One memory that kept popping up occasionally over the years is of my mother lending my neighbor my favorite matchbox car. By the time I'd gotten to him, he'd crushed it. I don't think he meant anything by it, and I don't have bad feelings to either one of them, I just know how much that sucked. I do remember that nobody gave a shit, and I never got it replaced.

Late last year I decided I was gonna get it back, so I've spent a few hours spread over some months when I was bored at my pc looking at matchbox size red Dodge Vipers from the 90s. Most had the wrong color, or extra decals, or the wrong wheels, etc. Eventually I found it, ordered a copy, and it got delivered about a month ago. I don't play with it, but it sits on my desk at home as a sort of fidgeting toy.

I'm sure it says some bad shit about my psyche but to me it's a nice reminder of a time when I was much happier. Maybe I should get some beyblades.

After years of my family saying I'm too difficult to buy gifts for, and me saying, "What the hell are you talking about? Just get me LEGO!", one of my kids got the message and has been getting me LEGO sets for Christmas every year.

It might have started when I bought myself the Cinderella Castle set.

The only problem I have is I'm 53, not 13. Sitting hunched over a pile of LEGO bricks for hours leaves me in pain. I need to come up with a space where I can play without injuring myself.

I do it all the time. Toys are super fun.

I wanted a Tyco RC car as a kid. My parents actually got it for me after waiting nearly a whole year for my birthday, and it was one of the most expensive birthday gifts I'd ever received.

Turns out it uses a proprietary battery that wasn't even included in the package! We'd have to go out and buy that separately, which made the thing like 50% more expensive.

We couldn't afford that so I agreed to return the RC car and pick something else.

I've decided to boycott them for life. Stupid Tyco for running my birthday with a stupid toy that doesn't even include the battery.

The one toy I wanted more than anything as a kid was the Jurassic Park Compound.

I see them on Ebay going for $100-200, but that's just for the building itself. It'd be pretty pointless to have a big fence with no dinosaurs in it, so I'd have to buy some dinos too. And I need action figures to sit in the watchtower and watch over the dinosaurs, you gotta have that.

And then the realities of adulthood set in: I wouldn't enjoy this toy as much as I would have when I was a kid. Kid me would probably spend hours with this thing crafting big elaborate stories about wrangling dinosaurs and stuff like that. Nearly-40 me would set up the toys, make sure everyone's in cool poses, and then it would probably sit on a shelf. I'm not really sure it's worth it.

So while I'm sad I never got the toy as a kid, I think going back and buying it nowadays would be kind of an expensive hollow victory.

I never got that Gameboy I wanted, but that's OK, I'm made up for it using emulators years later.

I wanted the micro machine van that opened as a town with the little mini cars.

I always wanted one of those little cars kids can drive. Nearly 30 and almost done saving up for my first car. I’m very excited!

Not exactly a toy.

Wanted the black toyota pick up from back to the future when i first watched the movie as a kid.

Ended up buying a version of it without remembering how much i wanted that truck as a kid.

When i saw it the first time after buying my truck i thought holy shit adult me bought child me his dream vehicle without realizing it

(It was not the exact same but might as well have been)

Nah. a 2.5 meter aircraft carrier is not really any more practical today than it was in 1986.

I had a Commodore 64 as a kid but we couldn't afford the disk drive (it was as much as the computer). I had to settle for a cassette drive. About 15 years later, I was at a garage sale and saw a C64 with disk drive but no cords. I asked the seller if it still worked. He said "For a dollar, does it matter?". Still have them.

I wanted a Sega Genesis for Christmas one year but I already had a Super Nintendo that I played all the time and my parents didn't want to pay for another console. When I was in highschool, a used game store opened in my town. Back then game collecting was a lot cheaper than it is now, so I was able to get a Genesis for like $30 and I enjoyed it.

When the 3ds was relatively new, I saw one being sold at a garage sale for $20 bundled with Pokemon. Clearly just some old person who didn't know its value. I wanted it so bad, but my dad said no. I didn't have a game console until the Wii, and never had a handheld. I've always been a huge gamer, but I was basically forced onto PC lol.

Yes!! I bought a Lite-Brite.

