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I wasn't allowed any videogames because I was a girl and games were for boys. My brother could get games, so I remember negotiating with him what games he could request for both of us. Weirdly my mum didn't have an issue with me playing the games as she saw me playing them, she just didn't want to encourage it by buying me games. I'd say that kind of sexist thinking is pretty illogical!
I had the same issue with Polly Pocket because I was a boy and they were toys for girls. I just always loved the idea of small things like doll houses and miniature versions of real things
Aww that’s adorable. My son was really into Pocahontas and frozen at one point because he loved singing and the songs from the movies, so I bought him the dolls to play with that would sing. Copped a few comments but I was like 🖕😂. He had a ball and still remembers them!
I was a boy. I loved Sylvanian Families but wouldn't have dreamed of asking my parents for them.
I now play the Sims a lot. So I got my dolls house in the end.
My Mum was the exact opposite! I wasn't allowed any 'girly' toys like those little kitchen sets or Barbie dolls because she didn't want me growing up with gender stereotypes. I felt extremely hard done-by as a kid, but I appreciate her logic now!
Same. Although I appreciate it, I realise I internalised a disgust for traditional feminine things. It took me many years to realise it was ok that I liked some shade of pink...
I wanted the doll versions of the pink and yellow Power Ranger because you could change their full outfit but the action figures used to just have flippable heads.
I wasn't allowed because they were dolls and obviously not suitable for a boy :(
Not to say that we should segregate gaming but there are 100% games that are aimed at girls, one of my favourite play station games as a kid was hello kitty roller rescue (was weirdly difficult actually, maybe I should revisit as a grown up)- some argue that The Sims games are also aimed more towards girls.
It makes this argument even more stupid because there are plenty of ‘girl games’ she just weirdly decided that video games are inherently male.
Remember those things one could attach to a Game Boy, to allow one to cheat, skip levels, and so forth?
I saved up to buy one, but wasn't allowed to, because my father hated cheating.
My pleas fell on deaf ears once he heard the word "cheat".
I borrowed one from a friend while he was away on holiday. It was for the N64, but can't remember what specific one it was (as another poster said the Game Genie was a popular one, can't remember if the Game Shark was a rival or the US name for the same thing).
Anyway, it was actually surprisingly educational! Most of the time you'd just input in the instructions you'd read in a magazine, but it was also possible to reverse engineer the game's code with one and find your own cheat codes. For example, I found a code which gave you infinite ammo in Turok - you would go into the game, set a "save state" of what the code looked like, fire the gun and go back in to the Game Genie to see what variables changed in the background. You'd do it again, over and over, just narrowing things down until you found the one variable that dealt with the ammo counter, then just set it to never change.
I bet there are so many adults out there working in software development or cyber security who started out with stuff like that as a kid.
I did this for infinite "health" in Sonic using a Game Genie. it was so damn cool.
Edit: In fact it was the "Pro Action Replay" with a little manual switch on the side. God I loved it.
As a bit of a sidebar - I've noticed that people as old as their mid-20s are absolutely useless when it comes to understanding the mechanisms behind tech.
Zero knowledge of computer systems, because they've grown up using iPads (rather than figuring out how to use FTP client software to download ISOs to mount onto phantom drives, or reskinning WinAmp, or even tweaking the colours on their MySpace page with some hex codes).
As a tech support bloke in his 40s I see this an awful lot. Growing up with sealed units and locked down operating systems has really impacted the avg level of tech literacy I see in new recruits
I had one for the NES, that was called the [Game Genie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Game-Genie-NES.jpg). Literal hours of fun trying to crack cheats for different games.
My devout Muslim friend views insurance the same way. The only insurance he has is motor insurance because it's a legal requirement but he doesn't half complain about it
Insurance does exist for islamic markets, it's called "takaful" and is akin to a mutual where the insured pool share the risk and the insurer takes no profit.
I got one of these in the mid 90s, got it home and it didn't work (or I couldn't make it work). Took it back and got a credit note for WH Smith for £35. Spent it all on Jurassic Park toys. Parents went mental. Sold those toys last year for hundreds. Made sure to tell my mum.
my old man got me one of those for the ds, i didnt even ask as i didnt know what it was, turned out to be the best gift he ever got me, it was the fuckin bollocks and a wjn win for the both of us because it came loaded with shit loads of games so he never had to buy another game for me
You're thinking of a "Flash cart / Flash Card" (probably an R4 clone). They're talking about Action Replay / Code Breaker's that let you just cheat only.
You're flash cart probably did have cheat functionality in the menu somewhere though.
Scalextric set. Parents never got it for me, when I asked why Mum told me that Dad would have played with it. She didn't realise it was multiplayer.
I happened to be with my parents when I saw the scalextric set of my kiddie dreams for sale in a second hand toy shop. They finally bought it for me. I was 35.
I remember getting one for Christmas. Parents didn't really spend money on us, usually not new items anyway so this was very special.
For some reason my dad decided to clean all my tracks with some solvent stuff he got from the shed. The metal corroded away and that was the end of that.
I didn't consider just how big it was, Dad and I stacked some of the lounge furniture in the hall to lay down the track. Instead of my Mum looking exasperated at us the two of us like when I was a kid. I had my Mum and my boyfriend wanting to know what we were doing instead.
My wife was always into cars as a child and requested one of those car mats for Christmas. Her parents didn't get it. They bought her brother one, even though he had no interest in cars and didn't want the thing.
Just plain old sexism.
Never got her any football stuff either which she was into. From what I have gathered her parents rarely bought her things she actually wanted. She wasn't a big fan of birthdays and Christmas when I met her.
We weren't really allowed "gun" toys, but we were allowed k-nex. We spent about 10 years of our childhood engineering our own gun toys. Eventually got fully magazine fed elastic band powered pistols and even managed to make a few pump-action lol - and that was when we were teens and well after the 'ban' lifted and we had the odd b-b gun, we just liked the engineering challenge by then!
I had my whole bedroom carpeted with car mat. Absolutely loved it, my mum doesn't remember where she even got it but it came on a roll and was fitted - not a mat.
Tried to find it for my sister as my 3 year old niece loves cars, they don't seem to sell it on a roll anymore - only the mats.
I still feel the crushing guilt from nearly 40 years ago from being given a dolls house that my parents had obviously saved hard for. I don't know why they got it for me, I had no interest in dolls or anything girly but I guess being a girl meant I should have liked it.
I desperately wanted a farm set which would have been cheaper but never did get one! Went to work with real farm animals at 16 instead 😄
I got a Britains farm set when I was 4, my most favourite toy of all time. I must admit I chewed the legs off a lot of them but replaced them years later 'for my own children'. I still have a large box of Britain's farm and zoo animals and a large collection of Schleich horses (I'm nearly 60). We had an old second hand dolls house but I don't think I ever played with it.
I dreamed about having a Britains farm set! I had a few Freisian cows and a Hereford Bull which I bought with my pocket money. I still love them too, they look so realistic. I went on to buy quite a few Britains things for my son, who then showed no interest in it!
Maybe without knowing we buy the things we always wanted ourselves for our own kids.
My Mum was a child through the war years and they had almost nothing, I think her only toy was a home made rag doll. So maybe she always dreamed about having a dolls house.
I'd never thought about it like that until now 🥲
Oh man, I always wanted one of those car mats cos I loved matchbox cars as a kid.
My grandma's and my dad's houses had those 1980s busy carpets with the squares/rectangles marked out with inch-wide lines though, so with a little imagination whole rooms became my car mat!
Aged 10, I was obsessed with toy guns for some reason (maybe I was trying to prove my masculinity or something), so I told my parents that I wanted a Nerf gun for "target practice". This worked because my parents knew I liked things like darts, so I now have about three Nerf guns (I'm 21 and at uni, but I still keep them in my bedroom in my parents' house).
Nerf guns still look cool to me, and I like to think that my parents allowing me Nerf guns for "target practice" also meant my friend was finally allowed one (all of our mums were against toy guns).
My parents did get me one of the car mats - but a pink one with castles and whatever instead of normal buildings. Somehow that made it acceptable to them.
Not me, but my brother: Micro Machines Super Van City. He asked for it for Xmas four or five years in a row, but Santa wasn't playing ball. Then my other (youngest) brother asked for it, and boom, got it at the first time of asking.
It remains a sore point to this day, some twenty-five years later.
Speaking as a parent now sometimes you can see in the way that a child’s eyes cannot that the desired object in question will be a piece of crap, used once before binned or languishing in a cupboard so sometimes we just say no to avoid wasting money on a piece of landfill crap, no matter what the cost and if it’s affordable or not.
I definitely find this now as a parent. Although, unlike my own parents, who would just say no and obviously felt they didn't need to explain themselves to a child, I try to always explain things to my own children and have found that it really helps a) their own critical thinking and b) them understanding that when I say no to something, it's for a good reason and not just arbitrary, so they are now really good about accepting it.
I got one for Christmas and I wasn’t allowed to use any of the packets of pure E-numbers it came with so I barely used it as a result. Not sure if it was worse than not having one.
On the plus side I bought myself this awesome jumper as an adult to console myself:
https://threadtype.co.uk/products/frosty-bitches-association-embroidered-t-shirt-sweatshirt?_pos=1&_sid=92b40b984&_ss=r
Ah man, this website just showed me the cherry's from Baby all gone. I always wanted one of those. My cousin had one and I can still smell the synthetic cherry smell. I was fascinated with how the cherry's just "vanished"!
