What are the little things disappointed you a kid?

Church on Tuesday · 10-03-2020 01:23AM

Some of the toys in cereal boxes.

Arghus · 10-03-2020 03:24AM

Realising on my first day in Primary School that I wasn't going to have a cool locker like I'd seen Kevin, Winnie and Paul use in high school in the wonder years.

Cottoning on to the fact that the father of the guy who sat next to me in senior infants wasn't a "Private Investigator" like he said he was. First time I can remember being clearly BS'ed. That kid could lie for Ireland.

Being too petrified to sit through all of Jurassic Park when it came out in the cinema. Like every other young boy at the time I was obsessed with dinosaurs - my favourite was the Triceratops - and I couldn't contain my excitement for Jurassic Park. My mother brought me, after a lot of lobbying and nagging from me. It felt like the culmination of my life. I was seven, it was probably my second or third time going to the cinema. I wasn't really prepared. I knew I was in trouble during the opening sequence, when was frightened by the noise to the point of being disturbed. I couldn't look at the screen when they were feeding the raptors, even though there's nothing there in that scene, only the suggestion of dinosaurs, all the quick cutting and noise was too much. I chose to look at the guy in the seat behind me instead and I couldn't believe how he just sat there watching all that suggested carnage like an unflinching stone. How was he not scared?

I fully couldn't hack it any longer by the time the T. Rex was showing up in the paddock and I had to beg my mother to bring me outside. We conducted a complex negotiation outside the screen, while the T. Rex roared on inside for what felt like ages, about whether I really wanted to go or did I just need a few moments to get myself together. I hated dinosaurs in that moment. Somehow I managed to have myself talked back into eventually going back inside, where I spent a good proportion of the time spraying hot jets of fearful piss onto my own leg.

Not a good experience, but the real ignominy was having to tell my friends about the film, which I had seen in the cinema and most of them had not. I left out the parts of being terrified and not being able to sit through portions of it, but internally I felt like a fraud.

Tork · 10-03-2020 04:11AM

Subbutteo. We got that one Christmas thanks to an ad on TV that gave the impression that it was an exciting game. It wasn't.

joeguevara · 10-03-2020 04:16AM

I was absolutely gutted when I was in London for the first time and finding out Argos wasn’t this massive shop with every game under the sun.

Finding out WWF was fake.

Getting most toys and finding out the ads were lies.

Thinking that the blue side of the red and blue rubber erased ink.

Deja Boo · 10-03-2020 04:49AM

Gynoid wrote: »

I got a hair dryer for Christmas as my big present when I still mostly believed, and I was hugely disappointed in Santa's distinct absence of magical thinking.

I got an ugly lamp.

teddy_303 · 10-03-2020 05:27AM

being brought to see Santys grave

Plopsu · 10-03-2020 10:08AM

Raconteuse wrote: »

Not being able to break the tv and take Bosco out.

Do you mean that in a 'dinner and a movie' kind of way or more of a Martin Scorsese way?

Rubberlegs · 10-03-2020 10:14AM

I asked for a drum for Christmas, by drum I meant drum kit. I got a metal drum on a string to hang around my neck. It wasn't the same.

I remember being extremely disappointed driving through Wellingtonbridge because I had pictured a bridge with wellies all over it.

razorblunt · 10-03-2020 10:20AM

Finding out wrestling is fake.

I hope Bret Hart knows how nervous I used to get before his matches.
As soon as I saw the backbreaker then elbow from the second rope I knew everything would be ok!

Plopsu · 10-03-2020 10:23AM

JupiterKid wrote: »

Covetously eyeing that colourful biscuit tin up in the kitchen press, finally getting to open it, and...

...just bits and bobs stored in it. No butter biccies!

The absolutely ****e state of the roads in Ireland - compared to the motorways and duallers galore up North when going up to visit my many relatives. I loved motorways, airports and shopping centres as a young child - and was very jealous that pretty much every other Western country had far better roads than we did.

Must have been a very poor quality of bits and bobs for that to be a disappointment. I loved bit and bobs when I was a kid... and knickknack drawers. Getting up in the attic, where all the old crap was, was like a trip to Narnia. But, I guess everybody's different.

whisky_galore · 10-03-2020 10:34AM

Circuses, candy floss and clowns, thought all of those were sh1t.

Realising religion was a load of bollocks.

Badly Drunk Boy · 10-03-2020 11:35AM

Silentcorner wrote: »

Sixmilebridge...I don't think I was ever so disappointed when I eventually passed through it!!

Imagine how I felt the first time I visited Two Mile House (in Kildare)!

Rawr · 10-03-2020 11:40AM

Finding out for the first time that 7-up was in fact not green.

(I liked to use opaque plastic cups when I was little and only later on used a glass. I remember being disappointed by the truth of 7-up....)

Church on Tuesday · 10-03-2020 11:51AM

Arghus wrote: »

Realising on my first day in Primary School that I wasn't going to have a cool locker like I'd seen Kevin, Winnie and Paul use in high school in the wonder years.

