What gift items do you remember from your childhood which would never be gifts today?

[FredaFrogspawn]

Another thread ended up accidentally debating the fact that ashtrays were common gifts for weddings or twenty first birthdays. I remember big marble or onyx ones, and ones on a stand which went by the arm of the chair. No one smoked in our house and we still had a shed load of these things.
Another thing I remember is steering wheel covers, in pleather. What were those about?? And leather covers for the TV listings magazines we all had to have before papers printed what was on with ‘Radio Times’ self importantly embossed on them. (My dad kept his TV Times in there and ringed the programmes he wanted to watch with a Quink ink capitalised ‘Tell Dad When This Is On.’)

Anything else?

We had a novelty holder for 'guest cigarettes'.

It was a donkey. You pulled his saddle up and placed the cigarettes inside. Then when you pressed its head, it shat one out!

Classy family we were

My brother’s always received car cleaning kits for Christmas when they were young adults, like it was a treat to clean the car.

My dad was in the Far East in the sixties when I was a child. He brought my sisters and I beautiful musical dolls back. You could pull off their heads and there was a 6 inch metal spike. My sister was three at the time.
I also remember being given chocolate cigarettes, in facsimile Camel packs

Ha you have reminded me of chocolate smokers sets, with fags and pipes and cigars, all in chocolate.

Dolls with long knitted dresses which covered the spare toilet roll.

Bible bath in a poodle shaped bottle with a slot indented in the lid - when you’d finished the bubbles, you were meant to get your mum to open the slot with a sharp knife and it became a money bank.

Umm bubble bath. Not bible.

These tacky souvenir dolls in the classy plastic tubes

Shoe cleaning kit, bit like the car cleaning kit up thread, like the recipient would enjoy using it.
Talcum powder in a tin

Yes! And bath cubes. The original bath bombs. No fizz, just lavender smelling bath water.

I had a few of those tube dolls. I remember one from Yugoslavia.

Bromley soaps and drawer liner from a classmate when I was 8. WTAF

Bromley soaps and drawer liner from a classmate when I was 8. WTAF

My brother’s always received car cleaning kits for Christmas when they were young adults, like it was a treat to clean the car.

To my DH it is!!!! He loves a good AutoGlym gift set, the fucking weirdo

Ha ha!!! I also remember The Guiness Book of Records being an exciting gift ever Christmas before we all just googled everything. We had a big collection of A-Z encyclopaedias too in the lounge which were referenced on occasion in a big debate. Also at Christmas we had things that held the cutlery.

Oh yes drawer liners! Don’t forget the scented sachets for hanging in your wardrobe too

@BornInAThunderstorm

These tacky souvenir dolls in the classy plastic tubes

My granny had loads of these. I always wanted to play with them but was never allowed!

Drawer liners at 8!! You must have been thrilled 😁

Those tins of travel sweets in icing sugar.

A box of Weekend ‘candies’ with the weird lime one, the nougat one and the pair of chocolate covered hazelnuts like little squirrel balls.

A golliwog.

Enid Blyton books with Dick and Fanny as characters.

Cassettes/personal cassette player.

A tent that is tiny and takes hours to put up.

Doing school projects on a country and writing to their Embassy for info. Always got a big pack of stuff back. Oh the excitement 😂

@FredaFrogspawn

Umm bubble bath. Not bible.

I loved the idea of bible bath 😂

At Christmas we always got a tangerine and some nuts in a stocking.

Sending bad paintings to Vision On in the hope that it would be featured in the gallery one week. (Hummus the deer hunter tune)

those Avon pomander things to hang in wardrobes

A dressing table set with a brush, comb and handheld mirror.

For my dad, we always bought old spice or brut.

Handkerchiefs as a gift?

Hums! And I went off topic. Sorry! But I did make mum presents from Blue Peter. ‘You‘ll need a yoghurt pot, two toilet roll inner tubes, an old pair of tights, some sharp scissors (ask you parents first) and some sticky tape (never ever sellotape. Not on the BBC!)

Oh I loved the weird lime sweets.
And coveted many a posh doll in a plastic tube. As a child you always wanted to free them but they were just to look at.
Bath cubes that made you itchy and smelled funny.
Knitted socks and bed jacket..I was born late 70s so still a bit odd 😁