Questionaire for GR47
Question for GR47
While growing up, perhaps you've always wanted. Maybe it was a Barbie or Lego. But your parents messed up and got you something else similar. i.e. a Spice girl doll, or perhaps MegaBloks. It could be clothing. i.e. you wanted Levi's but got Wrangler. Please tell us your stories details are nice. They may get used in Giant Robot 47. Please including you name, age if you want, and your city.
While growing up, perhaps you've always wanted. Maybe it was a Barbie or Lego. But your parents messed up and got you something else similar. i.e. a Spice girl doll, or perhaps MegaBloks. It could be clothing. i.e. you wanted Levi's but got Wrangler. Please tell us your stories details are nice. They may get used in Giant Robot 47. Please including you name, age if you want, and your city.
posted by gr @ PERMLINK: 10:17 AM
12 Comments:
One year for the holiday season I wanted the Fisher Price weaving loom set. Instead I was given a dolly and some Nancy Drew books.
I never got the loom from my parents, but I did find it many years latter at a garage sale and bought it. I also got one off of Ebay for spare parts.
The personal stuff: My name is Theresa Dhondup. I'm 35 and I live in Indianapolis,Indiana.
When I was growing up in Perth, Western Australia, we were pretty far removed from a lot of the culture I loved, namely, anything American. In fact, we were pretty isolated from everything. I think Perth's the most isolated major city in the world. In our eyes this made America the chosen land. Sure, as Jewish kids growing up we were told Israel was the land of milk and honey, but America was the place with all the comics, sneakers, record stores and theme parks. We had newsagents that didn't even keep their comics in plastic, overpriced nikes and reeboks a couple of seasons too late, record stores that only took up a small shop in a mall instead of a three story building and the Perth Royal Show (which was kind of a cattle show with carnival rides and show bags... good fun actually).
This meant that whenever a friend or relative would go on holiday to the states, they were inundated with request for stuff to bring back.
Here are a couple of the things I ordered and what I actually got...
In 1992, when I was 11 I asked a distant relative to send over some LA lights... Two years later they still hadn't come and i'd forgotten about them and moved on to wanting Reebok Pumps. I heard the same relative would be coming over for my Barmitzvah and thought this would be a perfect opportunity to get some Pumps. The big day arrived and I was so excited to pull on these shoes. So I was pretty pissed off when I open my present and saw a pair of LA lights. They were no longer cool in any way especially not on a 13 year old boy (sorry... it was my barmitzvah, make that man).
For some reason there was a brief period where a lot of the kids in Perth loved Ice Hockey, considering we had one shitty ice skating rink, this was pretty strange. It could have had something to do with the after effects of Young Blood or it might have been related to the rollerblade phenomenon, which was further enhanced by that Corey Haim movie Prayer of the Rollerboys. Anyway, we loved Wayne Gretzky, despite having very little knowledge of who he was. So I asked my dad to get me his LA Kings jersey. I think I only wore the Mighty Ducks jersey I got once and that was because I didn't want to upset my dad.
Other things I got...
Ninja Scroll VHS when I asked for Akira (I ended up being pretty happy with this).
Hubba Bubba bubble gum instead of Bubbalicious (You could get Hubab Bubba in Perth, which made it boring).
Roy
25
Sydney, Australia.
Sorry if this is a bit long. If you feel like using anything, edit away.
roy@gdworldwide.com.au
My family was low middle class when I was growing up, so my sister and I never had brand-name anything. Not that we really cared. But at one point I was very keen on having a real Barbie, and someone (I think it was my dad, but I could be wrong) took me to Kmart and bought me the next best thing: Skipper, Barbie's younger sister. Maybe Skipper was a few dollars cheaper. Anyway, this particular Skipper had this feature where if you cranked her arm 360 degrees in its socket, her boobs got substantially bigger. I think she was called "Growing Up Skipper." She was awesome (and f-ed me up for life).
So many mis-givings. I was a spoiled brat so I got a lot of stuff.
Here's a few that I remember off hand: Rose Petal doll instead of Strawberry Shortcake, purple acid washed Jordache jacket instead of a Levi's denim jacket, Jenny doll (sort of a Japanese Barbie) instead of a real Barbie, a Cabbage Patch Kid pillow instead of a real Cabbage Patch Kid, a pink jacket instead of a Members Only jacket.
Now that I look back on all the wrong stuff that I got, it doesn't look so bad. The jackets were actually pretty nice and the Jenny doll probably has a more attainable physique than Barbie save for the giant eyes.
Gayle, 29, Honolulu
well, i am from another country, so this happened all the time. we always had our mexican version of the toys we saw on television.
Our Mazinger Zeta looked like it had a tumor instead of a head. Our He-man had this weird expression like he ate dozens of steroids.
We had this character called Topo gigio, the most cheesy mouse you´ve ever seen, (you should google him!) he had a tv show, and during years and generations all the kids went to bed singing his songs, scary huh?
So maybe our parents didn´t got mixed up about the toys we wanted, but our cultural differences did. Now i found that amusing! :D
i am 25, Guadalajara, México. I am Kiwi Morado , that´s not my real name, but i like it.
Hey, Eric!! It's Serina, remember me? I was looking through the latest issue and I saw a picture of me and Fabian!!! Ha ha ha. It was awesome. Then in another section I saw a picture of you standing next to my cousin who was in an Uglydoll outfit. Ha ha ha!
When I was about 8 years old during the whole "Cabbage Patch Kid" craze, I begged my mom day and night for one. Being an asian mom and trying saving money, she bought me a knock off bootleg "cabbage patch kid" at a swap meet. The doll had a funny looking football shaped head with yarn for hair and it was sealed in clear plastic bag. And it's birth certificate was a black and white photo copy from the actual Cabbage Patch Kid's one. I still cry about this sometimes...
Jerome Lu
Woodland Hills, CA
Wanted a Steinway. Got a Kawai instead. Bummer.
My parents have always been good to me. They always got me whatever I wanted. That was their philosophy: keep me happy. I wouldn't say that I was a spoil brat, but I was definitely spoiled.
Every christmas and birthday my mom would ask my sister and me what we wanted. She made it blunt. "What do you want for christmas/birthday?" The best was when she would ask, "give me your christmas lists and I will give it to Santa." It was her coy little way of getting us what we wanted, but keeping the spirit of Santa Claus alive.
When I was little, the biggest craze was Tomagatchi toys. After watching a newscast on the newest thing from Japan on KTV (Korean Television), I fell automatically in love. I don't know what about it that made me want to just have one in my possession, but I wanted it. Like a kid on a sugar rush, I screamed at my mother to buy it for me.
"OH MY GOD THAT THING IS SO CUTE! I WANT ONE!" I screamed while jumping up and down on our dirty gray couch. It wasn't Christmas or my birthday. It wasn't even Canada Day (which I've heard is an important day up in Canada). I just needed to have one of those cute characters. I never had a pet of my own and my only solution to this dilemma was to buy it digitally.
A few days after that report on TV, I went to school to find everyone had already bought the toy. It was devastating to see everyone playing with their egg-shaped pets. Occasionally, there would be a beep or two during class. Everyone would look up and the kid would just say, "oh, my tomagotchi just pooped!" I was depressed.
Tomagotchis were rare in the States now. Every mother of every kid was in every toy store everyday trying to get their hands on one of the original Tomagotchis. Of course there were the imitations, but I knew my mother was good enough to buy me the original. I would dream about that toy. I would think of what to name it and how fun it was going to be to feed it, change it, and play with it. It didn't even occur to me that my little digital pet was never going to leave the egg-shaped boundaries.
One day, as I was eating my dinner, my mom comes home from work. I got up from my seat to welcome her in when I saw the bag in her hand. The bright colors of the "Toys R Us" sign glistened in the foyer lights. My heart pittered a step ahead. I knew exactly what was in that bag and I was so thrilled. "Simone, I got you one of them stupid dolls."
"You got the Tomagotchi?" I asked her.
"Yeah, those stupid things," she replied.
She handed me the bag, and I quickly snatched it from her. My excitement had been mounting to this very moment. I was going to have my very own strange-looking-creature-pet-from-another-planet to play with.
My hand sunk into the bag. I could feel the egg-shaped body of its home. I felt the plastic packaging around it. I pulled it out only to reveal my worst nightmare. My mother had bought my sister and me a Nano Kitty. "What the hell is this?" I demanded from my mother. For a young kid, I already had a really bad vocabulary.
"It's that Tomagotchi thing," she replied.
"This is a Nano Kitty. I wanted a Tomagotchi," I crawed at her.
My heart sank. I could feel the aching bits of food from dinner groggle in my stomach. Hope led to disappointment. I felt my world thunder down. What would people say when I got to school? They would probably think I was one of those people who could only get the imitation toys because they're parents weren't capable of buying them anything cooler. Arg! It was frustrating for my youthful self.
Although I was eternally upset about this new toy, I gratefully thanked my mother and retreated to my room. I didn't open this "Nano Kitty" until the next morning while I was getting ready for school. After pulling the tab from the battery back, it sprung to life. The kitty stared at me from its black and white screen. I think I fell in love that day.
A few months later, my mother did eventually get us Tomagotchis. Unfortunately, I had already been cultivating my very own Nano Kitty. Until this day, I still have that egg.
i just left my story about the tomagotchi/nano kitty. i forgot to write my personal info:
simone jung, 22. new york, ny
youropenpalms@gmail.com (just in case you need to contact me).
thanks!
when i was twelve i wanted a nintendo really badly. my friends all had one. i didn't. my family was really strapped for money in those days, so it didn't even seem possible.
i pulled a real cartman and when it was time for my birthday party i asked everyone if they could give me just a little money and i could pool it all and get a NES. if you didn't have an NES no one wanted to come over and play. I had to have to this thing. It mattered for reasons of social strata but also because, like, Bionic Commando and Contra made me feel life was worth living.
Well come my birthday my friends all chipped in some money who could afford it. It was sweet. And then my Mom brought out a big box. I opened it and inside was a Nintendo game cartridge. She told us all that there was enough money to get a game but no NES. So I'd have to go play this at a friend's house. She was sorry and kept laughing about it.
When we got home several hours later I stormed into my bedroom despondent. I could hear my family laughing downstairs. About an hour later my Dad finally came up to check on me and there on the desk in the room was a NES system which I had in my self pitying anger totally overlooked.
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