When I was a kid game consoles and RC cars were not in existence and likely dreamed of by very few! My best might have been a chemistry set or Lionel trains or a bike or…
@katbyter sadly never got any of those. was between the « you’re so lucky you’re an only child » and « don’t you wish you had brothers or sisters? »
as the child, don’t get a choice. have to come to terms with either would be OK but whatever it is is the way it is.
I was a total girly-girl, so one year when I still believed in Santa I described to him in minute detail this lovely little doll I wanted that was in that same shopping mall toy store. I’d make my mother stop at that shop window every time we went! I still have it packed away somewhere.
@ironcheftoni I dunno if anyone else had that, but I can say that I had nothing in that general class of thing. The kids around the corner had pedal cars. (That’s how long ago it was.)
@mcanavino he must be with my dad! I haven’t seen him since the '90’s. I’ve always wondered why, now I know he’s still waiting for my Christmas present! What a nice guy!!!
When I was really little, My Granddaddy made me a stove out of wood. He used the ends of coffee cans, painted them black, and those were the burners. The stove was painted white.
He even put racks in the oven.
It wasn’t fancy…or expensive…but it was made with love and was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen!
@Kyeh No, I wish I did. That was a thousand years ago. lol But to this day, I remember how I felt when I saw it, and how overwhelmed, even as a small child, I was.
When I was a kid, for some reason I loved stationery. One Christmas my mom gave me a wonderful box of assorted stationary products, most of which were personalized with my name, such as writing paper, notepads and pencils. There were some other accessories like a rubber date stamp and custom address stamp with ink pads. It was glorious.
@heartny That is so cool!
When I was a kid, my Grandmother told me that a lady always has stationery on her dresser…and isn’t afraid to use it.
To this day…yep… I have a box of stationery on my dresser, though I’m not much of a ‘lady’ anymore, and I rarely write letters.
It is truly a dying art.
It’s awesome that she was thoughtful enough to even have it personalized for you. That is just so cool!
@heartny@Tadlem43 I agree that is very cool. When I changed to a new job about 25 years ago, my manager’s wife made artisan paper and did handmade bookbinding. Did not even know that was a thing, and it seems so cool now.
I see other old people have addressed the issue with game consoles and RC cars. I enjoy telling people I didn’t see Star Wars until I was seventeen.
The best was probably a bicycle, with butterfly handlebars and a banana seat, but, so I can share this, I’ll go with my first Major Matt Mason set, which included the space station and crawler.
@craigthom I was 23 when Star Wars came out. The first time I saw it was about two weeks after it opened. It was at an old huge grand-auditorium-style theater in downtown Salt Lake, and the only two seats left when I got inside were front row dead center.
@craigthom Had this too, and played with it all the time. (At least until the wires in the limbs were broken and sticking out of the rubber!) As I remember, they were spendy, but in my case a great deal for number of hours played per dollar.
The funny thing I remember is any time we had adult guests, the men always wanted to play with it too!
@craigthom@werehatrack I saw Star Wars in the first week or so of its initial local opening. My friend’s older brother had seen it and was raving about it, so we decided to check it out. When we got there, we walked right in (no line) and had our choice of seats in the (maybe half-full) theater. We were pretty much blown away.
The second time we went to see it (about a month later), when we got to the same theater the word had spread and the line was out the door and around the corner. (Still got in and enjoyed it. )
The weekend of the 1st release of the 1st Star Wars film (now Epidide IV), George Lucas and his first wife Marcia Lucas (who was one of the three film editors for the film) were in LA for some reason.
They saw on a sidewalk an extraordinarily long queue of would-be film-goers waiting to get into some film or other.
He asked someone what was the super-blockbuster film people were excited about that weekend?
He was quite surprised to find out the moviegoers were waiting to get into his film. Star Wars
He’d had no idea until that moment that he’d had a potential huge hit.
It took him a while after that to grasp that he had created not only a modern classic series that everyone knows even (if they’ve only seen snippets in YouTube) …
but had also created a new set of expectations for what a film could be, or could do culturally, and could gross at the box office.
