TV Cream Toys

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A confession: I never had a He-Man. I know – it was abuse in plastic-moulded form.

You'll get similar pangs ­flicking through Steve Berry's brilliant TV Cream Toys – a ­nostalgia trip through the toys you wanted, those you got and the ones your sister threw at your head (Tonka Trucks never broke!).

Adapted from the cult ­website TV Cream, the book aims to "reclaim our childhoods", one toy at a time, in ­alphabetical order. You'll have had to have spent a childhood ­tethered to a Swingball post not to shout "I had one of those!" every five pages.

Sure, today's kids have text-messaging and crack, but this was a simpler time, when we found beauty in mashing together Sticklebricks, being creative with Fuzzy Felt (you could make rude pictures) or giving ourselves early ­nervous conditions with the pop-up-with-the-force-of-a-bear-trap shape-placing game Perfection.

But beyond the nostalgia slap of turning each page ("I used to have a Little Professor! Wait, it was just a calculator") we learn when the toys were born, whether they needed batteries, the number of players, breakability, how envious you were of mates who had them and their present eBay value.

The latter is great for those with loaded lofts. Some are very eBayable – the Sonic Ear surveillance device will fetch a pretty penny – while others, such as ball-bearing-in-a-maze game Screwball Scramble, aren't worth a bean.

Perhaps best are the curios, such as the "smoking monkey". Could anyone work out why we'd want a simian puffing on a pretend fag?

Written in a knowing, witty style, this is perfect present fodder, if just to remember the time when these toys were presents. Or not, as I found to my distress, with He-Man.

Boys' toys

He-Man: The original cartoon spin-off and ultimate ­macho toy: all bulging muscles, tight pants and – wait a second...

Boglins: Bursting onto the scene in '87, this green ogre puppet (top) was the perfect ­menacing toy to thrust in people's unsuspecting faces

ZX Spectrum: Looked like the controls of a Soviet missile and the graphics were barely a step up from Pong but the joysticks required two hands to control. That was real gaming, my friend.

Girls' Toys

Strawberry Shortcake: These dolls, launched in 1980, with their fit-bright outfits were small-girl cat-nip.

My Little Pony: These comb-my-mane beasties had one advantage: they were virtually indestructible. We brothers had fun trying, mind

Girl's World: Nowadays, a disembodied head in a box will make you think of the ending to a certain Brad Pitt thriller. Back in 1978, girls used it to put make-up on, style the hair, and – sometimes – cut it. ­Needless to say, the latter proved quite expensive