True story. I was in a comic store and saw a statue of a character I loved as a kid. He wasn't an action figure when I was young, so technically I'd never wanted it as a kid. Anyway, I saw it and wasn't going to get it, but then I realized if I didn't buy it I'd be kicking myself for years.

I brouhgt it and it sits on my shelf. I seldom think about it, but when I do I'm happy i have it.

I loved Transformers when I was a kid. My parents never worried about putting food on the table but we didn't have a lot of disposable income, so I never had the Power Wheels or the Action Figures, or whatever when I was growing up.

One day in my late 30s I realized I could just buy Optimus Prime. So I did. He's hanging out on a shelf in my office.

No. I always wanted steel battalion but it's even more expensive now and I still don't have an original Xbox to play it on. If yall don't know it's a 400usd game that comes with a super big controller for a mech suit. You have to use that controller for it and if you don't eject from your mech before it explodes the game permanently deletes your save file.

Jep, I bought a Furby when I first moved out. After about 2 months it stopped working (didn't even drop it). So I cut it open, the cheapest piece of electronics I ever saw for that price tag.

Foreshadowing for what I would soon learn about the adult world in general.

When a good friend had a child I bought them a big Brio set. Every kid should have Brio.

My friend and his brother both do woodworking as a hobby, they made custom track, bridges, tunnels, and rolling stock. It's now a whole room in a house. It should last a few generations.

I always wanted a cool Voltron toy with all the lions, but I never got one. When Lego released theirs I bought it straight away.

Trypticon. He unfolds into a base, and he walks in Dino mode, and he's so freaking cool.

Yes, this apple puzzle. I wanted it sooo bad and I got it in my late 30s and it's awesome. And they make a bunch of other ones now. I've done the skull, shark and pirate ship too. But the apple man.. the apple.

https://3dcrystalpuzzle.com/products/apple-red

No... but thanks to emulation I could play all the games I couldn't play as a kid because we couldn't afford consoles or VGA colour screens.

Sort of. My grandparents spoiled me growing up so I had a lot of fun toys, but lost them all in a house fire in high school. I've been slowly picking up some of my favorites ever since, everything from Mighty Max to Transformers to OG Gameboy games.

I did. Bought myself a Traxxas Slash 4x4 and got to drive it a bit before my SO at the time took it upon herself to tell me how much of a man-child I am for wanting/owning one and it took the wind right out of my sails. Only thing I have now it a Traxxas Bandit that I have no idea if it works. Have no batteries. Sold my nice Transmitter when I was forced to sell my Slash. Don't know if I will ever get into the hobby again even though I am single now.

Oh yeah! I wanted a small RC helicopter, quite simple thing, never got one. I remembered that a few years ago & really got into pov drones. Another consideration was the factual impossibility for me to get a real pilots licence. So I took the cheap road. My wife's opinion may vary.

I just want to say thank you to OP. I am going out and treating myself to all the stuff little me wanted

Why grow up otherwise? Also, why grow up samewise?

yes. do it, op. make younger you proud.

I bought a ton of ps1 , ps2 and ps3 games recently that I couldn't afford before. Also I buy my son Lego sets he too young to build himself and make them for him because I find it really fun .

Grew up with Commodore 64s and Ataris. Always thought it'd be ace if the graphics were loads more realistic

FUCKING FINALLY 😂

Good news - you still can!

Seriously, open a new tab on your browser NOW and jump on eBay or whatever and buy it. Even if you aren't surprised by how much fun it still is (which you probably will be), you'll be able to stop regretting NOT having it. No downside!

Yes

Other than that I mostly got all the things I wanted because I didn't really want much. The only expensive toy I wanted was a proper RC car and a PC but I bought those both with my own money that I had saved. I was a frugal kid.

My wife/kids recently got me Kirby's Dreamland for a Gameboy that I've had since about 1990 and never had any decent titles for.

Nah, my memory's not that good

I always wanted these little cube things with an LCD on the front that had a stick man on it. There were various different cubes each with a different character, they basically went through little actions on the screen, and you stick the cubes together and sometimes they'd travel between them. I bought them as an adult, it was amusing very briefly lol

ETA: I know a horse is a living being and not a toy.

Fuck yeah! I always wanted a horse even though I don't ride and never have aside from a couple of times. Nothing professional. Did not grow up around farms or horses. City folk through and through.