I don’t think he set out to make the film thinking “I wanna be a billionaire”.
@craigthom@f00l@macromeh@werehatrack That’s probably why it’s so good. Too many current films seem to be produced solely to make money, so they have no character.
@craigthom@f00l@macromeh Without Marcia’s edit, the film would have had a mediocre reception. But after the test audience came away grumbling, she re-cut it, and the result was what went out as the theatrical release. The ordering of several scenes was changed, among other things.
I gather that the younger George Lucas was a pretty difficult person to be a partner with the sort of person who felt entirely entitled to pay attention to you when he felt like it and ignore you for 16 days while he dealt into his passions when he felt like that
Eventually Marcia had enough and they split up on her initiative I believe and she connected with someone else
During the split up I believe things were fairly civil between them and reasonably cordial, but afterwards George Lucas really showed his capacity for petty bitterness
he literally took her name off the credit in some releases that occurred with a new Hope and the lawyers had to get into it or something
All that because he was pissed off because she had the gumption to go get a lot. She wanted when he wouldn’t compromise with her at all so that they could have the life which would’ve satisfied both of them when they were together.
Yeah I was aware that Marcy’s edits were considered foundational to the quality of the film and I think she worked hard on that final battle sequence with Luke versus the death star and a lot of the way it goes is her vision
@pmarin Cool - you could have used your crane to load cargo on my Johnny Express truck. I had a lot of fun with that truck (at least until the stupid batteries leaked, destroying the controller. ). Good practice for learning how to back a trailer.
HO scale train set.
The first Christmas gift I have memory of, and one of the few Christmas gifts I ever received from my parents. Still have it to this day, although needs to be fixed.
@kshayabusa I always wanted a decent HO starter set, but we never had a place to set up an actual layout, so it was always vetoed. A while back, I was in a local HO specialty store, and saw an absolutely exquisite model of 4014. Oh, ghods, I wanted it, but to do it justice would require a commitment of time and space I just don’t have.
@kshayabusa@werehatrack Had to look up the 4014 but knew it would be something glorious.
As I thought it’s the one I heard about when I was in railfan groups. Still based in Cheyenne WY and doing tours, one happening at the moment:
Big Boy No. 4014 will depart on the “Heartland of America Tour” on Wednesday, Aug. 28 from Cheyenne, Wyoming, and travel across nine additional states: Arkansas, Colorado, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Texas. The eight-week tour concludes in late October. No. 4014 will be on display in the following locations:
Sunday, Sept. 8: Rochelle, Illinois (Chicago metro area)
Sunday, Oct. 6: Houston, Texas
Thursday/Friday, Oct. 10-11: Fort Worth, Texas
Note: actual version is 1:1 scale and will need a lot of space, some coal, and some engineers. (perhaps the most important original meaning of engineer)
@kshayabusa@pmarinDAMMIT! 4014 was in Houston last Sunday and my calendar didn’t have an entry for it. I’d have sworn that I had marked it with plenty of advance notifications when the schedule was announced, and it’s not there. And now it has departed from Fort Worth, too.
@kshayabusa@werehatrack a little over 20 years ago, a local hobby store was going out of business, and I bought all of their Lionel train sets. About 18 of them. I sold all except one, it’s the Nickel plated Special set, and it’s still in my closet. I never got around to setting it up.
my grandfather never even graduated from elementary school because this was way back when and he had to leave home to get away
so he lied about his age and joined the Navy and during the many years he spent in the Navy. He became an expert mechanical practical engineer, if you will, and could maintain all the ships engines and systems.