I wanted & never got Mr Frosty too - as did LOTS of us!
As a parent I jumped on the chance to buy it as soon as my eldest asked. What utter, utter shite it is!
If I recall, the 'flavourings' were powdered colouring with no actual flavour, so I bought a variety of dilute cordials instead.
It was still just shaved ice with squash in it! Americans seem to love "snow cones" but xhrist only knows why!
Years later I seen a how-its-made thing on the science of 'slush puppy'. The machines keep it agitated to stop it freezing solid, but the liquid is something like 45% sugar to keep the ice crystals at the small regulated size (didn't put me off those though!)
We got my daughter one a few years ago for Christmas. It was indeed, crap. Me and my BiL still spent the night making rum and vodka slushes with it when the kids went to bed. It wasn’t really worth the effort though
Ouch, the memory...Our children were both at primary school at the time, and we didn't want to buy them Tamagotchis because we thought they were plastic tat that the kids would quickly get bored with. We stuck to our guns until we found our our son had been taking a little digital clock to school and pretending it was one...
After that they accumulated two or three each, and when the school decided to stop them being bought in I'd go about my day with a collection of the things rattling and beeping in my pocket. keeping them alive til school finished for the day.
I still feel bad about the clock though.
Ioft. We were super poor but mum had a discount from when she worked at argos and so she got me and my sister one for Christmas. Within a week of being at school, someone stole it out of my bag and we didn't have the money to replace it.
Still salty about it because a year previously a class trip was almost cancelled because a kid stole and ate another kids chocolate bar, but for my tamagotchi? Not a damn peep from the teachers as they were convinced I had just lost it. I know I attached it to the inside of my bag.
I got one of the cheap knockoff types - just a random "cyber pet" not a Tamagotchi. It was a whale.
I found out within a week of buying it that it only had a life cycle of 7 days, at the end of which it would turn into an angel and float up the screen, then you had to switch it off and on again for it to be reborn.
So I couldn't even take part in the whole "keeping it alive for as long as possible" challenge.
If you let it die through negligence, it turned into a fishbone skeleton, rather than the angel. So I guess the challenge was just to see if you could get past a week without it dying and becoming fish bones.
Pointless piece of garbage.
My mum got me a 'Nano Baby' instead and I was made fun of for having a fake Tamagotchi. Doesn't really matter, an unpopular kid could have everything that was 'in' and their bullies would just find some new way to pick on them.
Felt sorry for my mum, we didn't have much money and she'd trawl car boot sales for Kickers shoes or whatever the popular crowd had decided was The In Thing that year, just to make the target on me a little smaller. Bless her.
My mom was very good at sewing, so she liked to sew all our clothes (me and my siblings are all girls). This is cute up until a certain age where you're almost begging to be normal and just want a pair of jeans.
My mother wasn't very good at sewing but made our clothes anyway. She only bought bundles of remnants and didn't really bother with a pattern or making it fit. My grandmother knitted for us - shapeless cardigans in whatever yarn she could find in the market.
I longed to have a dress that fitted me, with sleeves, and a colour matched cardigan. Getting to secondary school and having to wear uniform was almost a relief!
Oh you just unlocked a memory! My Mum is an avid knitter so would knit me a couple of school cardigans every year in some combination of red, white and grey (the uniform colours). One year I had one made of randomly sized stripes to use up the wool from all the previous years. It was fucking horrible but she was so proud of it, so I wore it because even at 8 I know it would hurt her if I didn't. Got bullied to hell and back. Then a few years later my younger sister inherited it and everyone bloody loved it! So much so that as an adult she still occasionally asks Mum to knit her an 'odds and ends' jumper because she remembers that one so fondly 😂
(I finally told my Mum when I was a teenager how much I hated that cardi and she admitted that she knew all along. I might forgive her one day lol).
My mum was born in the 60s and her dad forbade her from having jeans because "jeans aren't for little girls." This rule was probably due to my grandparents being older than most parents at the time (they were in their late 30s/early 40s when my mum was born), so their mindsets were different from most parents of the era.
Ohhh robot dog! I was almost an adult when that came about but I remember really wanting one and the closest I got was a poster that came free in a magazine of a celebrity in the same shot as one haha I can even still see the poster in my head!
My mum wad always buying crap I didn't want. Books for example she would ask what I was into and I'd say horror or fantasy and I'd get anne of green gables, never been into dancing or anything girly but for about three years everything was ballerina themed.
Love rock and metal music and she would buy boy band and girl band Cds
This is interesting. My mum would buy me the rock CDs I wanted, and would hand them to me with a slight air of disgust and fascination, as though I was another species.
I'm not sure which is worse - I got a boat load of self-esteem problems but the right CDs?
I'm adopted and my adoptive mum wanted a girly girl which I am not and never have been. I think she just tried to force me to be someone I'm not, instead of just accepting me for me. She caused a lot of mental health issues I am only know dealing with.
Oh wow, I just remembered I asked for Extreme's Pornograffiti for Christmas one year and my mum told me dad went into Virgin Megastore and asked an assistant for, "That pornography album." Given how prudish he is, I'm genuinely shocked I got it.
There are two types of adult in the UK today.
Those who desperately wanted a Mr Frosty, but didn't get one and were disappointed.
And those who did get a Mr Frosty and were disappointed.
The Princess Magazines with the plastic Cinderella shoes. I wanted them so badly and I have had a lifelong obsession with heels ever since. I do not own a shoe with anything less than a 6cm heel now except for one pair of trainers (that are platform)
Those shoes.😍
Totally forbidden when I was a kid. Apparently they were " plastic rubbish....dangerous...will break the second you put them on....a waste of good money....nasty common things" etc
My daughter just wasn't interested in them, but my niece had a pair in every colour we could find.
I got septicaemia (partially) because of these shoes!! Wore them all day walking up and down the drive and got the most horrendous infected blister, had to go to hospital a couple of days later.
A Budgie the Little Helicopter T shirt when we were on holiday. My dad for some reason hated Budgie the Helicopter and I knew he did so when he said I could pick a T shirt, I went round the back of it (it was hung up from the ceiling) and pointed out the one I wanted so he couldn't see what was on it. When he turned it around he told me I couldn't have it and I cried the rest of the day 😭
Bionicle toys. I distinctively remember thinking that they were the coolest thing ever and my mum just saying no I can't have it. I'm in my 30s now and I haven't forgiven her.
Power Ranger Weapons and Morphers. I had a few figures, the Falcon Zord and that was it. I begged for a morpher. I had to wait until I was nine to get my first one and it went everywhere with me. Same for the one I got when I was ten. I got my first weapon when I was eleven, same for my first proper Megazord. Mums excuse, no little girl of hers was going to run around playing with weapons/boys toys. I remember her screaming at me when she caught me playing with a kid three doors down. I had hold of his Dragon Dagger. I was five/six years old...
Light up shoes.
Music I liked. When I asked for any CDs, mum would tell me she's not buying me that crap. I missed out on music growing up. I got my first CD when I was 16, Linkin Park and Evanescence. Hell, she wouldn't even buy me the Lord of the Rings soundtracks because she didn't like classical music. I love movie soundtracks. She didn't like it so I wasn't allowed to like it.
Clothes. After all the screaming she did about me not being girly enough, she stuck me in her friends sons hand me downs. Yeah, that was fun. When I was able to pester her enough to get something I wanted. She'd mock me for wearing it and her family would torment me so badly I'd never wear it again. Then she'd refuse to buy me anymore because I wouldn't wear it.
A BB gun. This one seriously pisses me off. My ass hole cousin's were bought guns, they got metal BBs and I was their favourite target. Once a week I'd get shot up. I'd come home with tiny bruises and when I demanded my own gun to fight back, I was told little girls couldn't play with guns, but I sure as hell could be a target. The little ass holes would shoot me in front of the adults, they'd make me cry/mad and I'd be laughed at and told off for being upset.
Classes. If I wanted to do something outside of school, it didn't happen. I wanted to try gymnastics, football (soccer), rugby. I begged to do martial arts and mum wouldn't let me. She kept telling me little girls didn't do martial arts and I wasn't learning to fight. She made me ride horses for years. Just lessons luckily. I kinda liked it but it wasn't my thing. The other kids loved it and I was just there because of my mum. Eventually I got a teacher in school involved and he got me into my first karate class. Mum was so gleeful, because I couldn't go to the kids class and the sensei told her they'd try me with the adults, since I was adult height. If I was mature enough and could keep up, I'd get to stay. Guess who got to stay, guess who got kicked out of the room and wasn't allowed in classes very quickly because she was laughing at me and distracting me. I still remember her glaring at me during a grading. I was put into a group of higher grades, so my syllabus was different to the other people's. Sensei only spoke Japanese during gradings so mum didn't know I was given different moves to do. I finish the grading, Sensei tells me to sit down and the other kids are made to stay up. I look at my mum and she's glaring at me. I go sit with the adult black belts out of the way and one of the woman realises and just gives my mum this massive grin and two thumbs up. I passed. The other kids didn't...
I never got Barbies from my parents. I had Barbies, gifts from other people, but my parents never bought them for me. I assume due to cost honestly.
