Top 5 Christmas Gifts

Last week’s list of my Top 5 favorite boardgames made me nostalgic about the best gifts I’ve ever received, and since we’re in the midst of the holiday season, I thought I’d drag out this ol’ chestnut roasting on an open fire: My Top 5 favorite Christmas gifts. Many people may not be aware of this, even regular followers of this blog, but if you subscribe to my blog, you’re entitled to a free book: Lists, Life, and Other Unimportant Details, a collection of my best blogs and published articles from my previous life as a journalist over the past 25 years. It’s true! All you need to do is follow the instructions at the top of this page:

Once I have your email address, I’ll send you a free PDF of my blog book, where you’ll enjoy this oldie but goodie selection, as well as many more in the 270-page collection.

Anyway, back to my listicle. When I say “Top 5 Christmas Gifts,” I’m talking about the best store-bought presents I’ve been given at Christmas time. I once wrote that my older daughter was the best Christmas gift I ever received, since she was born close to the holiday, but in this list, I’m talking about the good ol’ superficial version of Christmas, the commercialized Christmas that Charlie Brown has bemoaned for 60 years. You know, Christmas joy that can be bought at a store, so let’s forgo the love, peace on earth, and all that crap for a moment here and dive into the true “Gimme!” spirit of the holiday. (These are in chronological order of when I received them.)

Popeye “Read Along” Book and Record

Truth be told, this gift wasn’t really all that (and a bag of chips, if this was still the mid-‘90s), but it’s the first gift I can remember receiving around this weird holiday called Christmas. I don’t even remember the exact story. All I know is that there was this guy named Popeye the Sailor Man who rode a tugboat, was dating some human stick named Olive Oyl, and fighting with some shlub named Bluto. I remember liking the names and hearing them read aloud to me on the record. (Remember those? No? Then you’re probably much younger than me.) I have this very specific memory of sitting by my brick fireplace and thumbing excitedly through the pages, wondering what the story was about and impatiently waiting for one of my parents to put the record on, since I was too young to do it myself. It was my first Christmas memory—and one of my first memories period.

“CHiPs” Motorcycle

I don’t really recall fervently watching this late ‘70s/early ‘80s police dramedy on T.V., but I sure do remember the toy replica motorcycle I received one Christmas. That Christmas morning, I was blown away by the size of the thing—an authentic looking motorcycle, and it’s for me! It was even big enough to ride on. I also remember not believing the present was mine, that there must have been some mistake. Santa must have gotten his wires crossed with a kid much older than me, someone more responsible and/or respectable who could be trusted to ride around his living room strapped atop a motorcycle (fake though it was). Or maybe it was for Dad? He’s the one who watched the show, after all. Nope. It was mine, all mine. This generous gift sparked my motorcycle craze when I started collecting miniature Hot Wheels motorcycles. Eventually, I was first in line to buy the “Gobots” and “M.A.S.K.” toy motorcycles. I remember I couldn’t wait to get older so I could ride a real one, but thankfully (especially for my Mom), I grew out of this phase and realized how dangerous the vehicles really are. To this day, I still have never ridden a real motorcycle, though I wrote Danger Peak, a novel featuring a club of motorbike-riding teens.

He-Man Man-E-Faces Action Figure

Being a child of the early ‘80s, you could not escape the cartoon-as-toy-commercial marketing juggernaut that was He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (at least before the Transformers took over). While I was too young at the time to laugh at the homoerotic undertones of the pink-clad sissy Prince Adam and his half-naked, muscular alter-ego, I loved collecting the toys, and by far, my favorite was this little known action figure named “Man-E-Faces,” so named because his head swiveled to reveal three different identities: human, monster, and robot. Being 8 years old at the time, I didn’t realize the toy’s name was a pun (“Many Faces”), but I was thrilled at what a bargain I was getting: “He’s a man, a robot, AND a monster! It’s like getting three toys in one!” (Again, this was before Transformers.) I don’t know why I cared about the bargain aspect of this toy; I wasn’t the one buying it, after all. It seems I was cheap (er, frugal) even then. Once Optimus Prime and his cohorts descended on the Toys “R” Us toy aisle though, He-Man was mostly forgotten by me and my friends, so much so that I was shocked they left the scene in Ghostbusters II, released in the summer of 1989 many years after the toy was a has-been, where kids at a birthday party go nuts for He-Man. I’m attributing that scene to part of the sequel’s downfall.

