I hope so! Come on, folks, you must have at least a few favourite things to post!
Misc Avatar Contest: Best/Worst Present
- Thread starter Saga
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Our Avatar Contest has fallen on hard times lately. 
Ooh, was that the one with the blue track? One of my brothers received that for Christmas in the early 70s, and we had so much fun with it. When we moved back to Canada (the set was purchased when we lived in the Netherlands; it was never available in Canada) our dad bought a voltage adaptor so we could continue to play with it.
Come to think of it, the first Lego train we had was a battery operated one. The mains electric one with which we could change the speed and direction came a bit later.
Under our tree this year is the latest version of the Lego passenger train for our youngest son.
^I don't even know how those look these days 
Yep, I had the 4.5 Volt one with the battery-pack as well -same shape of motor as the adjustable speed 12 Volt one (yep, with the blue tracks and the middle track for power). The thing was that it was allowance-doable to buy a 12 V motor-part to put in the Lego-case of the 4.5 V motor and thus make it a brand-new 12 V Lego-engine -and then have two of those.
Oh the things you could build with that powerhouse of a motor
Yep, I had the 4.5 Volt one with the battery-pack as well -same shape of motor as the adjustable speed 12 Volt one (yep, with the blue tracks and the middle track for power). The thing was that it was allowance-doable to buy a 12 V motor-part to put in the Lego-case of the 4.5 V motor and thus make it a brand-new 12 V Lego-engine -and then have two of those.
Oh the things you could build with that powerhouse of a motor
I'm afraid I don't think I'll be able to make it this week.
What, no Chia Pets?
Whatdoyouknow... I just happened to have a pic of the front of the box... in AV-size even!!
Or maybe I should post the heart of the matter:
Nah, the train set looks much more x-massy than the box... the train-set is my entry!
Or maybe I should post the heart of the matter:
Nah, the train set looks much more x-massy than the box... the train-set is my entry!
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Is that a "best present?" I loved trains when I was a kid.
AB-SO-LUTELY!
Not only is a train-set a classic x-mas gift (have you ever seen an x-mas movie without one?) it also was my BEST.EVAH gift received as a child!
Admittedly the 'train' part wasn't so great in the age of LEGO - but the eletric motor gave all my LEGO a whole new dimension
Whoa, I just remembered something. This is actually the oldest christmas present I still own to this day:
The Playmates model of the Enterprise-D with lights & sound. Got it when I was eight, it's still around (although not in the condition presented in that photo, and the box's been gone for a long time). Gosh, must be about twenty years, now.
The Playmates model of the Enterprise-D with lights & sound. Got it when I was eight, it's still around (although not in the condition presented in that photo, and the box's been gone for a long time). Gosh, must be about twenty years, now.
^I think we have ourselves a winner.
I saw a commercial for Chia Duck Dynasty dudes.
Even I had a train set as a kid. I must have been only about two or three years old, because we were still living at McKone Street. I remember that the train made sparks on the rails when it moved and I was scared it would cause a fire.
I'm using a stock photo because the original item has disappeared. This isn't so much a worst gift ever as a tradition my brothers and me had for quite a few years based on an awful present.
When I was 7 or 8 an aunt gave my youngest brother, who's four years older than me, a desk set. It consisted of a stapler, tape dispenser, and some third item (possibly a staple remover) in a horrid yellow colour. My brother never took it out of the box, and my other two brothers and I mercilessly teased our youngest brother about his gift, and how our aunt obviously doesn't like him very much. What this brother did next was genius: he wrapped what we all called the yellow stapler set and put it under the Christmas tree for one of my other brothers. For over ten years the yellow stapler set did the rounds among the four of us. If one of us had a birthday and was not the current holder of the set it was guaranteed that one of the gifts would be it, but we had fun putting the set box into bigger boxes so that which gift it was couldn't always be guessed. Christmas was loads of fun, as any three could be the lucky holder until the next siblings' birthday. The four of us now live in three different countries, and somewhere along the line the yellow stapler set disappeared, but we still love to talk about our rather bizarre Christmas and birthday tradition.
When I was 7 or 8 an aunt gave my youngest brother, who's four years older than me, a desk set. It consisted of a stapler, tape dispenser, and some third item (possibly a staple remover) in a horrid yellow colour. My brother never took it out of the box, and my other two brothers and I mercilessly teased our youngest brother about his gift, and how our aunt obviously doesn't like him very much. What this brother did next was genius: he wrapped what we all called the yellow stapler set and put it under the Christmas tree for one of my other brothers. For over ten years the yellow stapler set did the rounds among the four of us. If one of us had a birthday and was not the current holder of the set it was guaranteed that one of the gifts would be it, but we had fun putting the set box into bigger boxes so that which gift it was couldn't always be guessed. Christmas was loads of fun, as any three could be the lucky holder until the next siblings' birthday. The four of us now live in three different countries, and somewhere along the line the yellow stapler set disappeared, but we still love to talk about our rather bizarre Christmas and birthday tradition.
ROTF! That's a cool story! 
That's funny, macloudt, because my BIL's family has an almost identical story involving an "ugly mug." I think it was a promotional item for Beauty and the Beast or something. The only difference is that it makes the rounds of cousins as well as siblings.
I remember that my dad had a number of good pieces of Märklin train-sets and that I was never ever allowed to play with them -I don't even know whatever happened to them, where they are now!
I remember reading this story here before -and I still love it*
Along those lines I have the story about an intricate macramé-ish thing my sister made in (pre?)school and found too good to give to only one set of grand-parents -so she gave it to all four of her grandparents... After that first x-mas they re-gifted it to each other every year thereafter. It became known as the wandering gift
What I'm trying to say is that not only bad gifts from grown-ups, but also good gifts from kids, have the ability to keep on giving
*) And I feel that I must re-tell the story about the wooden plank I gave my nephew one x-mas: The poor kid (about 4 or 5 year old) went into total 'blue screen of death' and took a few seconds before remembering what his mum had told him about what to do when unpacking something he really didn't like before actually lying and saying "Thank you" to me.
Of course this horrible, horrible thing I'd done to him was immediately countered by the next gift he unwrapped: a real grown-ups tool-kit! (I'm not cruel, I'm only cunning
)