When he got out, he went to work for Santa Fe railroad he was around house foreman, but he was never paid that way because it was lack of formal education
But he maintained all the engines in his geographic area, which kept expanding, and eventually he became the derailment specialist for Texas, and four surrounding states
During the decades he had that job. They kept a special train at the roundhouse he managed, and the train was for the special derailment crew that he led that went out anytime there was a derailment within his assigned territory, and they would figure out a way to deal with it
I learned a lot about his astounding life of achievements after he was gone, and I’m really sorry about that. It would’ve been incredible to hear the stories.
he had been around the world two or three times by the time he was 20 and he had during his neighbor gear sailed extensively on both wooden and steel ships and on sailing naval vessels
@kshayabusa@werehatrack @lonocat, Buying and keeping the nickel-plated Special Lionel was an extra-goatish move! If you ever want to sell it to a goat-Emeritus, let me know first. I was last up before you, so makes me first in line, right? (but you should keep it as you seem inclined to do, which is also a wise choice).
@OnionSoup Self-medicating for ADHD? It’s not approved for that because of the tooth-rot issues, but close relatives are. The only current and heavily monitored application that I’m aware of is for narcolepsy.
Absolutely… My first bicycle. The entire city became mine. A bit different back then. No big deal to ride 5 miles on your bike to go play somewhere. Got even better when I had a basket that would hold a basketball. Tennis rackets I strapped to the handlebars. We visited other neighborhoods quite frequently for sports wars.
Mine was a bike too! So excited to ride and tricked it out over the years with a light that generated from the tires turning, a rack on the back, a water bottle holder, and a clip for my Walkman. I still have that bike, and ride it occasionally. Most of the accessories are gone (though I put a kid seat on the back to take my boys around with me)
Santa brought me a Chatty Cathy doll that my grandmother made clothes for. I still have both. Besides clothes those were my only presents and I was thrilled.
“Besides clothes…” that would be clothes for me. Most of our birthday and christmas presents were clothes and shoes. As a result getting a doll and getting a number of clothes for the doll was a big deal.
Yellow banana bike and my brother got a green one!! We rode all over Jacksonville NC when our Dad was stationed in Vietnam. I remember riding around looking for ICEE cups that had been tossed on the road so we could collect the points/diamonds/whatever they were. Found some old farm with a sawdust pile a MILE HIGH. We scrambled around it playing king of the world and revisited it often. Looking back it was probably not that tall but in my mind’s eye it was humongous!
Good times, indeed.
The one that sticks out was Christmas 2002, my parents got me and my younger brother an Indigo Nintendo GameCube with Luigi’s Mansion, Super Mario Sunshine, and MarioParty 4, and two controllers. It was the first time they’d gifted us a proper home console, and the first one I received new, when the best games had just come out. I was already a Nintendo gamer so it wasn’t a formative moment per se, but I still have and regularly play all of those games, as well as the console, and it’s stuck with me.
Erector set, actually, two of them, hand-me-downs.
@rjquillin Now that you bring it up, same here, and mine were absolutely hand-me-downs.
When I was a kid game consoles and RC cars were not in existence and likely dreamed of by very few! My best might have been a chemistry set or Lionel trains or a bike or…
@andyw exactly
@andyw definitely a bicycle!
@andyw @lonocat Another vote for bicycle. Freedom! The whole town is mine. Be back for supper.
When my uncle gave me all his NHL player sticks.
Big Wheel
/image Big Wheel 70s
Siblings
@katbyter sadly never got any of those. was between the « you’re so lucky you’re an only child » and « don’t you wish you had brothers or sisters? »
as the child, don’t get a choice. have to come to terms with either would be OK but whatever it is is the way it is.
I was a total girly-girl, so one year when I still believed in Santa I described to him in minute detail this lovely little doll I wanted that was in that same shopping mall toy store. I’d make my mother stop at that shop window every time we went! I still have it packed away somewhere.
I was a little before Big Wheel’s time. But instead I had a Krazy Kar.
@ironcheftoni I dunno if anyone else had that, but I can say that I had nothing in that general class of thing. The kids around the corner had pedal cars. (That’s how long ago it was.)
@ironcheftoni we had one as a family. I was too big at that point. But my little brothers were small enough to have a great amount of fun in it.
@rustyh3 I loved that Krazy Kar. The little indentions near the foot rests were the perfect size to hold a snack and a drink. Fun on the go!
The best gift I ever got as a kid?