Cottoning on to the fact that the father of the guy who sat next to me in senior infants wasn't a "Private Investigator" like he said he was. First time I can remember being clearly BS'ed. That kid could lie for Ireland.

Being too petrified to sit through all of Jurassic Park when it came out in the cinema. Like every other young boy at the time I was obsessed with dinosaurs - my favourite was the Triceratops - and I couldn't contain my excitement for Jurassic Park. My mother brought me, after a lot of lobbying and nagging from me. It felt like the culmination of my life. I was seven, it was probably my second or third time going to the cinema. I wasn't really prepared. I knew I was in trouble during the opening sequence, when was frightened by the noise to the point of being disturbed. I couldn't look at the screen when they were feeding the raptors, even though there's nothing there in that scene, only the suggestion of dinosaurs, all the quick cutting and noise was too much. I chose to look at the guy in the seat behind me instead and I couldn't believe how he just sat there watching all that suggested carnage like an unflinching stone. How was he not scared?

I fully couldn't hack it any longer by the time the T. Rex was showing up in the paddock and I had to beg my mother to bring me outside. We conducted a complex negotiation outside the screen, while the T. Rex roared on inside for what felt like ages, about whether I really wanted to go or did I just need a few moments to get myself together. I hated dinosaurs in that moment. Somehow I managed to have myself talked back into eventually going back inside, where I spent a good proportion of the time spraying hot jets of fearful piss onto my own leg.

Not a good experience, but the real ignominy was having to tell my friends about the film, which I had seen in the cinema and most of them had not. I left out the parts of being terrified and not being able to sit through portions of it, but internally I felt like a fraud.

Yeah JP is an odd one. Too noisy and violent for any kid under 10 really at the time but still the lure of dinosaurs was irresistible and the JP marketing team knew this all too well.

That scene with the raptors being fed it a great example of less is more by today's standards. Taps into the imagination.

Never saw it in the cinema but on cassette, but was and still am fascinated by it today. Ambitious, grandiose and way way ahead of its time; it's the Alien of our generation.

Badly Drunk Boy · 10-03-2020 02:32PM

pablo128 wrote: »

I was quite a good speller in school. Imagine my excitement when they announced there was a spelling test with a prize for the winner. It was a car shaped pencil parer, a very fancy looking thing. I knew I had it in the bag tbh. Sure enough, I was announced the victor. Off the teacher went to fetch my prize, only to discover some b0llox was after robbing it. I got some piece of cheap tat instead. I was gutted.

I still remember it 35 years later.

When I was in second class in primary school, our teacher had an impromptu art competition once. I wasn't very good at art but whatever happened, I created this masterpiece of a castle, complete with turrets and towers (and even some stained glass windows)! All the other kids were saying how great it was but when it came to the prize-giving, Alan K. won it for a picture of tree with a wonky ladder against it and a wonky cat at the bottom. :mad: He got the first prize of 10p, but at least I came second, scooping the 5p runners-up prize. (This would have been 1981).

I had a little victory though, as the others in the class were copying my drawing for the next week or two. I haven't drawn anything decent since. (Only indecent...)

Thanks for that bit of therapy...:pac:

julyjane · 10-03-2020 02:44PM

Badly Drunk Boy wrote: »

Imagine how I felt the first time I visited Two Mile House (in Kildare)!

There's a nine mile house in Co. Tipperary. I remember over the years hearing my parents say someone lived in Ninemilehouse, then I went to a summer camp in Clonmel and met a few different kids who said they were from there and I thought it was one big house with loads of people living in it.

chrissb8 · 10-03-2020 02:55PM

Three quarter length shorts, I felt I was s**t hot looking when in reality I was just really hot and wished I put on normal shorts.

AllForIt · 10-03-2020 03:00PM

Myself and my sister were taken to Dublin by my Aunt for a few days. I was disappointed the skyscrapers were't as big as I was expecting. This would be far back as when The Streets of San Francisco was being aired on RTE.

Deebles McBeebles · 10-03-2020 03:15PM

Raconteuse wrote: »

Not being able to break the tv and take Bosco out.

Raconteuse wrote: »

Not being able to break the tv and take out the toys featured in ads.

Your folks had a to buy a few TVs back in the day, didn't they?

joeguevara · 10-03-2020 03:26PM

Looking back on primary school I wonder if certain teachers only joy in life was to make fun of me. But saying that I did give them some great cannon fodder. Not sure how many people remember a kids tv show (way before the den) called Pats Pals hosted by the inimitable Pat Ingoldsby. Anyway, he had a segment at the end of the show where he got kids at home to shout their name into their TV at a contraption in the studio. Basically he said the louder you shout your name would pop up on the TV. After doing it every show, at last Joe popped up in big yellow letters. Convinced I had done it, I waited until the teacher asked for News. Waving my arm wildly, shouting ‘miss, miss’, 8 year old me said it ‘I made my name flash on screen by shouting into my TV set’. Well the show she made of me would have broken Jeffrey Dahmer into confessing Not only his crimes but every crime since the Middle Ages. So not only was I disappointed that Pat Ingoldsby had lied at m3, I was also devastated that a teacher made a show of 30 kids who were only too happy to make fun of me for 2 weeks straight.

