I don’t know if you remember Consumers Distributing but when their catalog came to the house in the 80s, it was chaos as we all went through it to decide what we wanted for Christmas. I don’t know why I was thinking about that today but I remember really wanting some really bizarre stuff for Christmas over the years. In honor of the Ghost of Christmas Catalog Past, here is my list of things that I wanted for Christmas but never, ever got. Some for good reason. Actually all for good reason. If you have any gifts that you wanted as a kid but never got, let me know in the comments.
Tomy Omnibot :: In reality these probably were not that cool but back in the 80s, the promise of real life working robot kept me awake at night just dreaming of the awesomeness. Having just mentioned it now, I won’t be able to sleep tonight just thinking about the awesomeness that I missed out of. I had so many plans for this thing. A couple of years ago Market Mall had a retro toy place in it and one of these things sat in the window. Even as an adult it inspired some retro lust.
Vic-20 :: In grade 4, our teacher at Queensland Downs Elementary School was a bit of a computer geek and our classroom filled up with one Apple II, a bunch of Commodore PETs, an Atari 400 and other computers that we geeked out on. He had a Commodore 64 with a revolutionary floppy drive and gave this lecture once about if we worked hard, got a good education, made good investment decisions and had some luck, we too could afford a Commodore 64. While I had a Commodore 64 later in life (and I loved it), at the time, the Vic-20 was what we played with and I really wanted one. It was actually the star of our class Christmas play (it also crashed during the finale, wrecking everything) You know, after the spring of 1984, I don’t think I ever even saw one, let alone ever used one again.
Speaking of Mr. Taylor’s Grade 4 class, he was the one that brought in a robot into class. I think it was called Adam and it could be programmed to do a couple of things which seemed cool at the time. It probably explains that why I was so fascinated with Mr. Omnibot up there as well.
Timex Sinclair :: These may have been the cheapest personal computers that I have ever seen and I pestered my mom daily for one in 1985. Radio Shack at the Mall of Lawson Heights sold them. I think what sunk my quest to convince mom to get me one was she actually saw how crappy it was. Like Steve Jobs has taught us, the demo is really, really important. Of course if I had a Tomy Omnibot, it could have demoed it for me. For the record, that Christmas I got a Cooper XL7 helmet which despite what everyone said, looked pretty cool in it’s time.
Tony Hawk Skateboard :: Now I had bought a Dominion Firefly skateboard a couple of years earlier. For those of you who remember Dominion Skateboards, they were skateboards sold at Zellers and other big box retailers that were pretty cheap. Looking back at it, it took a lot of abuse and over the years I put some new wheels and trucks on it and it wasn’t a bad board. Of course it wasn’t a Powell Peralta and there was no way I was going to be accepted as a member of the Bones Brigade without one (I also had no really moves but that is irrelevant) A Tony Hawk Skateboard was a long ways out of the budget back in 1987 but I got a great generic skateboard for Christmas that year and with some really great old school stickers and some parts off my old deck, life was good. I was going to skate forever or at least until I discovered high school football. 
What cracks me up now is that I bought some Tony Hawk biking gloves this summer, Mark plays Tony Hawk games and refuses to accept that Tony Hawk was even alive when I was a kid. 20 years later I am still buying Tony Hawk products. When I am 80 I may be asking for the Tony Hawk Motorized Wheelchair.
GI Joe Skystriker :: I had a lot of GI-Joe toys over the years but I also thought the coolest toy was the F-14 Skystriker. I never ever had one but I had the GI Joe attack helicopter, a missile shooting jeep, the snowmobile, and a couple other really cool vehicles as seen on the page below. A couple of friends of mine had them and we never really played with it, it was like we were in awe of it’s greatness.
Metal Detector :: I totally forgot about this until Mark posted his Christmas wish list, I wanted a metal detector. I am not sure what I was hoping to get. Lawson Heights was still a new neighborhood so the likelihood of buried treasure or even spare change being found was slim but I remember thinking how cool it would be to have one. My grandfather had one so maybe that is where I got my inspiration from.