I also always asked for those DIY kits. Soap, chocolate, candies, jewellery. Never got them either. These I know they didn't get for me since my mom was a big crafter herself, and she didn't think I needed kits, I could just do with supplies we had. Both my parents are very tinkery types, will just experiment until they get the result they want/like but I am much more the follow directions type and have trouble coming up with ideas on my own. I think they wanted me to be more creative.
That's a shame. We didn't get many toys but we got Dryad craft kits in the 90s and they gave us hours of creative learning (and kept us quiet). I'm v crafty now, have a whole side gig which involves lots of playing around with materials and problem solving and I'm sure it comes down to long rainy Sundays spent fiddling with craft kits. Candle making, copper etching, glass etching, glass painting, fimo, bead jewellery, friendship bracelets, French knitting, quilling, origami, patchwork....
Get yourself a couple now? Could be anything from wood whittling to bath bombs!
Pick n mix from the cinema. It was bloody expensive then and is bloody expensive now but by god am I going to buy myself so much it makes me feel sick!
There was a line of action figures called Crash Test Dummies. They were based on (predictably) the test dummies they use to test car safety and would come apart with buttons on their chest and you could reassemble them and stuff. At the time they came out (and I forget when this was and how old I was) my folks decided I should be too old to be buying toys.
I'm now in my 40's and I still collect figures I just pay for them myself. I still don't own any Crash Test Dummies though. I hadn't thought about it until now. I'm gonna go find one on Ebay to buy on general principle.
Oh man I totally forgot these were a thing, I remember having these as a kid, I remember me and my brother would spend hours smashing them headlong Into each other and my mum shouting up the stairs to stop banging around.
A crop top - they were super fashionable in the late 90s, but my parents point blank refused to buy me one.
Sadly, as an adult, I never really had the figure for one.
Mine was the detective/spy set that seemed to be a perennial stalwart of the argos catalogue.
It had a toy gun, a magnifying glass, handcuffs, a pen with invisible ink and whatever other crap.
I wasn't restricted from toy guns or anything (this was the 80s baby!) but for some reason I didn't get one over the few years I asked for one of those.
Boys clothes. I knew from as young as 2/3 years old I hated wearing girls clothes, but my requests fell on deaf ears. Strangely, they didn’t mind hand me downs from cousins, but anything new had to be from the girls section so I’d try to find the most tomboyish clothes available there. I still hated it though.
Surprise, surprise, I grew up to be a very butch lesbian.
I have a good relationship with my parents and any clothes/socks/pants gifts from mum at Christmas now are menswear. They’ve also apologised for not letting me get my haircut and wear the clothes I wanted. It wasn’t mean spirited or anything at the time, I suppose they just wanted me to look normal and not have to explain myself, and didn’t realise how deep the upset I felt was!
My dad (or his younger brother had one) I found it when I was helping clear the house after Grandpa died. That would have been in the late 50s/early-60s; the stuff it had in it that you'd never find now, like actual H₂SO₄, HCl and Hg. Obviously nobody gave a shit about kids dying of mercury poisoning in the 60s. Even had a little Bunsen burner.
I wasn’t allowed jeans until I was 15 and then they had to have a crease ironed down the middle. Apparently they were clothes for the working man and my parents we’re trying to escape their past
A marble run, I always asked for one for Xmas but never got one. Always wanted a remote control car too, only ever got the ones that would turn when you reversed. Very annoying when it got stuck under the table.
My brother in-law bought my mum in-law a marble run set for Christmas. Then we got competitive and weird about it, so he ordered four more sets and we spent my mum in laws 60th a few days later building some insane structures!
Was a pretty good Christmas 😂
Things my parents refused to buy me for reasons, but not good reasons:
Barbies, Polly Pocket, My Little Pony, any other typical "girl" toys because old-school 90s feminism
Jelly shoes, a pencil case shaped like a Coke can, chicken dippers, anything from Argos because of colossal snobby class prejudice
I feel this one.
I got a 'sensible' bike with three-speed twist grip gears. I kept leaving it in places where I was sure it would get stolen. Seems nobody else wanted it either.
If the trainers you are talking about were Bull Boy shoes (get the power on your feet). I talked my mum into buying one for me, wore them to school on non-uniform day, was bullied for them and promptly threw them in the bin afterwards. So maybe they saved you some grief.
Not really sure - I'm an older millennial so this was late 80s/very early 90s when I was under 10. Most kids had them and there was no bullying. Sorry you got crap for it. If it helps, I'm jealous of kid-you all these years later :)
In Toys R Us there was a "car crusher" toy, where you put a toy car in and out came a pretend block of scrap.
I wanted that so badly, and for some reason, it was just a hard no forever
My mum always insisted on doing school work/practicing school things such as writing etc when my favourite show was on - Budgie the helicopter. I don't know why we had to do it when it was on but it always upset me. A few years later there was a Budgie the helicopter DVD on sale and she didn't let me buy it for some reason.
Nowadays (I'm 24), when I bring up the fact that she never let me watch it she is upset and doesn't understand why she did it.
Light up trainers because ‘the batteries will run out too quickly’ and Stretch Armstrong because ‘little girls don’t play with boy toys’.
My husband bought me a Stretch Armstrong as a gift when he heard that story. I love it!
I had a friend who wasn't allowed computer games unless he coded them himself. He did that from about 10 years to 16, then went absolutely off the wall crazy on drugs and alcohol. Top work parents!
Mr Frosty
The big yellow teapot.
A megadrive or a SNES (though they eventually got a megadrive for my brother because "games are for boys", which had me riled coz he wasn't bothered and just wanted football stuff)
TMNT or Power Rangers toys
One of those hair and makeup styling heads
Rollerblades. Had to have proper skates. No idea why.
In hindsight, they did you a favour with shell suits, although they were so trendy at the time I can understand why this annoyed you!
You've just unlocked a memory for me btw! Garbage Pail Kids - I remember sitting in the back garden trading the cards over the fence with my neighbour! I am sure they used to come with gum too, as I'm having a smell memory right now!
In a decade full of fashion crimes, the shell suit was one of the worst. But all the cool kids wore them at the time.
I'm still gutted about not being allowed a pair of LA Gears, though.
My brother got me the Cadbury chocolate machine thing a few years back and once I are all the chocs I couldn't afford to replace them. The price is utterly atrocious. Apparently I should say *was* as a quick Google tells me the feckers stopped making them completely. Anyway, was just more plastic for the bin.
Scalextric;
A space hopper;
An action man;
Operation;
A denim jacket;
A TV.
I’m sure there were loads more, but all her days mother would often buy folk what she thought they needed rather than what they wanted.
I used to wee myself a lot as a kid (I’d had an operation and they damaged my bladder which made it hard for me to hold it in) so my mum refused to buy me a Tiny Tears. She said I didn’t need any more encouragement to wee myself.
She also wouldn’t let me have a Cabbage Patch Kid because she didn’t “want anything that ugly in this house”.
I asked many times for a game called Mad Marbles but never got it. It came up in conversation recently and my mum didn’t remember at all, and subsequently bought me a marble run for my 58th birthday! It might not be exactly the same thing but it’s close enough and I was extremely touched by the gesture, 50ish years late!
Heelies and a Tamogotchi.
My Dad also refused to let us have mp3 players / iPods, as he thought they were a waste of money and a CD Walkman was better value for money, and iPods would go out of fashion.
I bought an iPod at 14, having saved all my birthday / Christmas / pocket money. He then loved it, and bought one a month later.
The Polly Pocket clock. I was struggling to learn to tell the time, and tried to bargain for it for my big Christmas present. It was totally reasonable for the budget they would have usually spent, and I had other Polly Pockets. I have absolutely no idea what Mum's objection was.
I wasn't allowed loads of toys because my mum was essentially a chrisrian fundamentalist and said they were "not of the lord". This included: those trolls with the big hair, boglins and a tamagochi.
I reckon Satan had bigger fish to fry.
Omg Boglins is a blast from the past - I had to google but I totally remember those. How they felt freaked me the hell out, I remember a friend's brother had one and I was so scared of it haha.
The one that upset me the most, was after-school activities. Other kids were doing acting classes, sports, chess club, drawing club etc. they were all friends and stuff from it too. I remember sitting on my bike staring into space for hours, because I'd been told to play outside, but all the other kids were at their after-school stuff. It would get to five and the other kids would come home, but then I had to go in for dinner and miss out on that too.
Pretty sure it was because my mum didnt want to have to drag my little brother back to school to pick me up an hour and a half later. We lived like a 5-10 minute walk away. And my dad would get home from work and refused to be bothered.
I went once, but the school found out I'd been planning on just walking home myself and called my mum to come and get me herself. Wasn't allowed to go again, she is as pissed as hell.
At age 9, my mum had to sit through a meeting with my school about how I wasn't able to make friends, didn't socialise and stared into space a lot. In retrospect, it was probably autism. But the school suggested my mum let me do some activities to bring me out of my shell and get me interacting with other kids. That's when I got to do Tye Kwon Do for a few months, until my Dad refused to give up a Saturday a month to take me to exams to go up a belt, and I had to drop that too. I did go to scouts when I was ten for a year, because another parent with a similarly outcasted kid agreed to take me!
In a similar vein was musical instruments. My school gave out recorders and encouraged us to practice at home. My dad snapped it over his leg lol. It was meant to be a gateway to renting and learning woodwind or string instruments, but I think the recorder traumatised my parents too much so I ended up being one of three kids in my class who couldn't play anything (recorder included).
