Growing up, I definitely had my share of Christmas presents. I never woke up to coal in my stocking, and there was always an abundance of pretty wrapped packages under the tree. However, being the observant little Virgo child that I was, I couldn’t help but notice that there was always something missing. I can still remember specific toys that I had my heart set on; and while looking back, I can appreciate my mother’s decision to omit these gifts from my list—they would have undoubtedly driven her crazy—these disappointments have never left me.

Here are a few toys that made my list, every year, but never made Santa’s cut.

Baby Born: My best friend had this lifelike newborn doll. Words cannot express my envy. I remember that it cost $50, certainly a lot of money for a plastic naked baby; but jeez, those commercials always put me in a trance. If you remember the soft lulling tune that sang, “Baby Born, Baby born,” you understand. The excuse my mother had for refusing me this doll was that it peed. You’d give it water through bottle, and it would come out the other end. For some reason, my mother was convinced that you fed it some sort of formula that would build up in the doll’s plastic intestinal area and it would get worms. She must have read that somewhere…? My best friend ended up leaving hers outside in the rain for a week…bummer.

Gak Splat: If you have never seen a commercial for Gak, Nickelodeon’s finest product, you must have lived under a rock. I’ve included a video to entice the memory. Essentially, it was play dough on crack, with a consistency to destroy any cloth it touched. Gak was a big negative to me from the beginning, as most of my house was carpeted. Though I still watched those commercials, dreamy-eyed, and imagine myself kneading it into my brother’s hair. Oh, childhood.

Talkboy: Kevin McAllister made this the coolest thing to have in Home Alone 2. Though, I was a pretty chatty kid, and my mother had a hard enough dealing with my annoying talkative habits as it was. The last thing she needed was a recorder to play back everything I said in an even more annoying, high pitched or slow-mo voice.

Gooey Louie: Basically, this was like Jenga, but with a giant nose and boogers… I think that gets the point across.