21 Comments
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Frank Bard's avatar

We did have the coolest toys. :) Underoos over here too. Did you forget Cloroforms? :)

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Punkrockmichelle's avatar

You nailed it. I had a set of the wonder woman underoos. I still have a framed pic of little me in them flexing on display. Sit & spin was great. I want an adult version of it! I bet it would be great exercise.

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Liz LaPoint's avatar

It sure would be great exercise! I remember gleefully spinning for so long on the Sit'n Spin that my brother complained I was hogging it, LOL

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Tim's avatar

So very well written! We also had toys that launched projectiles (dart guns & such), toys that required the use of the oven (Shrinky Dinks) and toys that were outright banned (Rest in Peace: lawn darts).

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Liz LaPoint's avatar

Thank you!

YES, I remember Shrinky Dinks! But my brother scarred me for life after he got a dart gun and shot at me whenever I tried to enter his room LOL

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Sun Seeker's avatar

I still use those tins as sewing kits....

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Rob "Flack" O'Hara's avatar

The first year my wife and I celebrated Christmas together, I opened my stocking Christmas morning and found an apple and an orange in there. I was like, "honey, you are too young to have dementia already. Why are you putting food in our stockings?" She said Santa always brought her an apple and an orange when she was young and all I could say was "well, your Santa was poor." What made the whole thing more confusing was we had apples and oranges on our kitchen counter. Why would Santa bother to visit our house from the North Pole and then just grab things from our own house to put in our stockings? "Hey look, Santa brought you our TV remote!" I've since learned she wasn't the only one and while I understand the reasoning behind the tradition, when Santa comes to this house he brings me Hersey's Kisses, Peeps, and M&M's in a plastic tube that looks like a candy cane. Santa has a lot of traveling to do in one night so he can keep that orange for himself.

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Liz LaPoint's avatar

🤣 Right? Give me the candy-stuffed cane Mr Claus!

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Heidi Mohrlang's avatar

All the boys and men in my dad’s side of the family got Hanes whitey tities, tube socks and undershirts from my sweet Gramma Leah. The women and the girls got the special gifts 🎁

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Randall Hayes's avatar

I got the Hulk Underoos and my little brother got the Spider-Man. I was SO jealous.

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KMB's avatar
Dec 30Edited

I laughed out loud at so much of this. Yep to the underwear! We got oranges and mixed nuts-walnuts, pecans, hazelnuts, etc- in our stockings. (And I used to love when the high school sold boxes of oranges from Florida.)

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L.M. Elm's avatar

Love the sweater. Better Off Dead is one of our X-mas movies.

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Liz LaPoint's avatar

It’s one of the most underrated comedies!

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Chase Roper's avatar

Not counting my Nintendo related gifts, a couple of my favs were My Pet Monster and a Popple!

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Henny Hiemenz's avatar

This was great! Although I’ll ask, is there a healthy way to have a relationship with puppets, ventriloquism, and cowboys? Seems like a unique trifecta of perversion any way you slice it 🤣

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Liz LaPoint's avatar

“A unique trifecta of perversion” sums it up perfectly 😆

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Primitive Ledger's avatar

The Spider-Man 🕷 suit does look familiar.

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jabster's avatar

Google "adult big wheel". You're welcome.

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Liz LaPoint's avatar

Ha! I just did and wow, what looks normal on a kid looks ridiculous on an adult LOL

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jabster's avatar

Growing up we had a neighbor (not poor, the dad drove a Bimmer) where the mom made her own Underoos for her kids out of long johns. She did a decent job with Rit dye and stitched-on bat and spider appliques.

Fruit for Christmas. Unless it's something exceptional like what Harry & David sell, yeah, that's a tradition that's past its sell-by date for GenXers and later. Not when you can get all of the basic fruit at reasonable prices at the local grocer year-round.

Yeah, there was a time when bringing back a bushel box of Indian River citrus from Florida was something special. That time is past.

I understand that some folks have a hard time providing even a hard-candy Christmas. But as P.J. O'Rourke said, salting doesn't make steaks tough. Poverty makes steaks tough, sometimes absent altogether. But there's a difference between truly having to do without and donning a hair shirt to signal some kind of virtue.

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Miguel Cruz's avatar

Thankfully no. I did have some awesome tshirts with Pac-Man on them. Also, a GenX guilty pleasure… Have you ever listened to the 80s TV theme song mixes of n YouTube. I’ll throw them in and get a warm nostalgic comforting feeling. I was brainwashed watching these shows as a latchkey kid or watching a show with my parents… Why do I get comfort from these theme songs? It’s sooo weird.

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