Now my kid is an equestrian and I will never forget their face when we got their horse! It felt so good to be able to do that for them and they take such good care of their animal.

No because I’m sad and broken and all the things that gave me joy as a kid only remind me of our rampant consumerism in this capitalistic hellhole

legos

I wanted the RC car kevin (i think his name was ) used from home alone but now i realised that kinda car isn't real amd the closest thing you could have is an internet connecting camera strapped to a big ass 4*4 and a computer to watch it through but that doesn't even come to close as what it is depicted as in the movie and i have lost interest . Also still not that rich to spent that much on toys nor interested to be fair .

I got a Bank Shot unit (electronic pool game by Parker Bros) and played the shit out of it.

Later I'd be seduced into PC pool games that featured a robust physics engine guaranteed to improve your game!

I wasn't obsessive enough to play it to improve my game, though.

Yep. And it was great. My wife and I married young - only in our early twenties. Because of reasons both us had grown up a little too fast and as young adults we mourned the fact that we'd never really gotten to enjoy our childhoods.

So we decided to hunt down all the crap we wanted as kids. We hit antique shops and thrift stores, eBay and garage sales. We found a ton of the things we'd always wanted.

Popples and Rainbow Bright dolls.
Kenner Star Wars action figures.
Video game consoles.
Transformers.

We bought the crap our inner children still wanted and gave ourselves permission to enjoy it - and then let it go.

Ultimately, we didn't keep much of it - though we've still got a box of a few favorite dolls, games and action figures somewhere. A few toys even got passed down to our own kids.

I don't regret a moment of it. Giving ourselves a belated childhood was fun - and it helped us move on and say goodbye to that part of our lives.

In my 20s I bought an NES because I never had one, despite it being the hottest toy ever during my childhood. It was just too expensive for my parents to get me one, back in the 80s and early 90s.

Kind of. I bought a SNES mini loaded with ROMs for about 10 different retro systems. Now I can play the games I didn't get a chance back in the day.

I didn't buy it, but my wife got it for me as a Christmas present one year. The Lego Star Wars imperial star destroyer. It was gigantic and amazing and took maybe 8 hours of building. It would have taken meweeks as a child.

I'm getting Hot Wheels and Transformers whenever I see a good one nowadays. But the issue is, they don't make them as good as they used to.

I'm working on it, slowly.

I used to love all kids of weapons as a child. As in, from kindergarten on up. My mom was very anti-gun, didn't like the idea of me having knives and swords, etc., and my dad went along with it. I know that I put an AK-47 on my Christmas wish list at one point.

I got my rifle, shotgun, and archery merit badges my first year at summer camp, when I was 13.

Now I'm... A little bit older. And I'm still adding to my gun collection. I don't have as many knives as I want because my wife doesn't like knives, but she's fin with guns. I just competed in a match last weekend--I didn't do very well, but I had a lot of fun, and didn't do anything dangerous!--, and I've got another one coming up in 3 weeks.

I still don't have an AK-47 (or any other Kalashnikov variant). But that's mostly because it turns out that they're not really very good.

EDIT - I took longsword classes for a while, and loved them, but the closest HEMA to me now is about an hour and a half. Oh well.

Inside every person there is a child that never got That One Ting™, and on behalf of that kid I say; do it!

yep. all the video games i had always wanted, like epic mickey and mario sunshine. now i still havent played them lol

Yeah! I think I still have the exact same tastes as when I was a kid. I always wanted a dirt bike and now I have one, and I always wanted a fast computer with a good sound system, which I now keep relatively up to date. Maybe my kid self would be disappointed that I don't have a fast car though!

I still don't have a Lego star destroyer (though the one I really want is the Venator), so no

I got myself a Gameboy colour yesterday. I posted about how expensive they were a bit ago on reddit and I got spam downvoted by a bunch of Scalpers lmao. Another reason not to use Reddit. I got a blue teal one and grabbed some games today and it felt so amazing to feel and see in real life, a gameboy game.

Nope. I realized that I didn't even want it anymore so no point. I do pay attention to my current wants now though - gotta find that balance, Zen.

Finding a functional Armatron has been difficult.