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What do people give for Christmas and are those presents any different from thirty or forty years ago? Obviously, there are games around now that did not even exist thirty or forty years ago. In this piece, I would like to take a look at some of the most well-liked Christmas presents of all time. They are not in any particular order, merely as they occur to me

Number 1: the number one desirable Christmas present for sons and fathers for almost a hundred years is the train set. There have been toy train sets for over a hundred years, but they were too costly for working class households until about the 1950’s. There are still more boys and fathers wanting train sets than mothers and daughters. A decent train set will last decades and rise in value.

Number 2: a rocking horse. All children like rocking horses. Boys and girls; girls seem to retain their fascination with horses longer than boys do, in Europe anyway. This gift has staying power lasting for a number of years even if it is used by many siblings. A good rocking horse can be passed down generations.

Number 3: doll’s houses and toy forts. All children like to play with either a dolls’ house and dolls or a fort and soldiers. A Wendy House and a tree house are in this bracket too. You can see children all over the world building make-believe houses and imitating their parents’ life.

Number 4: dolls; both sexes like to play with dolls of one form or another: teddy bears, rag dolls, action men, Barbie and Ken and toy soldiers are all dolls

Number 5: a doll’s pram is still a firm favourite with young girls - imitating mum transporting her baby about. Similarly toy pedal cars, which are well-liked with young boys and young girls alike.

Number 6: bikes and tricycles are also well-liked with boys and girls of all ages. We seem to all have an early desire to travel at a speed faster than walking pace.

Number 7: board games have been popular for thousands of years. Roman soldiers used to play a game comparable to ludo and chess has been around for roughly as long as that as well. Nowadays, there are hundreds of other board games as well, some of which have become classics already. Some of the board games that have been popular since they were invented are: Monopoly, Scrabble, Cluedo and Risk and there are many more besides that as well.

Number 8: cards. The original games of cards were nearly all gambling games or could be gambled on, but for decades there have been children’s decks of cards meant to make some children’s card games like Snap and Happy Families more simple and more fun.

Number 9: shoot-’em-ups. Boys have always liked shooting. At the outset cork guns or toy bows and arrows or toy crossbows; then air guns, then paint ball and then genuine guns.

Number 10: costumes; Children like to dress up, whether girls dress in mum’s clothing and boys dress as Batman; girls dress as nurses or boys dress as Superman, all kids dress up at some time or other in their lives.

To this list of more conventional toys, you can add the modern number ones like computers and gaming machines, but then they have been about for thirty or forty years already as well.

Owen Jones, the author of this article, writes on a variety topics, but is now involved with Silver Cross Rocking Horses. If you want to know more, please visit our web site at Rocking Horses for sale.

The children of the so-called Baby Boomer generation, those born in the twelve years or so after the Second World War, are now grandparents and one of the jobs of being a grandparent is to dote on one’s grandchildren. Baby boomers belong to the wealthiest generation that the West has ever seen and that is a good job, because all this doting is fairly costly.

Baby boomers were lucky because their parents outlived the worst war the world has ever seen and their parents knew unprecedented wealth as the world rebuilt itself after the devastation of the war. Needless to say a great deal of the wealth that baby boomers’ parents were earning was spent on their children, giving them what they had never had themselves.

This meant that a great deal of baby boomers had way too much: rocking horses, dolls’ prams, toy forts, train sets, dolls’ houses, you name it. Nothing was too much for the generation of hope from the generation who had had nothing.

Now, fifty odd years later, those baby boomers are grandparents. But not only grandparents - the richest generation of grandparents that the world has ever seen and the way things are going, the wealthiest generation of grandparents that the world will see for a generation or two to come as the Western world struggles to pay off the huge amounts of debt that the banking crisis cost us.

Nevertheless, money has a way of burning holes in pockets and grandparents like to dote and spoil their grand kids, so grandchildren, especially young grandchildren are being given the type of presents by their grandparents that the grandparents enjoyed themselves: rocking horses, dolls’ prams, toy forts et cetera are making a come-back big time.

The generation in between missed out, in general, on these old fashioned toys, but look on Amazon or eBay and see what is most popular now - it is contemporary versions of the old stuff, traditional toys. One of the reasons why traditional toys are so popular is because they are timeless.

Yes, a computer is a great present - it is both a games machine and it can be educational, but it will be too slow to run next year’s games, whereas kids will play with a rocking horse for ten years and then it can be handed on.

However, boomer grandparents were not just brought up on traditional toys, the Fifties and Sixties also saw a huge boost in science - nuclear science and the journey into space fascinated most people. Yes, it was a time of uncertainty and distrust as well because or the Arms Race with the Soviet Bloc, but that was not what most individuals talked about.

Music and science were the issues of the day. Flower power, hippies and a modern, clean, bright way of life powered by new technology. Educational toys were well-liked gifts: Lego, Meccano and chemistry sets.

Toys of this type are becoming popular as baby boomer grandparent presents too. Lego sells one Lego set every seven seconds of each day of every year, day and night! This is a new trend, or at least, it is a revived trend and without doubt a step in the right direction. Baby boomers may not have been the best parents, but they make fairly decent grandparents.

Owen Jones, the author of this piece, writes on a variety subjects, but is now involved with Silver Cross Rocking Horses. If you want to know more, please visit our website at Rocking Horses for sale.