My grandmother would have said it was Jesus.
The pastor’s daughter, Marianne, knew better.
@Pavlov Hey welcome back. We haven’t seen you in ages!!!
@Pavlov
Can we presume that you’ve been practicing various interesting forms of intellectual degeneracy?
@f00l Yes.
@Kidsandliz Thanks.
@Kidsandliz @Pavlov
If you wanted to put some of that enhanced intellectual degeneracy on show here, if not complain!
; )
@Pavlov You done any movies lately?
The NES my Dad is waiting in line at Toys R’ Us for. He’ll be home any minute now.
@mcanavino
@mcanavino he must be with my dad! I haven’t seen him since the '90’s. I’ve always wondered why, now I know he’s still waiting for my Christmas present! What a nice guy!!!
@IWUJackson @mcanavino
@mcanavino There are things I gave up waiting for more than 60 years ago.
When I was really little, My Granddaddy made me a stove out of wood. He used the ends of coffee cans, painted them black, and those were the burners. The stove was painted white.
He even put racks in the oven.
It wasn’t fancy…or expensive…but it was made with love and was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen!
@Tadlem43 Oh, how cool! Do you have pictures?
@Kyeh No, I wish I did. That was a thousand years ago. lol But to this day, I remember how I felt when I saw it, and how overwhelmed, even as a small child, I was.
@Tadlem43 It sounds wonderful!
When I was a kid, for some reason I loved stationery. One Christmas my mom gave me a wonderful box of assorted stationary products, most of which were personalized with my name, such as writing paper, notepads and pencils. There were some other accessories like a rubber date stamp and custom address stamp with ink pads. It was glorious.
@heartny That is so cool!
When I was a kid, my Grandmother told me that a lady always has stationery on her dresser…and isn’t afraid to use it.
To this day…yep… I have a box of stationery on my dresser, though I’m not much of a ‘lady’ anymore, and I rarely write letters.
It is truly a dying art.
It’s awesome that she was thoughtful enough to even have it personalized for you. That is just so cool!
OWLS! TOWELS! JOWLS! AWESOME!
@heartny @Tadlem43 I agree that is very cool. When I changed to a new job about 25 years ago, my manager’s wife made artisan paper and did handmade bookbinding. Did not even know that was a thing, and it seems so cool now.
Various horses
/giphy barrel racing
/giphy show jumping
@f00l
Wow giphy fail
/giphy giphy fail
I see other old people have addressed the issue with game consoles and RC cars. I enjoy telling people I didn’t see Star Wars until I was seventeen.
The best was probably a bicycle, with butterfly handlebars and a banana seat, but, so I can share this, I’ll go with my first Major Matt Mason set, which included the space station and crawler.
@craigthom I was 23 when Star Wars came out. The first time I saw it was about two weeks after it opened. It was at an old huge grand-auditorium-style theater in downtown Salt Lake, and the only two seats left when I got inside were front row dead center.
It was glorious. I have few memories more vivid.
@craigthom Had this too, and played with it all the time. (At least until the wires in the limbs were broken and sticking out of the rubber!) As I remember, they were spendy, but in my case a great deal for number of hours played per dollar.
The funny thing I remember is any time we had adult guests, the men always wanted to play with it too!
@craigthom @werehatrack I saw Star Wars in the first week or so of its initial local opening. My friend’s older brother had seen it and was raving about it, so we decided to check it out. When we got there, we walked right in (no line) and had our choice of seats in the (maybe half-full) theater. We were pretty much blown away.
)
The second time we went to see it (about a month later), when we got to the same theater the word had spread and the line was out the door and around the corner. (Still got in and enjoyed it.
@craigthom @macromeh @werehatrack
I remember reading somewhere …
The weekend of the 1st release of the 1st Star Wars film (now Epidide IV), George Lucas and his first wife Marcia Lucas (who was one of the three film editors for the film) were in LA for some reason.
They saw on a sidewalk an extraordinarily long queue of would-be film-goers waiting to get into some film or other.
