What stocking present do you remember best from your childhood?

[listsandbudgets]

When I was 4 I got a Hello Kitty compact with a comb and mirror. I don't know what happened to it but I remember it so clearly and I was hugely proud of it. I still wonder what happened to it.

I've just looked it up and found the exact one

I do remember lots of other things but that is the one that has always stood out.

This is such a lovely thread!

Santa only did stockings in our house- which were one of my dad's stretchy knee high socks pinched from his drawer, so it really was small things in there.

I got a Chinese wallet one year -I must have been about 6 or 7. You open it up, put a coin in the centre- say the magic words (flip the wallet over) and the coin disappears! Honestly that was so amazing, even when I worked out the How! I used it on everyone and still have it!
It was usually tiny trick toys like that, chocolate coins and a satsuma.

I've gone down a similar route with my DC, I was checking what I had for them on Sunday - stretchy men, caps, light up note books all feature. I love doing stockings.

Giant smarties and fruit pastille tubes and a chocolate orange.

One year I got a can of Impulse, Chic, I felt very grown up receiving this and for years the smell reminded me of Christmas.

I always had a jar of pickled onions in mine because I love them.

Ear muffs - probably remember them as they were white and I lost them in the snow making a snowman. Other thing was these plastic glow in the dark animals we got.

@YetAnotherSpartacus my dd7 is getting yardley perfume in her stocking this year!!

@Walkthroughthefire

A tiny little care bear and a wee glow worm that was solid plastic and glowed in the dark. A snow globe. Little animal shaped soaps ( body shop), the polar bear smelled of coconut and the elephant was raspberry. I always got wee stationery sets and bookmarks and sweets. I love the stocking

On the basis of these gifts I'm going to guess we're about the same age.

I remember getting a glo-worn in my stocking very fondly. My mum usually refused to buy into "fads", as she called them, so I got books and porcelain dolls and chemistry sets when other kids were getting Polly Pockets and Care Bears, so it was a real treat to get a "fashionable" toy!

A pack of coloured plastic marbles which had magnets in them. Loved them! Not sure why they stand out so much.

As a couple of others have said, a torch. I must have been about 8 and it felt like such a grown-up item to have. It wasn’t even a child’s one, just a small black one. I was so excited.

My most vivid memory is of getting ‘The Five Children and It’ and reading it before everyone got up whilst eating those Parma violet sweets in a tube. I still have that book now.

I was initially shocked that I couldn't think of one, then I remembered we never had stockings!

We left a pillowcase out for FC. We always did very well and he filled it with parcels but not small useless things bought only because they would fit in a stocking.

My mum was well ahead of her time environmentally in the 1970s (although it was called thrift then). Everything was washed and reused, nothing was bought unless we didn't have something that would do e.g. margarine tubs not Tupperware, yogurt pots not plant pots and she was generous with gifts but she wouldn't have bought something just for the sake of it , without knowing it would be used.

@Geldhorn The only thing I can remember from stockings was a chocolate smokers set. Pipe, cigs, cigar. 1970s. Those were the days

I was waiting for this as I read through. It was the high light of my stocking every year. (It used to have a packet of tobacco as well, disgusting sweet sticky strands, 1950's.) Pretending to smoke the oh so realistic chocolate cigarettes as we sat around at Christmas. And my parents were the most anti smoking people I ever knew

A pop gun every single year.

Chocolate orange, got one ever year

Loved it

It was a right treat

A little watercolour paint set. Tiny. And my granny said - oooo how does your mum find such nice things. I looked at her aghast and said granny it is from Father Christmas. But yes her comment broke the magic a bit.

One year we got a Terry's Chocolate Lemon instead of a chocolate orange'

I remember these. I was an adult at the time, but I remember it being the beginning of the end for TCOs. There was white, light, dark, lemon and I think raspberry - and the raspberry might even have had those fizzy things in it. The lemon also had a very acrid taste.

Wikipedia has a list - but omits the lemon.

I visited the York Chocolate Story museum and I think they said there was a Terry's chocolate apple years ago

Just checked and the chocolate apple was from 1926-54. Don't think I'd have liked it as I don't like the apple chocolate in Milk Tray

@inappropriateraspberry

I also opened my bedroom door one year to find an A La Carte kitchen outside in the corridor! My mum must have set it all up overnight. I loved that thing.

I can't BELIEVE you got one of these! I still remember the advert (when the child served cold baked beans and Swiss roll saying 'wake up Mummy, breakfast's ready!'

I sooooo wanted one. That and Mr Frosty were my too most coveted items that I never got

@maudspellbody I never got a Mr Frosty either! I always wanted one!
Loved my kitchen, played with it for years. I remember having the little boxes of washing powder and food for it. One of my friends also had one, and I remember being horrified because she trashed it and didn't look after it. I don't think she looked after any of her toys though, she'd cut Barbie's hair, draw on other toys etc.

Thanks for the Terry's chocolate lemon posts- I didn't imagine it.

Had heard they once did a chocolate apple- can't imagine that being a hit.

I knew the chocolate apple existed but didn’t know it lasted such a long time.
Definitely remember the chocolate lemon.
The chocolate orange was always impossible to get into - does anyone else remember hitting it with a hammer to separate the segments?

The chocolate orange was always impossible to get into - does anyone else remember hitting it with a hammer to separate the segments?

We had a toffee hammer!

I can't BELIEVE you got one of these! I still remember the advert (when the child served cold baked beans and Swiss roll saying 'wake up Mummy, breakfast's ready!'

It was "Wake up Daddy, breakfast's ready!" and I remember because the little girl actor went to my secondary school, and people used to repeat it to her to wind her up.

I got an old fashioned record player. It was a lot like this one. I suspect it may have been second hand and refurbished, but it worked well and I loved it. I was 11. I also remember Dad sneaking it into my room as he thought I was asleep.

If we're talking stocking fillers (as opposed to the Big Present), for some reason, I only remember the clear plastic Santa that was full of mini Kinder eggs. I had some Schokobons recently and they tasted so exactly the same that I was instantly transported back to being five and overexcited on Christmas morning. I guess they haven't changed the recipe - unlike the chocolate orange, which went to shite when they moved production out of York.