Who doesn’t remember that one Christmas? The one after a full year’s work staying off the naughty list and exactly what you wanted is under the tree.

The joy, the excitement — and, quite frankly, the sheer feeling of relief that although there had been some crying and pouting going on, in the end, for “goodness sake” you had been nice enough.

How fun it is when recalling those days when a particular toy, and in some cases the popular one that was on every child’s Christmas list, was delivered by Santa or someone special?

Vicksburg resident Nia Hurst recalled her special Christmas as the one when she found a Doodle Bear under the tree. Released in 1995, the bear was a must have for many children at the time, and Hurst said she vividly remembers the Christmas morning she got the bear along with its washable markers.

“I remember Christmas morning waking up, and I don’t remember any other toy I got that year, but I remember seeing that teddy bear on the very top of the pile of presents,” Hurst said. “It’s basically a teddy bear that for some reason, I was obsessed with when I was very young. You could draw on it yourself. So, you could doodle on it, make pictures, make hearts on it or whatever. And it would be your teddy bear that you almost designed yourself.”

Nia said she was about five years old when she received a Doodle Bear as a Christmas gift from her father.

“I didn’t have that many teddy bears growing up. I think (what I liked about) it truly was the fact that I could write my own name on it. I could write my friend’s name on it. I could color and make it look like mine, and it was going to be different from everyone else’s because I could make it myself.”

Kelle Barfield, who is the owner of Lorelei Books and President of the Warren County Board of Supervisors, remembers the Christmas Santa left an Easy Bake Oven under the tree.

“I remember that I just couldn’t believe it when I opened the door and saw that Santa had left me an Easy Bake oven, because I loved being in the kitchen at my grandmother’s house and she would teach me to cook home style foods,” Barfield said. “And I felt like, ‘wow, I can actually have my own kitchen.’”

The Easy Bake Oven was first released in 1963 by Kenner and at the time sold for $15.95. The original toy used a pair of incandescent light bulbs as the heat source, and it measured 20.20 inches by 18.43 inches by 10.75 inches.

“It was substantial. It was a large contraption, and it was all mine,” Barfield said.” I was the only girl in the family, so it wasn’t the kind of toy my two brothers were gonna fight over, and it made me feel like the lady of the house, if you will, that I had something that I could prepare food on — all that was on my own. So, it wasn’t just the activity of baking, it was the idea of being in charge of the kitchen.”

Barfield said one of the things she liked about her Easy Bake Oven is that she could pretend to step into an adult role.

“It’s interesting because my own grandchildren now, kind of like me, love getting on a stool in my kitchen and cooking recipes. And I just think the art of cooking is such a soulful activity,” she said. “There’s a great line in ‘Atlas Shrugged’ where Ayn Rand talks about when you feed someone, you’re not just feeding their tummy, you’re feeding their soul with your love. And so, I just think being in the kitchen with people you love is such an important act at all ages. And it was great to have a toy that made me feel a part of that so young.”

Executive director of the Miss Mississippi Teen Competition Winky Freeman said he will never forget how excited he was when he opened up a pump-action Sheridan Blue Streak pellet gun — a gift he still has today.

“My friends and I, we would hunt almost every Saturday morning when we would go to our place at Deer Park. My family had a place down there in Louisiana,” Freeman said. “I would shoot snakes and turtles and stuff like that.”

Freeman said he got the gun when he was about 10 or 12. And while it became a cherished item, it had not been his original ask. He wanted a Benjamin pellet gun because that was what all his friends had, but Freeman’s father worked at Sears, which stocked Sheridans. Luckily for Freeman, his pellet gun turned out to be superior to his friends’ since it was more powerful than its Benjamin counterparts.

And it has stood the test of time.

“Once I got older, I let my little brother have it. He took care of it. And when he passed away a few years ago, I got it back from his wife,” Freeman said, adding that his Blue Streak still shoots straight. “It (the pellet gun) was just a lot of fun. And it was something that has lasted — well, I’m 73 now, and I got it when I was about 10, so it lasted a long time.”

Vicksburg resident Dr. Amanda Tritenger had been wanting a video game, and Santa’s gift of a Sega Nomad came as a surprise on Christmas morning when she was a young girl.

“I had been wanting to play video games, any kind of video game, for a really long time. All my cousins had Super Nintendo, and one of my best friends down the street, she had every game console,” Tritinger said. “So, I’d been asking to have anything at all for a really long time and was told video games were not for me. So, this one came out of nowhere.”

