Times do be changin’, lads.
Look, Christmas is an expensive time of year.
You’ve got those festive drinks to attend with your mates. That festive dinner to attend with your mates. All those presents you’ve got to buy for your mates.
You’d want to have a lot of money floating about, like.
And understandably, Christmas is even more expensive if you’re a parent – for obvious reasons. We don’t need to explain why. You know.
But in a totally shocking and not at all predictable turn of events, Christmas didn’t used to be even half as expensive for parents as it is in 2018.
Which, yeah, makes sense considering inflation is a thing, but still, even taking that into account, people are spending an intense amount of money.
Especially parents, who are are spending up to five times as much in 2018 on presents as they were in 1970.
Grim enough scenario, to be honest.
The guys over at Music Magpie have done the maths and discovered that the things kids in the UK want these days just aren’t in the same league when it comes to price.
(And to be honest, we can probably go ahead and presume that the things Irish kids want are similar enough.)
According to them, the average cost of the top five presents in 1970 was £191.48 (taking into account inflation, it would’ve been just £12.75 at the time).
In 2018, the average cost is £997.92.
Yeah, honestly.
So what exactly are (and were) children wanting to make this giant gap?
Well, back in 1970 the top five toys were as follows:
- Nerfball
- Sindy
- Apollo Moon Rocket
- Risk boardgame
- Talking Viewmaster
And this is the top five, ahem, ‘toys’ of 2018
- Red Dead Redemption 2
- LEGO Harry Potter Hogwarts Great Hall
- Monopoly Fortnite edition
- iPhone XR
- Playstation Classic
Makes sense when you look at it that way, tbf.
The full list of top toys throughout the years can be found here.
Unsurprisingly, Etch-a-Sketches feature in there a lot. iPhone’s got nothing on them.