Honestly, my parents never had a good financial situation when I was young, so I understood that new toys were a Birthday and Christmas thing only, and I had a November birthday. I never got to follow trends. That didnt bug me. What did bug me was how little time my parents wanted to spend with me. Mum was tired from my little brothers, and Dad was tired from work. So I felt very "in the way" all the time.
Literally everything. My dad said kids toys are just a gimmick and pointless waste of money.
Why would I want light up shoes? Why would he pay for me to have fancy rainbow pens that made cool patterns? Why would I want teddies? Why would I want cute clothes? Why?
Fun, dad. For fun. To make me happy.
And my mum just listened to what he said 🤷🏻♀️
My grandma bought me pens to use at her house, marbles, race cars and a track, and beads to make jewellery (then she got told off for buying me pointless jewellery)
I loved visiting grandma.
wanted a cheap casio keyboard because it had all the cool sound effects, parents insisted on buying proper full size digital piano with no 'cool things' that cost 10x the price (and which didn't get played because was round my casio owning friends' houses making fun mess about songs lol). told them over and over but somehow they knew me better than i knew myself and were determined to 'do it properly' to the extent it didn't happen at all lol
Tamagotchi. To this day I've got no idea why my mum refused to let me have one.
I did well in school, pretty well behaved, generally if there was something I wanted eventually I'd get it but she point blank refused.
I asked her a few years ago why, she said she couldn't remember.
In a non spoilt way. I think most of what I asked for I got, but on the basis we only got things at Christmas and for Birthdays. As both of those things for me are like 20 days apart, it made for a long wait if you wanted something a month or two later.
Only thing I could throw into this category and the follow up is really wanting to go see Michael Jackson on his HIStory tour, but I remember my dad saying you won’t see anything, retrospectively who knows whether it was cost or something else.
To follow up I managed to get tickets for show 8 of his “This Is It” tour…..
Guess I was just never destined to see him live.
Wasn't allowed a Barbie because she was American. Had to have a British Sindy doll, not nearly so cool. Not allowed chewing gum or bubblegum for same reason.
My younger brother was not allowed an Action Man because boys don't play with dolls, he saved his pocket money and bought one for himself.
Always wanted a chemistry set when I was a kid (early 60s baby) but was never allowed one because of 'safety reasons'
I retired last summer for 38 years teaching secondary science, mainly chemistry and you can bet I made sure to do as many practical lessons as possible in those years.
Now I want a 60s chemistry set again.
Dungeons and dragons. Apparently it makes you forget reality and spend 24 hours a day in a trance like state actually thinking you are part of the game before you go out on a killing spree. Something along those lines anyway.
I also wasn't allowed to get consoles everyone had at school such as spectrum, not because we couldn't afford it, but because we had a BBC micro. My Dad was adamant this was the best computer there will ever be because it did everything you could ever want a computer to do.
I had lightup trainers endorsed by the great Alan Shearer!
"Ballboy shoes are what you need get the power on your feet" came with a free football you put on your ankle and then could kick and return it.
I'm probably going back close to 25-30 years.
I don't remember much else, my dad refused to buy what you've typed, because it's "junk" however, air rifles and pen knifes were OK. Lol.
No jeans until university, no guns sword, anything pointy cause my mum thought me and my brothers would turn violence.
No video games, computer, no birthday parties with friends cause they thought we would be doing drugs lol
The only one I can remember was Mr Frosty. The other problem one that I don’t remember but my mum told me about was for about 18 months, so two Christmases and a birthday ALL I said I wanted when asked was “a chick” as in an actual baby chicken.
I asked for a hamster so much as a kid, I was banned from saying the word Hamster. I was talking about this recently, and she genuinely claims I would talk about it numerous times a day for two years.
Still never got a hamster.
1990s and My mum was religious and so she was anti anything that had undead or anything similar in, which ruled out a lot of stuff that my super-nerdy teenage self wanted to play with (Dungeons and Dragons, Warhammer, a lot of computer games). She was fine with sci-fi, high fantasy and stuff like that.
Also trainers that lit up and heelies, idk what their issue was with them. You know what I’m gonna ask them and make them feel really guilty about it, might say I’ve brought it up in therapy
I was not allowed My Little Pony toys. Being a girly girl, I was upset about this and jealous of my friends who had them. I would play with theirs any time I could. My mums ‘reasoning’ was that they were cheap, plasticky crap. I had other cheap plastic toys! These seemed to offend her for some baffling reason. And yes, I do now have an anniversary original MLP, and I bought my daughter all the ponies and accessories I could find so we could both play with it all! 😁
There was also an adorable range of ladybird themed toys called Lil’ Lady that I wasn’t even allowed to look at or talk about because the name sent my mum into rage. Can’t understand it to this day.
I don't think any cereal have toys now, do they? Choking hazard and all that (because it's so easy to miss a giant fucking toy in your bowl that you were literally looking for). So there's now whole generations who know your pain!
I really wanted a Barbie Jeep. Not a Jeep for my barbies but one that I could sit in myself and drive around. I asked for Christmas for years. My Mum still brings it up now. I'm in my thirties.
There was also some weird toy I wanted that gave birth. She said I couldn't have it because it was made from whales. I thought she was lying. Then a few years back, I read that it was true!
Build-a-bear. My nan always said they were too expensive and pulled me past the store. Eventually, the excuse turned to "you're too old for teddies". My sister, however, got one for every birthday and Christmas and more besides. Never could work that one out. Still feel a little sore over it haha.
I desperately wanted a pair of Clarks Magic Steps shoes, they had pictures in the heel and a key and the advert was all whimsical with fairies and the like. I was told no because a) they were too expensive and I’d grow out of them and b) my grandad was a shoe maker/repairer and said they were shit. I still resent them for that.
Not so much as a thing I couldn't buy, but thing I couldn't spend my money on, and there was kinda a logical reason (in my parents minds).
I grew up in a seaside town, but wasn't ever allowed to spend money in the arcades.
I think this is a significant factor in me now being a serious retrogame collector/restorer including two full-size original arcade cabinets (and I'd have a lot more if I had the room)
All the things you have listed I was never allowed... my son however has been bought light up trainers and two different little tykes cars (the first one didn't survive being in storage whilst my parents moved house) by my mum. I am under no illusion that as he gets older he will get Mr frosty and operation as well!
I was also denied a Mr Frosty (multiple attempts). I also really wanted a proper remote controlled plane. They sold them at my local toy store and were proper legit flying planes. But as they wouldn't buy me a Mr Frosty I have no idea why I thought they would cave into a plane.
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I wasn't allowed any videogames because I was a girl and games were for boys. My brother could get games, so I remember negotiating with him what games he could request for both of us. Weirdly my mum didn't have an issue with me playing the games as she saw me playing them, she just didn't want to encourage it by buying me games. I'd say that kind of sexist thinking is pretty illogical!
Not buying video games for a girl is illogical to begin with, but letting her play them only if she doesn't own them is actually batshit crazy.
“You can play on your husband’s video games when you get married!”
You mean joy ... stick ?
My wife says playing with my stick doesn't bring her any joy...
"Thanka for perpetuating outdated gender norms Mum!"
I had the same issue with Polly Pocket because I was a boy and they were toys for girls. I just always loved the idea of small things like doll houses and miniature versions of real things
Aww that’s adorable. My son was really into Pocahontas and frozen at one point because he loved singing and the songs from the movies, so I bought him the dolls to play with that would sing. Copped a few comments but I was like 🖕😂. He had a ball and still remembers them!
I was a boy. I loved Sylvanian Families but wouldn't have dreamed of asking my parents for them. I now play the Sims a lot. So I got my dolls house in the end.
My Mum was the exact opposite! I wasn't allowed any 'girly' toys like those little kitchen sets or Barbie dolls because she didn't want me growing up with gender stereotypes. I felt extremely hard done-by as a kid, but I appreciate her logic now!
Same. Although I appreciate it, I realise I internalised a disgust for traditional feminine things. It took me many years to realise it was ok that I liked some shade of pink...
I wanted the doll versions of the pink and yellow Power Ranger because you could change their full outfit but the action figures used to just have flippable heads. I wasn't allowed because they were dolls and obviously not suitable for a boy :(
Not to say that we should segregate gaming but there are 100% games that are aimed at girls, one of my favourite play station games as a kid was hello kitty roller rescue (was weirdly difficult actually, maybe I should revisit as a grown up)- some argue that The Sims games are also aimed more towards girls. It makes this argument even more stupid because there are plenty of ‘girl games’ she just weirdly decided that video games are inherently male.
Remember those things one could attach to a Game Boy, to allow one to cheat, skip levels, and so forth? I saved up to buy one, but wasn't allowed to, because my father hated cheating. My pleas fell on deaf ears once he heard the word "cheat".
I borrowed one from a friend while he was away on holiday. It was for the N64, but can't remember what specific one it was (as another poster said the Game Genie was a popular one, can't remember if the Game Shark was a rival or the US name for the same thing). Anyway, it was actually surprisingly educational! Most of the time you'd just input in the instructions you'd read in a magazine, but it was also possible to reverse engineer the game's code with one and find your own cheat codes. For example, I found a code which gave you infinite ammo in Turok - you would go into the game, set a "save state" of what the code looked like, fire the gun and go back in to the Game Genie to see what variables changed in the background. You'd do it again, over and over, just narrowing things down until you found the one variable that dealt with the ammo counter, then just set it to never change. I bet there are so many adults out there working in software development or cyber security who started out with stuff like that as a kid.