He asked someone what was the super-blockbuster film people were excited about that weekend?
He was quite surprised to find out the moviegoers were waiting to get into his film. Star Wars
He’d had no idea until that moment that he’d had a potential huge hit.
It took him a while after that to grasp that he had created not only a modern classic series that everyone knows even (if they’ve only seen snippets in YouTube) …
but had also created a new set of expectations for what a film could be, or could do culturally, and could gross at the box office.
I don’t think he set out to make the film thinking “I wanna be a billionaire”.
@craigthom @f00l @macromeh @werehatrack That’s probably why it’s so good. Too many current films seem to be produced solely to make money, so they have no character.
@craigthom @f00l @macromeh Without Marcia’s edit, the film would have had a mediocre reception. But after the test audience came away grumbling, she re-cut it, and the result was what went out as the theatrical release. The ordering of several scenes was changed, among other things.
@craigthom @macromeh @werehatrack
I gather that the younger George Lucas was a pretty difficult person to be a partner with the sort of person who felt entirely entitled to pay attention to you when he felt like it and ignore you for 16 days while he dealt into his passions when he felt like that
Eventually Marcia had enough and they split up on her initiative I believe and she connected with someone else
During the split up I believe things were fairly civil between them and reasonably cordial, but afterwards George Lucas really showed his capacity for petty bitterness
he literally took her name off the credit in some releases that occurred with a new Hope and the lawyers had to get into it or something
All that because he was pissed off because she had the gumption to go get a lot. She wanted when he wouldn’t compromise with her at all so that they could have the life which would’ve satisfied both of them when they were together.
Yeah I was aware that Marcy’s edits were considered foundational to the quality of the film and I think she worked hard on that final battle sequence with Luke versus the death star and a lot of the way it goes is her vision
One most fun thing was a mechanical tower crane with wired remote control. I think it was this model from Sears. Apparently I can have it again for under $50 + shipping, though says used, not working. Should be easy to fix if parts intact. But I shall resist for now.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/276625248882?chn=ps&norover=1&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-117182-37290-0&mkcid=2&mkscid=101&itemid=276625248882&targetid=2370186391901&device=c&mktype=pla&googleloc=9033572&poi=&campaignid=21772435673&mkgroupid=172165932430&rlsatarget=pla-2370186391901&abcId=10047345&merchantid=138376901&gad_source=1&gbraid=0AAAAAD_QDh9VnhhBnWLC7_IJpJzr7bsuC&gclid=CjwKCAjwvKi4BhABEiwAH2gcw60pMsa2LbNhlOj_DVW495KLRsnkeDkaJslUYpOpblWYbNGN9Pt6NxoCAfoQAvD_BwE
@pmarin Cool - you could have used your crane to load cargo on my Johnny Express truck. I had a lot of fun with that truck (at least until the stupid batteries leaked, destroying the controller.
). Good practice for learning how to back a trailer.
HO scale train set.
The first Christmas gift I have memory of, and one of the few Christmas gifts I ever received from my parents. Still have it to this day, although needs to be fixed.
@kshayabusa I always wanted a decent HO starter set, but we never had a place to set up an actual layout, so it was always vetoed. A while back, I was in a local HO specialty store, and saw an absolutely exquisite model of 4014. Oh, ghods, I wanted it, but to do it justice would require a commitment of time and space I just don’t have.
@kshayabusa @werehatrack Had to look up the 4014 but knew it would be something glorious.
As I thought it’s the one I heard about when I was in railfan groups. Still based in Cheyenne WY and doing tours, one happening at the moment:
Note: actual version is 1:1 scale and will need a lot of space, some coal, and some engineers. (perhaps the most important original meaning of engineer)
@kshayabusa @pmarin DAMMIT! 4014 was in Houston last Sunday and my calendar didn’t have an entry for it. I’d have sworn that I had marked it with plenty of advance notifications when the schedule was announced, and it’s not there. And now it has departed from Fort Worth, too.
@kshayabusa @pmarin @werehatrack No, still in Ft. Worth until tomorrow morning!
