With Christmas coming soon, parents will be headed to the stores to buy that hot new toy that secures them as the coolest parent in their child's eyes. But, the hot toy of the season changes every year. What was popular when I was a child is completely different to the high tech gifts of today. 

Things have changed quite dramatically since I was a child. The older I get, the more I see these changes taking place. I cannot imagine how it feels to see 60 or more years of the world's transformation. All of those years and so much is different, including the toys given at Christmas.

I remember a time before computers, cell phones, and iPods. These are some of the most wanted gifts for Christmas now. When I was a little one, getting a hunk of plastic that moved slightly and lit up by battery power was the coolest thing ever seen before. These days, nothing is good enough unless it has a mind of it's own and can connect to the internet.

What an evolution from my Fischer Price plastic kitchen that barely had cabinet doors that opened to my nieces updated kitchen that lights up and makes noises. There are now video games that no longer need controllers to play. Back in the day, the controllers for Nintendo had only five buttons. I have seen the slow growth from the original five to an X-Box's millions of buttons and now no controller at all. If told years ago that this would be the progression, I would have thought you were telling crazy made up stories. You can even play games with people all around the world online. What a curious thing to dream up from where video games were when I was a kid. In my mind, Mario was always going to be orange and you would forever have to take the game cartridge out and blow into it to get it to work again. Now you can play a game in 3D straight from the internet.

Looking back to how toys were years ago, I started to reminisce about my favorites from the time. Here is a short list of some of my most anticipated gifts from Santa in the 90's.

1. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turles action figures.
 I looked forward to getting my own Donatello, Michelangelo, Leonardo and Raphael
toys. Remember, this was from the cartoon not the new and digital version of the
classic green guys.

2. Magic Eye Pictures
    These optical illusion posters were everywhere when I was young. I had one of Bugs
Bunny that hung waiting in excitement for Space Jams to come out. The desire for
the new puzzle pictures was dire at the time and now have almost been completely
forgotten.

3. POGS
    These plastic and cardboard disks were all the rage. From Christmas morning to the
playground, these were always something to get excited about. Instead of getting
caught texting in class, we used to get in trouble for our POG fights when we were
instead suppose to be learning how to diagram a sentence.

4. Tamagotchi Keychain Pets
    Keeping your electronic pet alive was the most important part of my day when these
came out. I remember all too well when I did not get one until well after my friends had
one. Instead of whining about my lack of an iPad, I complained about not having my
own keychain pet.

5. Ty Beanie Babies
The excitement of the Christmas themed Beanie Babies was immense in the 90's.
There were fights at the mall for the newest and radest new bean filled mini animals.
The rush and flurry of getting one before they ran out seems so silly now that they are
cluttering every garage sale from here to Timbuktu.

So, what was your favorite hot toy for the holidays? How do you feel about the change in toys from our days to now?

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