i was all bummed and my god mother came and she had bought it for me .. i was very happy.. but i did feel a lil bad cause christmas eve i was mad at my mom cause she didnt get it for me..

i kind of wish we had more of a santa belief when i was young.. i guess since i was the youngest of four and 15 years younger then the oldest my parents had given up..lol kind of sad i know

when i have my own children im going to bring back all these santa traditions. and opening gifts on christmas morning

@voar – Legos rock! I spent many an hour building stuff with my son, from age 4 up to age 12. “More Legos!” topped his Christmas list each year during his Lego era. He is too cool to play with them now that he is a teenager, but I still get the urge now and then.

A Gibson Explorer in glossy ebony. A wonderful birthday present to myself.

I love me so

@steelmarket:
I bet by the time he is out of High School, He’ll want to play with Legos again! I was that way. What brought me around was when I was moving off to college, I came across all my old legos and a book with them that I forgot I had. It was called “Lego Hand Guns.”
It showed you how to build actual lego guns from the “advanced” lego, blast what were they called? Tecknic, I think.

My mom asked me what I wanted for X-mas this year, and at the top of the list is the new 50mm f/1.4, of course, but right under that, Lego Castles (the sad part is, for half the price of the camera lens, I can get every single boxed set of the Lego Castles!)

This is the gun

This is another cool one to show him

I ALWAYS wanted an Easy Bake oven but alas, never got one. I did at some point have a Suzy Homemaker blender and iron. They both really worked, slow, but worked. I remember making milkshakes for my brothers and sisters…..patience indeed. On a happier note, it wasn’t so much the best gift, but the circumstances. We used to always have gifts under the tree way before Christmas and of course we would always sneak around checking closets and other hiding places. This one year was no different. Anyway,. we go to bed as usual, the youngest of us, get up at the crack of dawn to check things out, try to see how many gifts with your name etc. , and go back to bed. When we got back up to open gifts, we had bikes under the tree!!!! Now, we were still young, but knew who Santa really was, but that year really had me re-thinking the Santa thing cause we had looked EVERYWHERE and come on, where do you hide 4 bikes!!! To make Christmas more believeable for my daughter, I never put anything under the tree early and left gifts over my sisters or friends to be collected on Christmas Eve. I always waited until she went to bed. She’s 25 now and I still do that. It’s funny, I hide stuff from myself. We’ll be opening gifts and I’ll remember a gift for someone and have to run and dig it out of the closet. :-)