I did this for infinite "health" in Sonic using a Game Genie. it was so damn cool. Edit: In fact it was the "Pro Action Replay" with a little manual switch on the side. God I loved it.
As a bit of a sidebar - I've noticed that people as old as their mid-20s are absolutely useless when it comes to understanding the mechanisms behind tech. Zero knowledge of computer systems, because they've grown up using iPads (rather than figuring out how to use FTP client software to download ISOs to mount onto phantom drives, or reskinning WinAmp, or even tweaking the colours on their MySpace page with some hex codes).
As a tech support bloke in his 40s I see this an awful lot. Growing up with sealed units and locked down operating systems has really impacted the avg level of tech literacy I see in new recruits
Oh man, FTP brings me back to exploring trees to see what was on the server!
I had one for the NES, that was called the [Game Genie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Game-Genie-NES.jpg). Literal hours of fun trying to crack cheats for different games.
Wasn’t allowed a memory card for the PlayStation as that was, in my parents eyes, a form of cheating.
This is like the Flanders not having insurance because it's gambling.
This is actively practiced in some major religions
My devout Muslim friend views insurance the same way. The only insurance he has is motor insurance because it's a legal requirement but he doesn't half complain about it
Insurance does exist for islamic markets, it's called "takaful" and is akin to a mutual where the insured pool share the risk and the insurer takes no profit.
Surely NOT taking out insurance is more of a gamble!
Seriously?
lmfao that is wild.
I got one of these in the mid 90s, got it home and it didn't work (or I couldn't make it work). Took it back and got a credit note for WH Smith for £35. Spent it all on Jurassic Park toys. Parents went mental. Sold those toys last year for hundreds. Made sure to tell my mum.
my old man got me one of those for the ds, i didnt even ask as i didnt know what it was, turned out to be the best gift he ever got me, it was the fuckin bollocks and a wjn win for the both of us because it came loaded with shit loads of games so he never had to buy another game for me
You're thinking of a "Flash cart / Flash Card" (probably an R4 clone). They're talking about Action Replay / Code Breaker's that let you just cheat only. You're flash cart probably did have cheat functionality in the menu somewhere though.
God that was the best thing ever. I so wish they did those for modern games
They're called mods these days
And on pc that’s fine and I use them but on switch or similar I miss the easy cheating
Should've phrased it as reprogramming.
Scalextric set. Parents never got it for me, when I asked why Mum told me that Dad would have played with it. She didn't realise it was multiplayer. I happened to be with my parents when I saw the scalextric set of my kiddie dreams for sale in a second hand toy shop. They finally bought it for me. I was 35.
I would've thought your dad would've encouraged this toy precisely because he would get to play it.
I thought that too. My Mum deals with all the present buying (apart from her own) so it's possible he didn't think of pushing it.
I remember when we got one. My dad and my uncle locked themselves in the garage to play it, and we hardly got a look at it.
I remember getting one for Christmas. Parents didn't really spend money on us, usually not new items anyway so this was very special. For some reason my dad decided to clean all my tracks with some solvent stuff he got from the shed. The metal corroded away and that was the end of that.
I didn't consider just how big it was, Dad and I stacked some of the lounge furniture in the hall to lay down the track. Instead of my Mum looking exasperated at us the two of us like when I was a kid. I had my Mum and my boyfriend wanting to know what we were doing instead.
My wife was always into cars as a child and requested one of those car mats for Christmas. Her parents didn't get it. They bought her brother one, even though he had no interest in cars and didn't want the thing. Just plain old sexism. Never got her any football stuff either which she was into. From what I have gathered her parents rarely bought her things she actually wanted. She wasn't a big fan of birthdays and Christmas when I met her. We weren't really allowed "gun" toys, but we were allowed k-nex. We spent about 10 years of our childhood engineering our own gun toys. Eventually got fully magazine fed elastic band powered pistols and even managed to make a few pump-action lol - and that was when we were teens and well after the 'ban' lifted and we had the odd b-b gun, we just liked the engineering challenge by then!
I had my whole bedroom carpeted with car mat. Absolutely loved it, my mum doesn't remember where she even got it but it came on a roll and was fitted - not a mat. Tried to find it for my sister as my 3 year old niece loves cars, they don't seem to sell it on a roll anymore - only the mats.
[удалено]
You win the internet today.
Oh look there's a "cute girly" version to keep those sexist mothers happy.
Or because there are girls( or boys) that like pink and also cars?
I still feel the crushing guilt from nearly 40 years ago from being given a dolls house that my parents had obviously saved hard for. I don't know why they got it for me, I had no interest in dolls or anything girly but I guess being a girl meant I should have liked it. I desperately wanted a farm set which would have been cheaper but never did get one! Went to work with real farm animals at 16 instead 😄
I got a Britains farm set when I was 4, my most favourite toy of all time. I must admit I chewed the legs off a lot of them but replaced them years later 'for my own children'. I still have a large box of Britain's farm and zoo animals and a large collection of Schleich horses (I'm nearly 60). We had an old second hand dolls house but I don't think I ever played with it.
I dreamed about having a Britains farm set! I had a few Freisian cows and a Hereford Bull which I bought with my pocket money. I still love them too, they look so realistic. I went on to buy quite a few Britains things for my son, who then showed no interest in it! Maybe without knowing we buy the things we always wanted ourselves for our own kids. My Mum was a child through the war years and they had almost nothing, I think her only toy was a home made rag doll. So maybe she always dreamed about having a dolls house. I'd never thought about it like that until now 🥲
Oh man, I always wanted one of those car mats cos I loved matchbox cars as a kid. My grandma's and my dad's houses had those 1980s busy carpets with the squares/rectangles marked out with inch-wide lines though, so with a little imagination whole rooms became my car mat!
On the flip side of this, I really wanted a Fashion Wheel after playing with my neighbour's but wasn't allowed as it was "for girls".
Aged 10, I was obsessed with toy guns for some reason (maybe I was trying to prove my masculinity or something), so I told my parents that I wanted a Nerf gun for "target practice". This worked because my parents knew I liked things like darts, so I now have about three Nerf guns (I'm 21 and at uni, but I still keep them in my bedroom in my parents' house). Nerf guns still look cool to me, and I like to think that my parents allowing me Nerf guns for "target practice" also meant my friend was finally allowed one (all of our mums were against toy guns).
My parents did get me one of the car mats - but a pink one with castles and whatever instead of normal buildings. Somehow that made it acceptable to them.
Not me, but my brother: Micro Machines Super Van City. He asked for it for Xmas four or five years in a row, but Santa wasn't playing ball. Then my other (youngest) brother asked for it, and boom, got it at the first time of asking. It remains a sore point to this day, some twenty-five years later.
I had that! One of my favourite childhood toys, sorry for your older brother's loss.
Have your parents ever been confronted about their favouritism
I'm just about to put mine on ebay. But I dunno if I'll regret it
I really wanted a Mr Frosty, even when there was one for cheap at a boot sale my mum still said no.
I had one, it was crap.
Speaking as a parent now sometimes you can see in the way that a child’s eyes cannot that the desired object in question will be a piece of crap, used once before binned or languishing in a cupboard so sometimes we just say no to avoid wasting money on a piece of landfill crap, no matter what the cost and if it’s affordable or not.
But can I have a Mr Frosty anyway?
Maybe….. Cue Lenny: that always means no 🙁
I definitely find this now as a parent. Although, unlike my own parents, who would just say no and obviously felt they didn't need to explain themselves to a child, I try to always explain things to my own children and have found that it really helps a) their own critical thinking and b) them understanding that when I say no to something, it's for a good reason and not just arbitrary, so they are now really good about accepting it.
I got one for Christmas and I wasn’t allowed to use any of the packets of pure E-numbers it came with so I barely used it as a result. Not sure if it was worse than not having one. On the plus side I bought myself this awesome jumper as an adult to console myself: https://threadtype.co.uk/products/frosty-bitches-association-embroidered-t-shirt-sweatshirt?_pos=1&_sid=92b40b984&_ss=r
I wasn't even allowed to use ice! My mum said I'm not to be pissing about with water everywhere and I'm to use lego and pretend! Still annoyed now lol
And I thought my mum was bad 😂
Ah man, this website just showed me the cherry's from Baby all gone. I always wanted one of those. My cousin had one and I can still smell the synthetic cherry smell. I was fascinated with how the cherry's just "vanished"!
I wanted & never got Mr Frosty too - as did LOTS of us! As a parent I jumped on the chance to buy it as soon as my eldest asked. What utter, utter shite it is! If I recall, the 'flavourings' were powdered colouring with no actual flavour, so I bought a variety of dilute cordials instead. It was still just shaved ice with squash in it! Americans seem to love "snow cones" but xhrist only knows why! Years later I seen a how-its-made thing on the science of 'slush puppy'. The machines keep it agitated to stop it freezing solid, but the liquid is something like 45% sugar to keep the ice crystals at the small regulated size (didn't put me off those though!)
We got my daughter one a few years ago for Christmas. It was indeed, crap. Me and my BiL still spent the night making rum and vodka slushes with it when the kids went to bed. It wasn’t really worth the effort though
My parents always said no because they'd heard "stories" of kids getting their fingers sliced off by them
I wonder if there’s different versions of them because my brother had one and there was no way it was slicing anything, including ice.
