Toys you wanted as kids but never got...

[AGXStarseed]

I think we all had to go through this as kids, especially after seeing TV adverts or reading through the catalogues of shops that sell toys (for me it was always the Argos Catalogue).
In any case we'd see one or more toys that we wanted but our parents/family would never buy them; maybe they cost too much, maybe our parents thought they were poor quality/would negatively affect us, maybe they thought we'd play with them for 5 minutes before becoming bored, maybe we already had something similar - the excuses go on.

In any case, what toys did you want during your childhood that you never got?
I'll start us off:

For me, one of my favourite toys was my Gameboy Advance (I later got a Gameboy Advance SP but kept my old GBA just in case), and this toy got a lot of official and third-party attachments you could buy.
For me, there was always one accessory that I really wanted and that was the TV Tuner; when attached, it would turn your Gameboy Advance into a Portable Television.

This would have been great, especially as I had a habit at that age for waking up at around 4:00/5:00am and been unable to get back to sleep. So, I would try to creep out of bed, turn the TV on at the wall, turn it on, mute it quickly, creep back to bed and then turn it down to about 3 on the volume before finding a channel to watch; all the while hoping that my mother wouldn't catch me or my brother whom I shared my room with wouldn't rat me out (both these situations sometimes happened).

If I'd had the TV Tuner, I could have just watched TV on my Gameboy and through my headphones if I woke up early without disturbing anyone. This is on top of watching TV shows I would normally miss if on a long car journey.
Also, according to this review, you could even watch DVDs through the Gameboy by connecting the TV tuner to the player. A review of another TV Tuner for the Gameboy Advance SP states you can also use it to watch VHS cassettes and to serve as a TV for non-portable consoles like the Gamecube, Xbox and PS2.

Sadly as I said, I never got it as my parents said it was too expensive (it was £79.99 if I remember rightly) and nowadays it would no longer work even if I had my GBA; this being because the TV Tuner used the analogue signal to find channels and, during the Digital Switchover in which the UK's analogue signal was gradually turned off between 2008 and 2012, my area was switched to digital in 2011.


So as I say, what toys did you want during your childhood that you never got?

 

[tree]

One of those inflatable clowns that would be about as tall as me
& sat on the floor, for punching. My parents seemed to think that
was not a toy for a girl.

 

[AGXStarseed]

One of those inflatable clowns that would be about as tall as me
& sat on the floor, for punching. My parents seemed to think that
was not a toy for a girl.

That's just made me think of Home Alone 2 with Kevin pranking Tim Curry (I know his character has a name but I can't remember it) with the inflatable clown in the shower.

(Humorously ironic that Tim Curry is scared of clowns when he previously played Pennywise in the TV miniseries adaptation of Stephen King's IT)

In any case, it sucks that your parents didn't get you the inflatable clown.

 

[Tom]

Deluxe Reading's Battlewagon. 1960s. Working guns, missiles, planes, and it moved on battery power. From the age when most kids only had one working eye. Asked for it one Christmas but alas... Did get it as an adult at a flea market though, and my son had fun with it. Later sold it for a tidy profit to a one-eyed collector.

 

[Judge]

Toys for bigger boys.

But my parents said NO. Quite emphatically.

 

[Streetwise]

I wanted action man ,A Sindy companion horse,a rabbit family , a dolls house,sooty,sweep puppets .

 

[Autistamatic]

 

[Judge]

Space 1999. LOL...I used to be amused with actor Barry Morse pretending to have a rather good English accent.

Never dreamed that "Inspector Philip Gerard" (The Fugitive) was actually an EastEnder!

 

[Autistamatic]

I loved the show as a kid. All the episodes are on YouTube for free too if you ever feel like a bit of 70s SciFi nostalgia

 

[Nitro]

Toys for bigger boys.

But my parents said NO. Quite emphatically.

When my mom said no, I ran an end game on her and built stuff for myself
My minibike at age 13 was a hit, and had a manual clutch because it was cobbled together out of salvaged junk because you didn't dare ask for a store bought centrifugal one for it.
The throttle on the handlebars weighed about 5 pounds because the clamp and housing was machined out of 2" diameter steel. Same gig
When my sister finally busted me with mom for having it, mom wanted it dismantled and blamed my dad for it.
He told her he didn't have anything to do with it, and then said the boy built it on his own, so taking it apart would be useless.
The next day, he brought home the parts he made for it to fix the weak links on the jackshaft bearing mounts


I grew up in a machineshop, and somewhere in my dad's transparency collection, there is a slide of me running his first lathe.
(He still has it too)
He would set us kids up on a production job where all we had to do was cut the power on the machine after the operation had ended. It was simple fairly safe work, what could go wrong?
(I was only 5 when he took that picture btw)

As I got older, he gave me piecemeal work where I earned a penny per operation. After I earned my first $100, I was taken to the social security office for my number and card, then taken to a bank to open up a savings account and deposit my pay.
My brother and I made nearly $1,000 on that contract, which wasn't exactly chump change for ten and eleven year old kids, and that was in 1971.

