I got to go on a tightly controlled, guided tour of East Berlin when I was 10 or 11 in the late ‘80s. So from a child’s perspective: they seemed to be a hundred years behind the Western World in toy technology... Seriously though, in the area we were allowed to shop in, I was disappointed to find that the toys were all like something from my grandparent’s generation: wooden blocks, tin whistles, ball and cup, ect. Nothing electronic. I ended up getting a small brass telescope that turned out to be more decorative than functional.