Oh, maybe not on display, though.
@kshayabusa @werehatrack a little over 20 years ago, a local hobby store was going out of business, and I bought all of their Lionel train sets. About 18 of them. I sold all except one, it’s the Nickel plated Special set, and it’s still in my closet. I never got around to setting it up.
@kshayabusa @pmarin @werehatrack
my grandfather never even graduated from elementary school because this was way back when and he had to leave home to get away
so he lied about his age and joined the Navy and during the many years he spent in the Navy. He became an expert mechanical practical engineer, if you will, and could maintain all the ships engines and systems.
When he got out, he went to work for Santa Fe railroad he was around house foreman, but he was never paid that way because it was lack of formal education
But he maintained all the engines in his geographic area, which kept expanding, and eventually he became the derailment specialist for Texas, and four surrounding states
During the decades he had that job. They kept a special train at the roundhouse he managed, and the train was for the special derailment crew that he led that went out anytime there was a derailment within his assigned territory, and they would figure out a way to deal with it
I learned a lot about his astounding life of achievements after he was gone, and I’m really sorry about that. It would’ve been incredible to hear the stories.
he had been around the world two or three times by the time he was 20 and he had during his neighbor gear sailed extensively on both wooden and steel ships and on sailing naval vessels
@kshayabusa @werehatrack
@lonocat, Buying and keeping the nickel-plated Special Lionel was an extra-goatish move! If you ever want to sell it to a goat-Emeritus, let me know first. I was last up before you, so makes me first in line, right? (but you should keep it as you seem inclined to do, which is also a wise choice).
@kshayabusa @Kyeh @pmarin @werehatrack @PooltoyWolf
Knew about it, but didn’t schedule myself properly, so missed it both times (both directions) it passed through. Bad on me.
But here’s a good explanatory show on it. Lots of side info, also. [Steam airplane, e.g., ??]
Meth
@OnionSoup Self-medicating for ADHD? It’s not approved for that because of the tooth-rot issues, but close relatives are. The only current and heavily monitored application that I’m aware of is for narcolepsy.
I always loved my Polly pockets, and always got stuffed animals, and coloured pencils.
Absolutely… My first bicycle. The entire city became mine. A bit different back then. No big deal to ride 5 miles on your bike to go play somewhere. Got even better when I had a basket that would hold a basketball. Tennis rackets I strapped to the handlebars. We visited other neighborhoods quite frequently for sports wars.
Mine was a bike too! So excited to ride and tricked it out over the years with a light that generated from the tires turning, a rack on the back, a water bottle holder, and a clip for my Walkman. I still have that bike, and ride it occasionally. Most of the accessories are gone (though I put a kid seat on the back to take my boys around with me)
Santa brought me a Chatty Cathy doll that my grandmother made clothes for. I still have both. Besides clothes those were my only presents and I was thrilled.
“Besides clothes…” that would be clothes for me. Most of our birthday and christmas presents were clothes and shoes. As a result getting a doll and getting a number of clothes for the doll was a big deal.
Kennedy toolbox
Yellow banana bike and my brother got a green one!! We rode all over Jacksonville NC when our Dad was stationed in Vietnam. I remember riding around looking for ICEE cups that had been tossed on the road so we could collect the points/diamonds/whatever they were. Found some old farm with a sawdust pile a MILE HIGH. We scrambled around it playing king of the world and revisited it often. Looking back it was probably not that tall but in my mind’s eye it was humongous!
Good times, indeed.
The one that sticks out was Christmas 2002, my parents got me and my younger brother an Indigo Nintendo GameCube with Luigi’s Mansion, Super Mario Sunshine, and MarioParty 4, and two controllers. It was the first time they’d gifted us a proper home console, and the first one I received new, when the best games had just come out. I was already a Nintendo gamer so it wasn’t a formative moment per se, but I still have and regularly play all of those games, as well as the console, and it’s stuck with me.
/image big wheel
AAAND, it was 70 degrees that Christmas so I could ride it immediately!