Ghostbusters ECTO-1 Mobile

Speaking of Ghostbusters, a little after my He-Man and Transformers craze, I suited up with the “busters of many…g-h-o-s-t.” I was a huge fan of The Real Ghostbusters cartoon show, so named because there was a competing Ghostbusters cartoon at the time that was based on a completely irrelevant live-action T.V. show a decade before the ‘80s classic, so they had to differentiate the one that featured Bill Murray (y’know, the good one). Anyway, as with most of my toy obsessions, I collected all the paraphernalia that came along with it, and my favorite was the ECTO-1 Mobile. Even though it wasn’t my largest Ghostbusters item (that would be the firehouse, complete with its own fire pole that the figures could swivel down on), I was still impressed with the size of this fake piece of machinery. When I asked Santa/Mom for it for Christmas, I naturally assumed it would be about the size of a Matchbox car, maybe larger, but when it finally showed up under the tree, this baby was HUGE, which I should’ve figured out beforehand since the oversized figures had to fit inside the car. It came with a retractable claw that extended from the back, a small ghost, and a seat equipped with a proton pack mounted on the top. As an added bonus, there was a packet of stickers in the box so you could customize the car any way you wanted. It was a work of art, and I still have it in my basement in a toy box. Believe it or not, there are some nights when I feel like sneaking downstairs, cracking open that toy box to retrieve the car, and making believe I’m Dr. Venkman again vanquishing the evil slime off New York City’s streets.

Super Nintendo

Funny story about Super Nintendo: I asked for it the year it was released–late 1991–which was perfectly and not coincidentally timed for the holidays, making it near impossible to get (sort of like the Cabbage Patch Kids craze in the mid-‘80s). Because of this, and also because she thought I spent way too much time in front of Nintendo already, my Mom refused to get me one. But that Christmas, I saw a suspiciously rectangular box in the corner behind the tree, and even though my Mom swore she didn’t get me the game system, something told me she was playing one of those Christmas fake-outs on me, a la Ralphie and his beloved B.B. gun from A Christmas Story. (Old Spoiler Alert: His Mom swore he wouldn’t receive the gun, but he ended up getting it anyway, courtesy of his old man.) As I ripped through the rest of the gifts, I purposefully saved that big rectangular package for last, building to it with a frenzy of shredded wrapping paper like a finale, and when I at last opened it, it was…

A boxing bag.

I could do nothing but stare in shocked disbelief at the odd prop, more at home at a sweatshop gym than MY home under a Christmas tree. My head filled with unanswered questions, I dizzyingly spun around to my parents, and my Dad sheepishly helped: “I saw you looking at it in the mall a few weeks ago, so I thought you wanted it.”

Keep in mind, at the time of the early ‘90s, I was a gangly teenager who not only took no interest in fighting, but I hardly had any interest in sports period, unless you count endless bouts of “Mike Tyson’s Punch Out!!” on Nintendo. I guess you could say that this was my Dad’s point, that I needed to exercise and beef up, especially if I wanted to counter those pesky bullies who belligerently pestered me almost daily in school. But hey, I’m a lover, not a fighter.

Despite my protests and warnings that he should probably return the damn thing so he could at least gain store credit, my Dad ended up stringing up the bag downstairs anyway, and I reluctantly played around with it—for a few weeks. As I looked at the long, red bag hanging pathetically from the center of my basement, awaiting my even more pathetic “body blows,” I envisioned my beloved Super Nintendo, still waiting for me at an electronics store somewhere. Now at least I had a real reason to beat up that boxing bag.

Anyway, the story has a happy ending. I did end up getting Super Nintendo, or “SNES” as I affectionately called it: one year later, Christmas 1992. And it’s still my favorite gaming system of all time.

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In other MTP news, my discounted promotion for Déjà View last Saturday went fairly well. It reached #32 in its category of Coming of Age. Not bad for a book that’s over 2 years old. You can see its chart position below:

If you missed out on your chance to download it, fear not! Since the promotion went so well, I’ve decided to offer the eBook for free again next Saturday, December 27^th. Consider it a late Christmas gift.

And speaking of, Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa, and have a Joyous Festivus, everyone!

MTP

P.S.: Next blog: A Surprise!

P.P.S.: The Danger Peak audiobook is now available!

P.P.P.S.: The new edition of The Electric God and Other Shorts is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble: