Spinoff: Things you wanted as a kid but they didn't exist

[sailorstitch]

What were they? Do you have them now?

I don't mean things that are impossible like a pet unicorn or dinosaur. I mean things that hadn't been invented yet.

Back in the 80s I remember wishing for a teddy bear that had a massive wardrobe of clothes and lots of accessories to play with. Like Barbie, but a bear I could snuggle. 1997 rolls around and Build A Bear Workshop is launched. Yeah... you don't want to know how many of those I have now.

I always wanted a plush of True Heart Bear from the Care Bears Movie II, but she didn't exist... or so I thought. After I got on ebay in the early 2000s I found out that they DID make her in the 80s. She was just exclusive to the UK. Seriously! She was pricy, but I did get one.

While building with my Legos as a kid I remember wondering why the bricks didn't come in colors like orange and purple. And the only green pieces were plants and baseboards. I'm working on adding these new colors to my collection.

As a kid or vacations were long road trips from Indiana to either western Montana or Florida. I remember wishing for a TV to be installed in the back of the driver's seat. My dad got a little upset at me for that one. He was really strict about making sure I knew the difference between fantasy and reality. Of course that kind of thing was impossible in the 80s. And I'm pretty sure he thought it would never be possible because how tvs work will never change. I don't have a car with a TV in the backseat. We don't do those road trips anymore. And I'm pretty sure I'd never leave the backseat.

 

[ChrisFL]

a real hoverboard like in Back to the Future 2

 

[Kitty 34]

Magic Carpet

 

[TippyThomas]

Siblings.

 

[goofyernmost]

When I was about 4 years old, my father was a truck driver and I daydreamed about driving almost every waking moment. At the time there were the toy cars that you could sit in and steer like a car and pedal like a bicycle to make it move. My parents could never afford one, but one of our neighbors did and whenever I could I would be imagining driving cross country with the car.

All the while I was doing that I had a vision in my head about a toy car that ran on a battery and drove like a real car with a gas peddle and brakes. I had it totally imagined in my head, what it looked like and how it would work. 20 years later I was managing a variety store and we got an electric toy car in for Christmas sales. I unpacked it and there it was, almost exactly the way I had imagined it but made of molded plastic instead of the metal one that my mind had built.

Two things happened that day. The first was that such a thing existed and how, at age four I invented the thing and then wanted to kick myself for not finding a way to officially invent it. Never heard about patents back then. Someone else beat me to it. There went my chance of becoming wealthy enough that I could give away yachts for tips. Also I was sad that by the time they became widely available I had a real car and worse I couldn't fit in the toy. Not for lack of trying though. There was what was really an electric wagon in the late 1800's, but it wasn't until 1970 something, that any were released to the public in the form of what looked like an actual car. By then, real cars were way better because you could actually go somewhere with them and not have to imagine it.

 

[LuvOrlando]

A Star Trek Communicator AKA a cell phone.

 

[bcla]

Probably an electronic device that seemed almost impossible. When I was in school back in the early 80s I'd have copies of Creative Computing. I remember reading reviews of the latest portable computer technology including extremely expensive, solid state bubble memory. This was back when we were dealing with 10 MB hard drives that cost $1000 and the most common storage was floppy drives in those flexible plastic jackets.

There were various reviews of computers that used these fairly new solid state storage devices that could replace floppies. But I remember some article about the ideal computer of the future and how much it would cost. But it was something like 2 MB of bubble memory cartridges costing maybe $100. And even without accounting for inflation, I think that $100 can buy an SD card or solid state drive of about 200 GB to 1 TB.