Dreaming of a cheap Christmas? Head back to 1987...

PARENTS counting the cost of fulfilling their children’s dreams on Christmas Day may cast a nostalgic eye back to 1987.

The bill for the top five mostwanted gifts that year came to just £35 – or £97 in today’s money. Compare that to this year, when the top five presents will set families back a whopping £1,609.

Researchers scoured the past 50 years to find the most popular gifts each year and uncover the cheapest and most expensive Christmases on record for parents.

This year is the most expensive year while 1987 was the cheapest.

The top five gifts 33 years ago were Sylvanian Families toys, a Koosh Ball, Popple soft toys, a Pogo Ball bouncer and a Jem Doll.

This year they are a PlayStation 5, an iPhone 12, a PAW Patrol Dino Rescue Patroller, Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, and a Lego Super Mario Starter Course.

The second most pricey year for parents was 2013 when the total bill for the top five gifts – an Xbox One, a PlayStation 4, a Lego City Coastguard, a Hoverboard and Grand Theft Auto V – came to £1,092, or £1,216 in today’s money.

The second- cheapest year was 1974 when the most popular presents – Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots, Dungeons & Dragons, a Magic 8 Ball, a Spirograph, and the game Twister – cost £11, or £110 in today’s money.

In 1970, the first year covered in the survey, the top gifts were a Nerf ball, a Sindy doll, an Apollo moon rocket, a Risk board game, and a Talking View-Master.

All five cost just £13 – the equivalent of £191 now.

A spokesman for Music Magpie, which conducted the survey, said: ‘We’ve used historic inflation rates to calculate the equivalent cost in today’s money to find out what percentage of disposable income parents would have to spend to get the five must-have presents each year.

‘ In 1987, parents had to spend only three per cent of their monthly household disposable income to fulfil their children’s wish lists, compared to a whopping 63 per cent in 2020.’