Remember these popular children toys? Here’s how much they would cost today.
A cuddly animatronic puppet, Stitch, won the 2025 Toy of the Year Award. The realistic blue alien toy can perform more than 100 actions and retails for $66.99 on Amazon. That might sound pricey for a toy, but have parents always spent big to get the hottest new toy for their kids? Etch A Sketch was the must-have toy in 1960 and sold for $2.99, which might not seem like a lot. But after adjusting for inflation, that’s $32.59 today for a drawing toy compared to a high-tech animatronic puppet.Using the top holiday toy gift list compiled by experts at the Strong National Museum of Play and newspaper archives, The Get the Facts Data Team revisited six must-have toys through the decades, stretching back to the 1950s. For each toy, the data team tracked its original price and what that amount would be worth today using the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Price Index inflation calculator. CPI measures how prices change over time for everyday goods and services. The inflation calculator uses this index to adjust a sum of money from one time period to another, giving a clearer picture of what households were actually spending for these popular toys in previous decades. To keep inflation calculations consistent, prices reflect November of the year each toy was a top holiday item, not its release year, compared with its projected value in September 2025. Retail prices were pulled from newspaper archives. Scroll down and click a price tag to guess how much each toy would cost in today’s dollars.
A cuddly animatronic puppet, Stitch, won the 2025 Toy of the Year Award. The realistic blue alien toy can perform more than 100 actions and retails for $66.99 on Amazon.
That might sound pricey for a toy, but have parents always spent big to get the hottest new toy for their kids?
Etch A Sketch was the must-have toy in 1960 and sold for $2.99, which might not seem like a lot. But after adjusting for inflation, that’s $32.59 today for a drawing toy compared to a high-tech animatronic puppet.
Using the top holiday toy gift list compiled by experts at the Strong National Museum of Play and newspaper archives, The Get the Facts Data Team revisited six must-have toys through the decades, stretching back to the 1950s.
For each toy, the data team tracked its original price and what that amount would be worth today using the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Price Index inflation calculator.
CPI measures how prices change over time for everyday goods and services. The inflation calculator uses this index to adjust a sum of money from one time period to another, giving a clearer picture of what households were actually spending for these popular toys in previous decades.
To keep inflation calculations consistent, prices reflect November of the year each toy was a top holiday item, not its release year, compared with its projected value in September 2025. Retail prices were pulled from newspaper archives.
Scroll down and click a price tag to guess how much each toy would cost in today’s dollars.
