Things your friends had, but parents wouldn't let you have

[HardyGirl]

First, let me preface this by saying that I'm really happy for Brian's new book, but I can't feel that joy some of you feel, b/c my mom would never let me have Rack Toys. And that got me thinking about some stuff other kids had that my parents, (or should I say Mom), wouldn't let me have. (I know, Nerd Therapy time, right?) Some other examples are:

*a Big Wheel (I'd outgrow it too fast)
*a lunchbox ("you'll just lose it")
*Wacky Packages (even though I got some from Wonder Bread, and I did buy a few and had to sneak them in)
*an "OOOH" hat (ski mask, and it was "for boys")
*Pro-Keds sneakers (also for boys)
*trick-or-treating (only to folks I knew in our building, which took all of 10 mins.)

In all fairness to my mom, I think that b/c she was an "older mom" (37 when I was born), she just didn't care about the "coolness factor", and sometimes was just way too practical.

So what things were you denied that your other friends had?

[kingdom warrior]

Atari video game system My Mom was totally against video games in the house. She felt I'd want to stay in and play with it all the time....she said heck no...
I bought my first system Nintendo as an adult and she was right about them.......

Other than that she never withheld anything from us.....

[torgospizza]

5" die-cast Shogun Warriors. Mom was afraid of the spring-loaded fists and missles, like one could go through someone's skull or something.

[TomStrong]

My mom was totally against video games when I was a kid. All my friends at school would talk about them like it was the greatest thing. Neither would my mom let me watch horror movies. I didn't see Friday the Thirteenth till I was a grown man. She finally relented on the video game thing when I was a teenager though.

[Mikey]

Motorcycle

Wasn't allowed to get one till I was 15 --- even though I had a car at 12

My mom hated motorcycles with a passion

[JediJaida]

I never got video games, because she would simply tell me that we couldn't afford it, and that junk was for boys anyway.

My mom was also against rack toys (you'd just break it!), stuff from TV (I can't afford that garbage! Tell your father to buy it for you! And he was too cheap to buy anything for me.)

Mego's World's Greatest Supergals (you have enough dolls! Grow the F*** up already! I was eleven at the time.)

Disney books (Those are for babies! You're not a damned baby!)

[thunderbolt]

Slime, but I could have Silly Putty, Play Doh, Shrunken Heads, Creepy Crawlers makeer.

[megoat]

Firecrackers were off limits (they were also illegal in where I lived).
Any sort of dirt bike/ATC/Motorcycle/Moped.
Trampoline.

Basically anything my parents thought would kill or maim me!

[palitoy]

Slime, Fire Crackers, Big Shogun Warriors, Buck Rogers figures, Green Machine/Big Wheel.

[HardyGirl]

My mom vetoed Slime too, but I got around that and bought the gumball machine stuff. (I had to hide it!)

[Figuremod73]

Looking back it was a little expensive but...A commodore 64.
I wanted one of those badly.

[4NDR01D]

-Big Wheel. My mom said it was too low to the ground and cars couldn't see me.
-I did have Mattel Slime, but only for a few days and then it was off limits. The only time I remember my grandma being mad at me (i ruined her carpet).
-Firecrackers (small ones like black cats) were always illegal so I never had them unless my friends went to the States for vacation and brought some back.
-Several band t-shirts when I was in grades 7/8 and high school.(specifically the Sex Pistols, the Cult, Dead Kennedys and Suicidal Tendencies)

[Captain Big Trousers]

Thinking about the thread title, it wasn't so much that I wasn't allowed certain things - it was just that any specific requests were completely ignored (I can't recall ever getting a toy I'd actually asked for), and my toys were completely random. eg: I had four "action figures" but they were all different scales: An Action Man (pilot, no vehicle for him), a Butch Cavendish (not the Lone Ranger or a horse), a Matchbox Fighting Fury (Peg Leg, not the Hook I'd asked for) and a Mego Ivanhoe. Consequently all my play with action figures involved battles with a giant earthbound pilot versus a midget jouster without a horse, or a large cowboy baddie versus a dwarf amputee pirate, or variations thereof.

And my whole toy collection would fit into two boxes.

Actually they did fit into two boxes, when we moved to Australia (when I was nine) and my parents made me give away all my toys.
"We're moving to a country you don't want to go to, and you have to give away all your toys." Parenting 101. Annoyingly, they did bring all of their cheap ornaments and knick-knacks (which mostly ended up in a hock shop when they divorced a few years later).

Not that I'm still bitter or anything.

So I gave my Matchbox car collection (that I'd bought myself with pocket money) to a kid who lived two doors down. A few years later that kid's family also emigrated to Australia. When I was sixteen I visited them. The kid says "I have something to show you" and pulls a box out from beneath his bed. It was my old Matchbox collection, on the other side of the world! Amazing to see after all those years.

"Here," he said, "they're yours. Take them."

Not really. He slid the box back under his bed and kept them all.

Never really got into toys after the age of nine anyway. Spent more time outside.

I've got a nice collection of Matchbox cars now.



TAKE THAT, KARL!

[VintageMike]

As far as what my friends had, I can narrow it down.

1-Darth Vader's Star Destroyer. My folks were good about getting me Star Wars stuff but for some reason didn't get me this.
2-Original White Tie Fighter. Less of a mystery here. My aunt bought me the Darth Vader version one Christmas so my parents refused to get me the white one because it was "the same thing." To this day when i see them, I want to buy it, but don;t because I know it will just sit in a box.
3-The AT-AT. Just too big
4-The Atari 2600 for the longest time. More my Dad because had the foresight to know "you'll only want the next thing". He was right, of course. They finally gave in when I was about 12. Despite wanting new systems there was no give until a got a Nintendo four-five years later.
5-Mego Green Goblin & Joker. I will qualify this one saying if they had been able to find them in the store, they probably would have bought them for me. By the time I was old enough to ask for them though, you could only get them by ordering through Heroes World and they weren't keen on that.

[Hector]

Great Matchbox collection!