Sharp Wizard Organizer :: Continuing the computer geek fest, how cool would a pocket computer have been to my life. It included a memo pad, a telephone pad, calendar and scheduling with alarms and repeating events, multi-time zone clocks, and a calculator. I am not sure how useful it would have been in real life as a kid but then again, all of those Palm devices I owned were not that much more useful.
Gateway Handbook 286 :: In high school I was pretty much a nerd (which is different than now how?) and we used to love going through computer magazines as a group of nerds and talk computers. I remember the day when we first saw an ad in Computer Shopper for the Gateway Handbook. It was too expensive (I think it started out at $995 USD when it came out) to ask for but my heart beat a little faster every time I saw an ad for one.
I later owned a Gateway 486 and loved it. In a lot of ways, it was the world’s first netbook but it was before it’s time (and the web).
So what Christmas gifts did you miss out on? EZ Bake oven? Cabbage Patch Kids? Intellivision? Coleco Adam?
Well, I’m a bit older, but I do remember wanting kangaroo shoes. These were shoes (boots?) that had a sole with two springs, so you could jump farther. They were hard to find, “normal” stores did not sell them.
Hammacher Schlemmer made a gas powered pogo stick. One cylinder. You came down and compressed the fuel-air mixture and a spark set it (and you) off. They only made a thousand, or so, and reportedly all but a few buyers injured themselves before they stopped selling them.
I don’t know how much trains were a factor for you, but both Lionel and American Flyer had some great (and greatly priced) train sets. Nobody in my town ever had much more than the basic sets, with a little more track and switches.
Growing up near Boston meant an occasional trip to New York with Polk’s Hobbies, FAO Schwartz and the Gilbert Hall of Science. It had six floors – Erector Sets, trains, chemistry sets, magic sets (AC Gilbert worked his way through Yale doing magic shows), and a collection of scientific toys and small home appliances.
Okay, those pogo sticks sound absolutely incredible.
I had a train set when I was a kid, I think I got it in 1982 and my parents bought a 4×8 board for it where I also had some green “grass” covering. It was pretty basic but I loved it.
In Calgary’s South Centre Mall, there was the most incredible train display I ever saw. It was huge and massive attraction at Christmas. I remember just walking around and watching it forever with not only my mom but hundreds of other people who were just mesmerized by how big it was.
Hey Coop,
I’m a faithful reader of your blog but don’t bother to comment. Just a quick note, I totally support your Christmas lists and your view of giving at Christmas…I think the pharisees that read your blog should cill out a little.
In regards to your retro list….I was lucky enough to own one of those Tony Hawk skateboards. But it wasn’t a gift, it was paid for with my hard earned childhood income. I believe I was doing the juggling for money thing back then as well as collecting about $5 a week allowance. I saved up and finally was able to purchase a lime green deck with hot pink wheels. That was ok back then. I loved skateboarding but I wasn’t very good. My fear of the physical pain potential held me back. Some would say I was a poser but I was just a fat kid who loved to skate.
I can join you in the “fat kid who loved to skate club” and also “I don’t want to die on my skateboard club”.
In grade 7 or so, a friend’s dad built a really nice street skateboard. You would think it would have been so easy to ride it and ollie off it. We spent days wiping out, skidding across the street, and laying there bleeding it. Some of my friends could finally jump off it but I never could.
Later, someone else’s dad built a full sized half-pipe. I never even ever thought of going on it, I knew right away that this was a death machine.
It did increase my admiration for Tony Hawk though.
I had the Skystriker and… it was as cool as looked like it would be. Until your younger cousins reduce it to a pile of tiny plastic pieces. Alas!
Lousy younger cousins. I still remember the epic GI Joe comic where the Skystriker and the Cobra Rattler had a one on one dogfight over Washington. Of course it ended in a draw.
Man, I had a Vic 20! I think it had 4K… I used to program it in Basic to run my name up the screen. And that was about it.
What about Big Trak? Remember that thing? It was like a tank that had a calculator keypad on the top. You could program it to go forward, make turns, enter your parents bedroom at 5am and fire the cannon 99 times. Needless to say, ours didn’t last long in our house.