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?

Pettit typewriter
Scented tissues
Bottle of bubble bath with a hideous looking dolls head for a top.

@CarrieMoonbeams was number 1 a shaker maker? I remember being desperate for one!

Dolphin shaped Body Shop bath pearls that never quite fully dissolved and left a sort of skin floating round the bath.

OMG a dinky diary, I had totally forgotten about that! I guess a funfax from scholastic book club in the 90s was a sort of knock off of that, but you could add those little books. When my mum finally got me one I was gutted that when you put the little books in that you'd bought, they didn't open properly?

Bath pearls and cubes were a staple of my childhood christmases.

ALWAYS wanted a post office set or Pettit typewriter from the argos catalogue, but alas, never materialised.

I also seemed to receive lots of tiny notebooks with tiny pencils, and also ornamental soaps that would sit gathering dust in the bathroom.

As a PP commented, we seemed to like keeping a lot of things for 'best' and had a sort of 'show shelf' in bedroom. I'm not meticulous about not letting things gather dust and 'keeping for best' is forbidden in this house. Best never comes 😂

Oh lots of memories here. I think a lot of you must be around my age. I desperately wanted the mini Dairy Milk dispenser. I asked for it for Christmas every year for ages but never got it
I collected Whimsies too. And my sister had a collection of deer made from orange glass on her dressing table. I broke one once but never confessed. I think she knew it was me, but I denied it.
Does anyone remember a toy that was very popular for a whike that was basically 2 plastic spheres on strings that you bounced against each other. You were supposed to do various tricks with them, i think they were called Clackers, though that could be a name that we made up in our house I suppose. My sister had a turquoise set and I desperately wanted my own but my Mum said I was too young. I had just about worn her down and got her to agree when they were banned! Apparently the plastic was too brittle and had a tendency to burst causing facial damage. I think a few kids were blinded. Terrible of course, but at the time I didn't care, I was just upset that I couldn't have them!

A white Sindy doll with dreadlocks.

Just seen one on eBay for £40!!

Who had Plasticraft? I spent hours embedding leaves, dead insects and the like into blobs of probably highly toxic plastic.
And some kind of rubber moulds that you poured plaster of paris into and then painted the resultant ugly models. I had Snow White and the Seven Dwarves and probably many more. It made a hideous mess.
My Mum was very tolerant of my artistic endeavours really.

Chocolate smoking sets.

Writing sets, a pack of themed notepaper, cards and envelopes.

'Clackers' yep lets give kids two big glass marbles connected with a string and see if they can hit them together so fast they go over the hand and clack again.

@MrsAvocet I've just read your post, there were plastic ones but my mum had bright red glass ones that shattered.

'Pretty Peaches' bath stuff, marketed as being for girls but it brought me out in a rash, I still got some every birthday.

My brother got a working steam engine and chemistry sets used to have some pretty dangerous stuff in. I seem to remember one with something 'radioactive' in it.

I loved clackers, they were banned at our school as somebody smashed their knuckles with them.

The noise they made was awesome! Clackers that is, not smashed knuckles!

There have been various toys here that my children have received in recent years..

My contribution... A cassette player and a drawer to keep cassettes in.

A British phone box biscuit tin - when I was around 5.

Water filled sausage things that jumped out of your hand. And rectangular pencil cases with a padded cover and magnetic closure that never worked properly. Weird octopus things that climbed down the window.

I remember going through the Avon catalogue when I was 14 or so, picking out novelty bottles of perfume for my friends' Christmas presents. Fuzzy teddies and angels and such.

@Spanielmadness

They were Jacko skates - my best ever present!

I had mine for years thanks to being able to extend them using a flat spanner, aka "skate key". The foot toe section was in red leather with gold lettering and white laces.

A Triang scooter

All metal with a wooden platform - no garish plastic here!

So many bruises o wrists from Clackers!! We made protective padded wristlets in the end.
They revived them a few years later iirc, but with plastic spheres instead of glass, and on rigid sticks rather than strings. Nowhere near as effective, required far less skill, and nowhere near as much fun without the constant jeopardy of having your wrist broken by a heavy glass ball travelling at speed. We despised the 'self and safety gone mad' nambypambyismof the generation of children following a couple of years behind us...

'Elf and safety, obviously.

@FredaFrogspawn

Those timings you held to your eye and through a system of mirrors saw wonderful symmetrical glitter snowflakes

Kaleidoscope?

@Scarby9

Obviously. Conkers met the same fate.

I had clackers- the pain when they hit your wristbone or forearm was something else!!! I remember an edition of Blue Peter where Lesley Judd made a protective sleeve by cutting the top and bottom off a fairy liquid bottle , slitting it open and placing over your wrist and forearm. Probably had some sticky back plastic featured in there somewhere

I asked for Potters Wheel two years on the trot but never got it!! One year I got a plastic oven thing and packets of cake mix. Basically you mixed water into the cake mix and into a cake tin with a cover(which looking back, was cake crumbs) and put it into the oven. It pressed the mix into a 'cake' - bloody awful it was as well

Address books
Birthday books
Hairpieces for little girls
Talcum powder and powderpuff

Electric shock toys: we had catalogues of practical jokes such as plastic dog poo and whoopee cushions, and it listed electric shock playing cards. I couldn't believe that! More recently I've seen "shocking" games marketed as adult gadgets, but not children's toys.

A 9-year old I was friends with had his own penknife, and lighter.

@SillyCow6 I remember seeing Magic Eye pictures when I was a child, but I didn't crack how to see the image until I was an teenager. I had a pack of cards with magic eye drawings on the back, so you could cheat and see what your opponent had.

@Bowerbird5 I remember a childhood time of visiting another family, where I was "kidnapped" by the older kids. I loved it, including being tied up. They challenged me to get free, and ignored me for half an hour, during which time I well and truly failed to escape. Happy times, unthinkable now.

A horror make up kit set and a science set were great

@Waitingandwaitingandwaiting - I came on here to say tights too.

In my mid teens my nana decided that I was too old for an Easter egg so would give me a pair of tights, usually Pretty Polly in an 'oh so flattering' American Tan shade.