Poll Vault: Best toy you ever received for Christmas or Hanukkah?

The Internet certainly makes holiday shopping for kids less of a challenge. These days, it seems, nothing is unavailable.

But when I was a kid, every year there was a must-have toy in short supply that threw shoppers into a frenzy.

One year, my brother desperately wanted the Death Star Space Station, and my folks searched everywhere for it. As Christmas drew perilously close, my mom spotted one on display at Sears.

The floor model was the only one left, and the manager was reluctant to sell it because it lacked a box and the trash compactor monster was missing. Ultimately, though, Mom won out. My brother was ecstatic on Christmas morning. (We wrote to Kenner to obtain a replacement trash compactor monster.) A few years later, he was just as excited to receive the G.I. Joe command center.

What Christmas or Hanukkah gift put you over the moon when you were a kid? Was it a Cabbage Patch doll in the early '80s, or perhaps a Pac-Man game during the Atari craze? How about a Big Wheel, Barbie's Dream House or an Easy-Bake Oven?