Butch Asks, What Was Your Favorite Christmas Toy?

   I guess all of us remember that one Christmas day during our childhood when we received that special toy . . . you know, the one we “just had to have!” It may have been a doll, or train set, or bicycle or any number of things. When I was 4 years old, I wanted a Captain Hook pirate ship. I have no idea why, but I likely spotted it in the Sears and Roebuck catalog. Well, guess what? I found it under the tree on Christmas morning! I played with it about a half an hour, and soon discovered that it was not quite as much fun as I thought it would be.

   On most Christmas days I received one or two toys, candy and some clothes. As I grew older, I was happy to receive sports items . . . balls, bats, mitts, golf items, etc. But in looking back on those days, my all-time favorite gift was a Daisy B-B rifle. “Be careful with that. You might shoot your eye out!” Well, that never happened, but I did manage to shoot out the lightning rod glass bulbs on the barn and the kitchen window . . . and I accidentally shot my little brother in the chest . . . OOPS!

   I did a little research on the Internet to see what the most popular toys were in past years. Of course, dolls were always popular gifts for most girls and sports items for boys. In the 1920s and ’30s kids wanted Radio Flyer wagons, yo-yo’s, View Masters, Buck Rogers pistols, pop-up books, stuffed Mickey Mouse toys and sock monkeys. During the Great Depression, many children received no gifts at all, except for perhaps some penny candy and an orange in their stockings.

   In the 1940s, kids received Little Golden Books, army men, Magic 8 balls, chemistry sets, Tinker Toys and Log Cabin building sets. When the Baby Boomers made out their lists in the 1950s, they included Matchbox cars, Barbie and Chatty Cathy dolls, Play-Doh, Mr. Potato Head, Hula Hoops, Silly Putty, Tonka trucks, Colorforms, Paint-by-Number sets, Frisbees and Whiffle balls and bats. I received a Pogo stick one year, and jumped around on it for a few weeks!

  The 1960s toys included G.I. Joe, Easy Bake oven, Lite-Brite, Hot Wheels, Rock-em-Sock-em Robots, Etch-a-Sketch and radio-controlled cars. Of course, by then many girls wanted the Barbie dream house, too.

   In the 1970s the most popular toys were Rubik’s Cube, Baby Alive, Speak and Spell, Magna Doodle, NERF balls and all of the Star Wars figures and accessories.

   The most popular thing in the 1980s was the Cabbage patch dolls. I stood in line a few times to get one for my daughter. Other toys were My Little Pony, Care Bear, Teddy Ruxpin, Snoopy Sno-cone machine, Transformers, Game Boy and Teenage Mutant Ninja turtle figures. The ’90s fad toy was the Beanie Babies and American Girl dolls and Pokemon. That decade also saw kids wanting Buzz Lightyear, Super Soaker water pistols, Little Tykes, Furby, Tickle Me Elmo and various electronic games.

   After 2000, popular toys were Nintendo Wii, Bratz dolls, Zhu Zhu robotic hamsters, and the Razor scooter . . . just to mention a few.

   There are hundreds of other toys, along with many board games, which you might recall from your childhood. But there is likely only one or two that will always seem very special in your memory from those days of Christmas past.

John “Butch” Dale is a retired teacher and County Sheriff. He has also been the librarian at Darlington the past 36 years, and is a well-known artist and author of local history.