On that job, the contractor spent $.01 on material and labor to punch out a polyurethane washer.
My brother was paid $.01 to drill a hole in it.
I got my $.01 to size the OD of them 5 at a time on that same old South Bend lathe.
Dad made his $.01 for getting the contract and delivering the finished product.
He also got to write off $.02 a pop too, because we were paid as subcontractors.
He got to turn a profit from our labor that covered our tuition to his school
I think we both won on that one.

Being the hoarder that I am, I kept a handful of them to use for who knows what. The stuff was supposed to be bullet proof. It is when it is brand new.
After 15 years had passed, they got chalky looking. At 25 years, they started to crack. After 30 years had gone by, they had turned to dust. I guess the chemical reaction to make the stuff never really ends

 

[QueenOfFrance87]

I wanted these things as a kid:

Slip and Slide
Stretch Armstrong
Furby
Tamagotchi
Robot dog
A whole bunch of board games

 

[Crossbreed]

1. Legos (unthemed)
2. Ding-a-Ling robots
3. Zorr, the Mighty Eagle. It was an eagle-shaped glider that launched like a kite.

 

[Cinnamon115]

A dartboard. My parents always said that my brothers and I would stab each other with the darts instead of playing the game. They were probably right but I still wanted one. I also wanted one of those little motorized cars (the kind you ride in), but my parents said they were too expensive.

 

[FreeDiver]

Me? I never wanted toy's. At least not the kind that all the other kids like to play with. The only 2 toys I ever liked were my BMX bike and my Radio Flyer wagon. The only toy store I was interested in was Radio Shack. Electronic parts? Now that's what I called toys. And I always had enough money to buy them because I would collect coke and beer cans off the side of the road, on the beach and by dumpster diving. Being that the state of Oregon pays $0.05 per can. I could easily make over $100 a month while all the other kids would be lucky to get $5 in allowance. I always like making things and tearing apart old radios. I was the kind of kid that could be happy with bailing wire, duck tape and lollipop sticks.

 

[Isadoorian]

I'd have loved to get a Yugioh Duel Disk based on the ones used in the Battle City Arc of the original Anime when I was younger (I was 8, maybe 9 when it came out?) I was still kinda into the Card Game at the time; it's an accessory you wore on your left forearm.

Had a built in Digital Life Counter too!

They (Mattel) eventually came out with a 2nd iteration dubbed the "Chaos Duel Disk"

Eventually a final 3rd iteration based on the Academy Duel Disk, from the Yugioh GX series of the Anime, was released

These were the only accessories that you could use for the Card Game to be made from the Anime (that I'm aware of)

 

[GrownupGirl]

It's kind of embarrassing, but as a kid I was obsessed with getting a Monchichi doll. I saw them in a store once but my mom wouldn't get one for me. I now recently have a small family of Monchichis and Bebichischis.

My older brother was not that interested in toys. He never collected action figures or anything. He mainly liked building toys that were more complex than Legos, board games, and Hot wheels.

 

[tlc]

Around 1987 I wanted a 20" Street Runner bike from Sears, and my existing bike was falling apart. Looked so cool and it was the first 20" 10 speed I'd ever seen. I like things that are different like that. But I'd have outgrown it quickly. Not too long afterwards I got the bike that I still have today. Even if I hadn't outgrown it, a Sears special would have probably not lasted as long as my Schwinn.

 

[Progster]

I didn't really want toys when I was a kid. I wanted things like: a telescope (a real one, not a toy one), a PC (Personal computer) - in the 80s we didn't have mobile phones, laptops, tablets, etc. I had a Rubrick's cube, mastered it and then wanted other variations. I wanted a chemistry set, but didn't get one for a long time because I was too young. I wanted books... a constant supply of books. I was very curious and easily bored and I wanted things to do, to create, never things like dolls or action figures.

My parents bought me a game boy when they first came out, but it had only one game, I mastered it, and then got bored. They also bought me a Meccano set - loved it.

I'm grateful to my parents that they didn't try to socialise me to a gender role and bought me things that they knew I would like, rather than things that they thought I should like.

 

[Fridgemagnetman]

I had a Rubrick's cube

similass OR a better kind of cube... than the one you used to peel the stickers off to finish it.

 

[Progster]

similass OR a better kind of cube... than the one you used to peel the stickers off to finish it.

Laziless more like, not looking it up to check the spelling
Perhaps Rubrik should have invented an all black cube with no stickers. Then I could solve it in literally no time at all