But I didn’t learn. My dad brought me to a golf club open day. He won a pitching competition with the prize of the most impressive brass trophy. To keep me sweet he said I had won it for some race that I had won. I brought it in to school to show off my impressive athletic ability. I was getting looks of admiration off all my classmates until said teacher above, loudly exclaimed that she doubted I was 1988 Senior Tipperary pitching champion which happened to be engraved on the base of the trophy.

Cee-Jay-Cee · 10-03-2020 05:52PM

I used to believe that England and America and other countries were up in the sky and that’s why people went in planes to get to them. I was so disappointed when I discovered at around age 9 or 10 that they weren’t. I found this out when we went to Liverpool on the ferry. I remember questioning my dad as to how we were able to sail to England when it was up in the sky and a plane was needed to get there.

Pauliedragon · 10-03-2020 06:01PM

joeguevara wrote: »

I was absolutely gutted when I was in London for the first time and finding out Argos wasn’t this massive shop with every game under the sun.

Finding out WWF was fake.

Getting most toys and finding out the ads were lies.

Thinking that the blue side of the red and blue rubber erased ink.

Ha. Reminds me of when I was young enough to still think it was real and the Warrior (i was obsessed with him) was put in a coffin by the undertaker and he was "rushed to hospital".
Always sticks in my mind I was inconsolable.

joeguevara · 10-03-2020 06:16PM

One of my best Childhood memories is getting a blue bmx 2000 off Santa. Quickly mastered wheelies, bunny hop and standing on crossbar(while still holding handlebars). Heard one of the older boys bragging in school that he knew ‘every bmx trick in the book’. The sense of excitement I felt the next time I went to the local library, thinking of this encyclopaedia of how to do bmx tricks turned into crushing disappointment when the librarian cracked up laughing as she explained the phrase to me.

Sgt Hartman · 10-03-2020 06:24PM

Pauliedragon wrote: »

Ha. Reminds me of when I was young enough to still think it was real and the Warrior (i was obsessed with him) was put in a coffin by the undertaker and he was "rushed to hospital".
Always sticks in my mind I was inconsolable.

I bawled my eyes out when Earthquake "crushed" Jake Roberts' snake Damien in the middle of the ring. In an interview years later Earthquake stated that instead of the snake the bag actually contained women's tights stuffed with hamburger meat.

bitofabind · 10-03-2020 07:44PM

Samsgirl wrote: »

Not getting a Mr Frosty from Santa

Getting a Mr Frosty from Santa and then my older cousin coming to stay and using ALL the flavoured sachets during a game and sitting and watching in horror as I hadn't had time to play with it myself first

:(

The trauma!

Mister Vain · 10-03-2020 07:55PM

When I got Mortal Kombat 3 instead of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3.

vriesmays · 10-03-2020 08:08PM

Howard Jones' second album.

Arghus · 10-03-2020 08:35PM

AllForIt wrote: »

Myself and my sister were taken to Dublin by my Aunt for a few days. I was disappointed the skyscrapers were't as big as I was expecting. This would be far back as when The Streets of San Francisco was being aired on RTE.

I remember being stunned by the size and hustle and bustle of Dublin when I went there for the first time as a kid. It was mind-boggling to me. How did people find their houses or where they worked? Where was RTE? Don-ney-brook? How did Gay Byrne figure out how to get there to record the Late Late?

There was a huge distinctive radio tower type thing on the outskirts of where I lived and I assumed that the presenters that I heard on the radio had to climb that tower to record their shows, up about 100 feet in the air, totally exposed to the elements, presumably clinging on for dear life. I used to look up their regularly for signs of any of the lads - Gay Bryne, Larry Gogan, Gerry Ryan - hanging out with big headphones on and having a laugh. Never spotted them.

Learning that a time bomb just blew up like a regular bomb, it didn't actually create a rip in the space time continuum that you could use to send people back in time.

Wondering why there were no bulldogs whatsoever involved in British Bulldog.

Archeron · 10-03-2020 10:29PM

When my brother threw my favourite teddy in the air and it got stuck on the roof. He said the wind would blow it back down and it did, into next doors garden where it was ripped to shreds by their Irish wolfhound. It was stuffed with some sort of probably now banned wispy fluff, so his innards all got caught in the neighbours bushes and were blowing in the wind like something out of a horror film. For weeks.

joeguevara · 10-03-2020 11:45PM

Mister Vain wrote: »

When I got Mortal Kombat 3 instead of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3.

Well, it was when I was 16/17 so not a kid but asked for a ps2 for Christmas. My dad went to get it but the store clerk convinced him that N64 had better graphics and better games. Now, both are savage but when I opened it up Christmas morning it wasn’t a bundle that had games. It was a console by itself. This is mid 90s where shops (including xtravision) didn’t open until about the 29th December, so basically I looked at a grey box for 4 days.

What are the little things disappointed you a kid?

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