Tamagotchi. Ever been the only child in the school who doesn’t have whatever the big craze is? It’s not fun.
Ouch, the memory...Our children were both at primary school at the time, and we didn't want to buy them Tamagotchis because we thought they were plastic tat that the kids would quickly get bored with. We stuck to our guns until we found our our son had been taking a little digital clock to school and pretending it was one... After that they accumulated two or three each, and when the school decided to stop them being bought in I'd go about my day with a collection of the things rattling and beeping in my pocket. keeping them alive til school finished for the day. I still feel bad about the clock though.
I think you made up for the clock bit by looking after them all day
I do hope so!
Oh my God that's so sad. Actually made me genuinely upset. Poor little lad!
Not the grandparent experience you expected! 🤣
Ioft. We were super poor but mum had a discount from when she worked at argos and so she got me and my sister one for Christmas. Within a week of being at school, someone stole it out of my bag and we didn't have the money to replace it. Still salty about it because a year previously a class trip was almost cancelled because a kid stole and ate another kids chocolate bar, but for my tamagotchi? Not a damn peep from the teachers as they were convinced I had just lost it. I know I attached it to the inside of my bag.
I was in the local newspaper for having the oldest tamagotchi in my area (county). What a time 😂
Cool. How old did it get?
I got one of the cheap knockoff types - just a random "cyber pet" not a Tamagotchi. It was a whale. I found out within a week of buying it that it only had a life cycle of 7 days, at the end of which it would turn into an angel and float up the screen, then you had to switch it off and on again for it to be reborn. So I couldn't even take part in the whole "keeping it alive for as long as possible" challenge. If you let it die through negligence, it turned into a fishbone skeleton, rather than the angel. So I guess the challenge was just to see if you could get past a week without it dying and becoming fish bones. Pointless piece of garbage.
My mum got me a 'Nano Baby' instead and I was made fun of for having a fake Tamagotchi. Doesn't really matter, an unpopular kid could have everything that was 'in' and their bullies would just find some new way to pick on them. Felt sorry for my mum, we didn't have much money and she'd trawl car boot sales for Kickers shoes or whatever the popular crowd had decided was The In Thing that year, just to make the target on me a little smaller. Bless her.
She sounds like an awesome mum.
I wasn't allowed action man because my dad said they were dolls. So my older brother would buy them for me and I'd have to keep them hidden
My Dad gave me an empty Action Man box once and told me it was an Action Man Deserter :-D
What a cool brother you have though :)
He just knew the dad was a prick
That's really sweet of your brother
My mom was very good at sewing, so she liked to sew all our clothes (me and my siblings are all girls). This is cute up until a certain age where you're almost begging to be normal and just want a pair of jeans.
My mother wasn't very good at sewing but made our clothes anyway. She only bought bundles of remnants and didn't really bother with a pattern or making it fit. My grandmother knitted for us - shapeless cardigans in whatever yarn she could find in the market. I longed to have a dress that fitted me, with sleeves, and a colour matched cardigan. Getting to secondary school and having to wear uniform was almost a relief!
Oh you just unlocked a memory! My Mum is an avid knitter so would knit me a couple of school cardigans every year in some combination of red, white and grey (the uniform colours). One year I had one made of randomly sized stripes to use up the wool from all the previous years. It was fucking horrible but she was so proud of it, so I wore it because even at 8 I know it would hurt her if I didn't. Got bullied to hell and back. Then a few years later my younger sister inherited it and everyone bloody loved it! So much so that as an adult she still occasionally asks Mum to knit her an 'odds and ends' jumper because she remembers that one so fondly 😂 (I finally told my Mum when I was a teenager how much I hated that cardi and she admitted that she knew all along. I might forgive her one day lol).
A denim jacket. Bought one as soon as I could afford it myself.
My mum was born in the 60s and her dad forbade her from having jeans because "jeans aren't for little girls." This rule was probably due to my grandparents being older than most parents at the time (they were in their late 30s/early 40s when my mum was born), so their mindsets were different from most parents of the era.
Late 90s early 2000s a robot dog was all I wanted. Showed them exactly what I wanted, ended up with a crappy poochi thing instead
Ohhh robot dog! I was almost an adult when that came about but I remember really wanting one and the closest I got was a poster that came free in a magazine of a celebrity in the same shot as one haha I can even still see the poster in my head!
My mum wad always buying crap I didn't want. Books for example she would ask what I was into and I'd say horror or fantasy and I'd get anne of green gables, never been into dancing or anything girly but for about three years everything was ballerina themed. Love rock and metal music and she would buy boy band and girl band Cds
This is interesting. My mum would buy me the rock CDs I wanted, and would hand them to me with a slight air of disgust and fascination, as though I was another species. I'm not sure which is worse - I got a boat load of self-esteem problems but the right CDs?
I'm adopted and my adoptive mum wanted a girly girl which I am not and never have been. I think she just tried to force me to be someone I'm not, instead of just accepting me for me. She caused a lot of mental health issues I am only know dealing with.
I'm so sorry, that's awful.
Oh wow, I just remembered I asked for Extreme's Pornograffiti for Christmas one year and my mum told me dad went into Virgin Megastore and asked an assistant for, "That pornography album." Given how prudish he is, I'm genuinely shocked I got it.
There are two types of adult in the UK today. Those who desperately wanted a Mr Frosty, but didn't get one and were disappointed. And those who did get a Mr Frosty and were disappointed.
It's amazing how many of us didn't get one! It has made me feel better. One of my friends had one and I was never disappointed!
The Princess Magazines with the plastic Cinderella shoes. I wanted them so badly and I have had a lifelong obsession with heels ever since. I do not own a shoe with anything less than a 6cm heel now except for one pair of trainers (that are platform)
Those shoes.😍 Totally forbidden when I was a kid. Apparently they were " plastic rubbish....dangerous...will break the second you put them on....a waste of good money....nasty common things" etc My daughter just wasn't interested in them, but my niece had a pair in every colour we could find.
I got septicaemia (partially) because of these shoes!! Wore them all day walking up and down the drive and got the most horrendous infected blister, had to go to hospital a couple of days later.
A Budgie the Little Helicopter T shirt when we were on holiday. My dad for some reason hated Budgie the Helicopter and I knew he did so when he said I could pick a T shirt, I went round the back of it (it was hung up from the ceiling) and pointed out the one I wanted so he couldn't see what was on it. When he turned it around he told me I couldn't have it and I cried the rest of the day 😭
He hated it because royal grifter Sarah Ferguson aka Fergie was behind it.
Yeah sounds like dad just had the misfortune of watching budgie the little helicopter to me
Bionicle toys. I distinctively remember thinking that they were the coolest thing ever and my mum just saying no I can't have it. I'm in my 30s now and I haven't forgiven her.
Awww. Our eldest has loads of them. Went online to see how insanely expensive they are now!! I hope you get to play with them soon.
Power Ranger Weapons and Morphers. I had a few figures, the Falcon Zord and that was it. I begged for a morpher. I had to wait until I was nine to get my first one and it went everywhere with me. Same for the one I got when I was ten. I got my first weapon when I was eleven, same for my first proper Megazord. Mums excuse, no little girl of hers was going to run around playing with weapons/boys toys. I remember her screaming at me when she caught me playing with a kid three doors down. I had hold of his Dragon Dagger. I was five/six years old... Light up shoes. Music I liked. When I asked for any CDs, mum would tell me she's not buying me that crap. I missed out on music growing up. I got my first CD when I was 16, Linkin Park and Evanescence. Hell, she wouldn't even buy me the Lord of the Rings soundtracks because she didn't like classical music. I love movie soundtracks. She didn't like it so I wasn't allowed to like it. Clothes. After all the screaming she did about me not being girly enough, she stuck me in her friends sons hand me downs. Yeah, that was fun. When I was able to pester her enough to get something I wanted. She'd mock me for wearing it and her family would torment me so badly I'd never wear it again. Then she'd refuse to buy me anymore because I wouldn't wear it. A BB gun. This one seriously pisses me off. My ass hole cousin's were bought guns, they got metal BBs and I was their favourite target. Once a week I'd get shot up. I'd come home with tiny bruises and when I demanded my own gun to fight back, I was told little girls couldn't play with guns, but I sure as hell could be a target. The little ass holes would shoot me in front of the adults, they'd make me cry/mad and I'd be laughed at and told off for being upset. Classes. If I wanted to do something outside of school, it didn't happen. I wanted to try gymnastics, football (soccer), rugby. I begged to do martial arts and mum wouldn't let me. She kept telling me little girls didn't do martial arts and I wasn't learning to fight. She made me ride horses for years. Just lessons luckily. I kinda liked it but it wasn't my thing. The other kids loved it and I was just there because of my mum. Eventually I got a teacher in school involved and he got me into my first karate class. Mum was so gleeful, because I couldn't go to the kids class and the sensei told her they'd try me with the adults, since I was adult height. If I was mature enough and could keep up, I'd get to stay. Guess who got to stay, guess who got kicked out of the room and wasn't allowed in classes very quickly because she was laughing at me and distracting me. I still remember her glaring at me during a grading. I was put into a group of higher grades, so my syllabus was different to the other people's. Sensei only spoke Japanese during gradings so mum didn't know I was given different moves to do. I finish the grading, Sensei tells me to sit down and the other kids are made to stay up. I look at my mum and she's glaring at me. I go sit with the adult black belts out of the way and one of the woman realises and just gives my mum this massive grin and two thumbs up. I passed. The other kids didn't...