The Sega Nomad was a portable, handheld version of the Sega Genesis, Sega’s 16-bit video game console released in 1988. The handheld version could play all the games of its big brother. It also had the added benefit of being playable on long car rides.

“It was beyond my expectations, and I got so much use out of it,” Tritinger said. Especially after the family moved to Florida. There were many road trips, she said, back up to Pittsburgh, where they had originally lived, which meant lots of hours spent on the road.

Had it not been for her Sega Nomad, Tritinger might not have developed an interest in video games.

“I started my gaming career and my love of video games with that Sega Genesis,” she said. “I do feel like it was a rare video game, and truly, I can’t hype enough how much it started my passion for the video game lifestyle.”

The year was 1963, and Nancy Bell, who is now the executive director of the Vicksburg Foundation for Historic Preservation, said she knew exactly what she wanted for Christmas — a Chatty Cathy.

“It used to be that every household would receive a Sears wish book. It was a Christmas wish book,” Bell said. “And so, all the kids would sit down with it and mark the pages.”

Chatty Cathy, a doll manufactured by Mattel hit the department store shelves in 1960. Chatty Cathy operated with a miniature phonograph inside her body that would play one of 11 phrases when a string on the doll’s back was pulled.

“I wanted the blonde one with blue eyes,” Bell said. “They didn’t have a lot of choices in those days, but she was beautiful, and I was blonde. And she came with a beautiful pink pinafore type dress and all the accoutrements that came with that. And so that’s what I had asked Santa for. I was so excited.”

Bell said one of the reasons she had wanted the doll was because Chatty Cathy was more “grown-up.” Until then, Bell’s dolls were baby dolls. Chatty Cathy, on the other hand, could speak and sit upright.

“She talked. And when you laid her down, her eyes would close,” she said.

Multiple outfits could be purchased for Chatty Cathy, but Bell recalled making her own.

“In those days, you know, little girls made their clothes for their dolls. So, my mom helped me make little clothes for her and all that kind of stuff,” she said. “She still is one of my favorite things that I got for Christmas, and I still have her.”

Vicksburg resident Rusty Permenter said he got his wish’s worth of Santa’s present when he received a one-speed Huffy with pedal brakes.

It was Permenter’s first bike that didn’t have training wheels, and he said he “loved it.”

“It was the freedom, getting out of the house,” he said. “There was a game reserve nearby where I’d go see all the deer or hogs or I’d just go down to the river.”

Permenter said he would also ride his bike to a park near a river and recalled how he had met some colorful characters.

“There were these two old guys that used to drink at the park by the river, and I talked to them,” he said. “And there was another old man that would be reading books all the time down there.”

Permenter said it had been a blast being able to ride and explore on his Huffy bike in the small Texas town where he grew up.

“I could go further on that (bike) than I could have by just walking somewhere, and I rode it until it died,” he said.

A longed-for Christmas toy a child receives is never forgotten, nor are toys that over the years were top sellers or became a craze.

According to the website people.com among the top 10 toys that caused mayhem through the years were Mr. Potato Head, which made history as the first children’s toy advertised on television in 1952; Tickle Me Elmo became a frenzy in 1996; and then there were the Beanie Babies that became popular in the late 90s. Ten million Transformers were sold in 1984 — and are still sold today — and in 1998, every child wanted a Furby. These little “Furbish” speaking creatures became so popular during the holiday season the original retail price was bumped from $35 to $100.

More recently, the “Frozen” Elsa Doll, which became popular in 2014, was selling upwards of $1,000 on eBay and the New York Post even reported “physical fights” broke out over the toys.

Cabbage Patch Kids that came out in 1983 also had parents fighting over them. It was reported that one Pennsylvania woman suffered a broken leg when a 1,000-person crowd turned into a violet department store mob. And by 2007, the Nintendo Wii which was released a year earlier was “perpetually sold-out” for the holidays.

Bell’s Chatty Cathy doll made the most popular list according to buzznet.com along with G.I Joe, Game Boys, Pokemon and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

For those who really want to travel down Christmas toy memory lane, visit azfamily.com.

This website stretches back over a 100-year span beginning in 1919 with toys that included Pogo sticks, Yo-yos, Radio Flyer Wagons, Slinky, Match Box Cars, Barbie, Troll Dolls, Smurfs, Barney and Nintendo, just to name a few.