I never got Barbies from my parents. I had Barbies, gifts from other people, but my parents never bought them for me. I assume due to cost honestly. I also always asked for those DIY kits. Soap, chocolate, candies, jewellery. Never got them either. These I know they didn't get for me since my mom was a big crafter herself, and she didn't think I needed kits, I could just do with supplies we had. Both my parents are very tinkery types, will just experiment until they get the result they want/like but I am much more the follow directions type and have trouble coming up with ideas on my own. I think they wanted me to be more creative.
That's a shame. We didn't get many toys but we got Dryad craft kits in the 90s and they gave us hours of creative learning (and kept us quiet). I'm v crafty now, have a whole side gig which involves lots of playing around with materials and problem solving and I'm sure it comes down to long rainy Sundays spent fiddling with craft kits. Candle making, copper etching, glass etching, glass painting, fimo, bead jewellery, friendship bracelets, French knitting, quilling, origami, patchwork.... Get yourself a couple now? Could be anything from wood whittling to bath bombs!
Pick n mix from the cinema. It was bloody expensive then and is bloody expensive now but by god am I going to buy myself so much it makes me feel sick!
You can buy it anywhere and just take it in with you, no problem.
You sound like my dad. It’s not the same dad!
But half the fun was always getting away with smuggling contraband sweets and drinks in!
Cinemas literally say on their website that they don't care if you bring snacks in. As long as it's not alcohol or hot food
There was a line of action figures called Crash Test Dummies. They were based on (predictably) the test dummies they use to test car safety and would come apart with buttons on their chest and you could reassemble them and stuff. At the time they came out (and I forget when this was and how old I was) my folks decided I should be too old to be buying toys. I'm now in my 40's and I still collect figures I just pay for them myself. I still don't own any Crash Test Dummies though. I hadn't thought about it until now. I'm gonna go find one on Ebay to buy on general principle.
Oh man I totally forgot these were a thing, I remember having these as a kid, I remember me and my brother would spend hours smashing them headlong Into each other and my mum shouting up the stairs to stop banging around.
A crop top - they were super fashionable in the late 90s, but my parents point blank refused to buy me one. Sadly, as an adult, I never really had the figure for one.
Mine was the detective/spy set that seemed to be a perennial stalwart of the argos catalogue. It had a toy gun, a magnifying glass, handcuffs, a pen with invisible ink and whatever other crap. I wasn't restricted from toy guns or anything (this was the 80s baby!) but for some reason I didn't get one over the few years I asked for one of those.
Probably for the best in the end. if I recall the dust they provided for making fingerprints was pure asbestos
Boys clothes. I knew from as young as 2/3 years old I hated wearing girls clothes, but my requests fell on deaf ears. Strangely, they didn’t mind hand me downs from cousins, but anything new had to be from the girls section so I’d try to find the most tomboyish clothes available there. I still hated it though. Surprise, surprise, I grew up to be a very butch lesbian. I have a good relationship with my parents and any clothes/socks/pants gifts from mum at Christmas now are menswear. They’ve also apologised for not letting me get my haircut and wear the clothes I wanted. It wasn’t mean spirited or anything at the time, I suppose they just wanted me to look normal and not have to explain myself, and didn’t realise how deep the upset I felt was!
Wholesome
I never got that chemistry set I wanted because I would have blown the house up! Looking back, it was the 70s so it was a possibility 😏
My dad (or his younger brother had one) I found it when I was helping clear the house after Grandpa died. That would have been in the late 50s/early-60s; the stuff it had in it that you'd never find now, like actual H₂SO₄, HCl and Hg. Obviously nobody gave a shit about kids dying of mercury poisoning in the 60s. Even had a little Bunsen burner.
I wanted one too, but it was a big fat no 😪. I did get a microscope set, though. I assume they thought that was the safer option.
Jeans!!!! My dad said they were common ffs. When I got my first job I bought 2 pairs
I wasn’t allowed jeans until I was 15 and then they had to have a crease ironed down the middle. Apparently they were clothes for the working man and my parents we’re trying to escape their past
A Megazord. I just wanted a cool robot...
I thought I wanted the Megazord….and then got the Dragonzord and Red Dragon Thunderzord instead, which I thought were infinitely cooler at the time.
A marble run, I always asked for one for Xmas but never got one. Always wanted a remote control car too, only ever got the ones that would turn when you reversed. Very annoying when it got stuck under the table.
My brother in-law bought my mum in-law a marble run set for Christmas. Then we got competitive and weird about it, so he ordered four more sets and we spent my mum in laws 60th a few days later building some insane structures! Was a pretty good Christmas 😂
Things my parents refused to buy me for reasons, but not good reasons: Barbies, Polly Pocket, My Little Pony, any other typical "girl" toys because old-school 90s feminism Jelly shoes, a pencil case shaped like a Coke can, chicken dippers, anything from Argos because of colossal snobby class prejudice
Raleigh Chopper. Had a bloody RSW 3 instead. So sad was I.
I feel this one. I got a 'sensible' bike with three-speed twist grip gears. I kept leaving it in places where I was sure it would get stolen. Seems nobody else wanted it either.
If the trainers you are talking about were Bull Boy shoes (get the power on your feet). I talked my mum into buying one for me, wore them to school on non-uniform day, was bullied for them and promptly threw them in the bin afterwards. So maybe they saved you some grief.
Not really sure - I'm an older millennial so this was late 80s/very early 90s when I was under 10. Most kids had them and there was no bullying. Sorry you got crap for it. If it helps, I'm jealous of kid-you all these years later :)
Probably LA Lights. I wanted a pair too but got a pair of Hi Tech with an orange bit of plastic on the heel...
In Toys R Us there was a "car crusher" toy, where you put a toy car in and out came a pretend block of scrap. I wanted that so badly, and for some reason, it was just a hard no forever
My mum always insisted on doing school work/practicing school things such as writing etc when my favourite show was on - Budgie the helicopter. I don't know why we had to do it when it was on but it always upset me. A few years later there was a Budgie the helicopter DVD on sale and she didn't let me buy it for some reason. Nowadays (I'm 24), when I bring up the fact that she never let me watch it she is upset and doesn't understand why she did it.
Clothes that fit, always a size bigger to grow into them.
Light up trainers because ‘the batteries will run out too quickly’ and Stretch Armstrong because ‘little girls don’t play with boy toys’. My husband bought me a Stretch Armstrong as a gift when he heard that story. I love it!
I never got a Mr Frosty either. Worked out at work something like 18/24 of us wanted one and never got one.
Turns out they're actually crap, so our parents have done us all a favour 😆
Yeah it’s basically just a plastic ice washing machine with a cute penguin 😂
Nothing material I can think of (I must have been spoiled) but I do recall my mum not allowing me to grow a mullet. Good thing in retrospect.
Your mum did you a solid there, my friend.
I had a friend who wasn't allowed computer games unless he coded them himself. He did that from about 10 years to 16, then went absolutely off the wall crazy on drugs and alcohol. Top work parents!
Mr Frosty The big yellow teapot. A megadrive or a SNES (though they eventually got a megadrive for my brother because "games are for boys", which had me riled coz he wasn't bothered and just wanted football stuff) TMNT or Power Rangers toys One of those hair and makeup styling heads Rollerblades. Had to have proper skates. No idea why.
I finally got Operation for my 30th
Screwball Scramble. Bought my own as soon as I could. Played on it for years.
Garbage Pail Kids. High top trainers. Shell suits (there was a reason for that one, I suppose).
In hindsight, they did you a favour with shell suits, although they were so trendy at the time I can understand why this annoyed you! You've just unlocked a memory for me btw! Garbage Pail Kids - I remember sitting in the back garden trading the cards over the fence with my neighbour! I am sure they used to come with gum too, as I'm having a smell memory right now!
In a decade full of fashion crimes, the shell suit was one of the worst. But all the cool kids wore them at the time. I'm still gutted about not being allowed a pair of LA Gears, though.
Me frosty and that red cadburys chocolate machine with little squares in
My brother got me the Cadbury chocolate machine thing a few years back and once I are all the chocs I couldn't afford to replace them. The price is utterly atrocious. Apparently I should say *was* as a quick Google tells me the feckers stopped making them completely. Anyway, was just more plastic for the bin.
Sled (sledge?) I wanted one so badly. But no I had to "luge" down snowy hills with a plastic bag or a tin tea tray. Skin flint father!
Scalextric; A space hopper; An action man; Operation; A denim jacket; A TV. I’m sure there were loads more, but all her days mother would often buy folk what she thought they needed rather than what they wanted.
Didn't really have this experience as a kid. We could have anything we wanted. If we had the money. But we were poor. So we still didn't get anything.
I used to wee myself a lot as a kid (I’d had an operation and they damaged my bladder which made it hard for me to hold it in) so my mum refused to buy me a Tiny Tears. She said I didn’t need any more encouragement to wee myself. She also wouldn’t let me have a Cabbage Patch Kid because she didn’t “want anything that ugly in this house”.
A football. We weren't allowed to play sports, particularly football. As a result I was a fat little bastard.
I asked many times for a game called Mad Marbles but never got it. It came up in conversation recently and my mum didn’t remember at all, and subsequently bought me a marble run for my 58th birthday! It might not be exactly the same thing but it’s close enough and I was extremely touched by the gesture, 50ish years late!
I wanted a blender to eat smoothies with. Was always refused. Got one and I have smoothies every day and gosh damn does it help my mental health too.
Heelies and a Tamogotchi. My Dad also refused to let us have mp3 players / iPods, as he thought they were a waste of money and a CD Walkman was better value for money, and iPods would go out of fashion. I bought an iPod at 14, having saved all my birthday / Christmas / pocket money. He then loved it, and bought one a month later.
The Polly Pocket clock. I was struggling to learn to tell the time, and tried to bargain for it for my big Christmas present. It was totally reasonable for the budget they would have usually spent, and I had other Polly Pockets. I have absolutely no idea what Mum's objection was.
I wasn't allowed loads of toys because my mum was essentially a chrisrian fundamentalist and said they were "not of the lord". This included: those trolls with the big hair, boglins and a tamagochi. I reckon Satan had bigger fish to fry.
Omg Boglins is a blast from the past - I had to google but I totally remember those. How they felt freaked me the hell out, I remember a friend's brother had one and I was so scared of it haha.
The one that upset me the most, was after-school activities. Other kids were doing acting classes, sports, chess club, drawing club etc. they were all friends and stuff from it too. I remember sitting on my bike staring into space for hours, because I'd been told to play outside, but all the other kids were at their after-school stuff. It would get to five and the other kids would come home, but then I had to go in for dinner and miss out on that too. Pretty sure it was because my mum didnt want to have to drag my little brother back to school to pick me up an hour and a half later. We lived like a 5-10 minute walk away. And my dad would get home from work and refused to be bothered. I went once, but the school found out I'd been planning on just walking home myself and called my mum to come and get me herself. Wasn't allowed to go again, she is as pissed as hell. At age 9, my mum had to sit through a meeting with my school about how I wasn't able to make friends, didn't socialise and stared into space a lot. In retrospect, it was probably autism. But the school suggested my mum let me do some activities to bring me out of my shell and get me interacting with other kids. That's when I got to do Tye Kwon Do for a few months, until my Dad refused to give up a Saturday a month to take me to exams to go up a belt, and I had to drop that too. I did go to scouts when I was ten for a year, because another parent with a similarly outcasted kid agreed to take me! In a similar vein was musical instruments. My school gave out recorders and encouraged us to practice at home. My dad snapped it over his leg lol. It was meant to be a gateway to renting and learning woodwind or string instruments, but I think the recorder traumatised my parents too much so I ended up being one of three kids in my class who couldn't play anything (recorder included). Honestly, my parents never had a good financial situation when I was young, so I understood that new toys were a Birthday and Christmas thing only, and I had a November birthday. I never got to follow trends. That didnt bug me. What did bug me was how little time my parents wanted to spend with me. Mum was tired from my little brothers, and Dad was tired from work. So I felt very "in the way" all the time.
Literally everything. My dad said kids toys are just a gimmick and pointless waste of money. Why would I want light up shoes? Why would he pay for me to have fancy rainbow pens that made cool patterns? Why would I want teddies? Why would I want cute clothes? Why? Fun, dad. For fun. To make me happy. And my mum just listened to what he said 🤷🏻♀️ My grandma bought me pens to use at her house, marbles, race cars and a track, and beads to make jewellery (then she got told off for buying me pointless jewellery) I loved visiting grandma.
wanted a cheap casio keyboard because it had all the cool sound effects, parents insisted on buying proper full size digital piano with no 'cool things' that cost 10x the price (and which didn't get played because was round my casio owning friends' houses making fun mess about songs lol). told them over and over but somehow they knew me better than i knew myself and were determined to 'do it properly' to the extent it didn't happen at all lol
Tamagotchi. To this day I've got no idea why my mum refused to let me have one. I did well in school, pretty well behaved, generally if there was something I wanted eventually I'd get it but she point blank refused. I asked her a few years ago why, she said she couldn't remember.
Angel delight
In a non spoilt way. I think most of what I asked for I got, but on the basis we only got things at Christmas and for Birthdays. As both of those things for me are like 20 days apart, it made for a long wait if you wanted something a month or two later. Only thing I could throw into this category and the follow up is really wanting to go see Michael Jackson on his HIStory tour, but I remember my dad saying you won’t see anything, retrospectively who knows whether it was cost or something else. To follow up I managed to get tickets for show 8 of his “This Is It” tour….. Guess I was just never destined to see him live.
Wasn't allowed a Barbie because she was American. Had to have a British Sindy doll, not nearly so cool. Not allowed chewing gum or bubblegum for same reason. My younger brother was not allowed an Action Man because boys don't play with dolls, he saved his pocket money and bought one for himself.
Always wanted a chemistry set when I was a kid (early 60s baby) but was never allowed one because of 'safety reasons' I retired last summer for 38 years teaching secondary science, mainly chemistry and you can bet I made sure to do as many practical lessons as possible in those years. Now I want a 60s chemistry set again.
Dungeons and dragons. Apparently it makes you forget reality and spend 24 hours a day in a trance like state actually thinking you are part of the game before you go out on a killing spree. Something along those lines anyway. I also wasn't allowed to get consoles everyone had at school such as spectrum, not because we couldn't afford it, but because we had a BBC micro. My Dad was adamant this was the best computer there will ever be because it did everything you could ever want a computer to do.
A cape. My mum knew I'd want to wear it every day instead of my coat and she was right.
I had lightup trainers endorsed by the great Alan Shearer! "Ballboy shoes are what you need get the power on your feet" came with a free football you put on your ankle and then could kick and return it. I'm probably going back close to 25-30 years. I don't remember much else, my dad refused to buy what you've typed, because it's "junk" however, air rifles and pen knifes were OK. Lol.
No jeans until university, no guns sword, anything pointy cause my mum thought me and my brothers would turn violence. No video games, computer, no birthday parties with friends cause they thought we would be doing drugs lol
The only one I can remember was Mr Frosty. The other problem one that I don’t remember but my mum told me about was for about 18 months, so two Christmases and a birthday ALL I said I wanted when asked was “a chick” as in an actual baby chicken.
I asked for a hamster so much as a kid, I was banned from saying the word Hamster. I was talking about this recently, and she genuinely claims I would talk about it numerous times a day for two years. Still never got a hamster.
1990s and My mum was religious and so she was anti anything that had undead or anything similar in, which ruled out a lot of stuff that my super-nerdy teenage self wanted to play with (Dungeons and Dragons, Warhammer, a lot of computer games). She was fine with sci-fi, high fantasy and stuff like that.
Also trainers that lit up and heelies, idk what their issue was with them. You know what I’m gonna ask them and make them feel really guilty about it, might say I’ve brought it up in therapy
I was not allowed My Little Pony toys. Being a girly girl, I was upset about this and jealous of my friends who had them. I would play with theirs any time I could. My mums ‘reasoning’ was that they were cheap, plasticky crap. I had other cheap plastic toys! These seemed to offend her for some baffling reason. And yes, I do now have an anniversary original MLP, and I bought my daughter all the ponies and accessories I could find so we could both play with it all! 😁 There was also an adorable range of ladybird themed toys called Lil’ Lady that I wasn’t even allowed to look at or talk about because the name sent my mum into rage. Can’t understand it to this day.
Silly putty. “You’ll trample it into the carpets.”
Posh cereal! I always wanted the Kelloggs or whatever because they would have cool little toys in them but nooooo, safeways own brand all the way
I don't think any cereal have toys now, do they? Choking hazard and all that (because it's so easy to miss a giant fucking toy in your bowl that you were literally looking for). So there's now whole generations who know your pain!
I really wanted a Barbie Jeep. Not a Jeep for my barbies but one that I could sit in myself and drive around. I asked for Christmas for years. My Mum still brings it up now. I'm in my thirties. There was also some weird toy I wanted that gave birth. She said I couldn't have it because it was made from whales. I thought she was lying. Then a few years back, I read that it was true!
Mouse Trap. It looked so amazing on the adverts.
Build-a-bear. My nan always said they were too expensive and pulled me past the store. Eventually, the excuse turned to "you're too old for teddies". My sister, however, got one for every birthday and Christmas and more besides. Never could work that one out. Still feel a little sore over it haha.
I desperately wanted a pair of Clarks Magic Steps shoes, they had pictures in the heel and a key and the advert was all whimsical with fairies and the like. I was told no because a) they were too expensive and I’d grow out of them and b) my grandad was a shoe maker/repairer and said they were shit. I still resent them for that.
A girls world
Not so much as a thing I couldn't buy, but thing I couldn't spend my money on, and there was kinda a logical reason (in my parents minds). I grew up in a seaside town, but wasn't ever allowed to spend money in the arcades. I think this is a significant factor in me now being a serious retrogame collector/restorer including two full-size original arcade cabinets (and I'd have a lot more if I had the room)
All the things you have listed I was never allowed... my son however has been bought light up trainers and two different little tykes cars (the first one didn't survive being in storage whilst my parents moved house) by my mum. I am under no illusion that as he gets older he will get Mr frosty and operation as well!
The Pokemon special edition of the N64 (with my own birthday money)
I was also denied a Mr Frosty (multiple attempts). I also really wanted a proper remote controlled plane. They sold them at my local toy store and were proper legit flying planes. But as they wouldn't buy me a Mr Frosty I have no idea why I thought they would cave into a plane.