When I was 10, I really enjoyed Monopoly with my friends, but my parent's set was missing pieces and just overall in bad shape, so I asked for a new Monopoly set for Christmas. My grandma bought me Monopoly Junior, which was an entirely different game, and I was actually upset by it.
Years later, when 3D accelerator cards were coming into existence, I really wanted a 3dfx Voodoo card, since so many games required Glide (OpenGL and Direct3D hadn't caught on quite yet) which was a 3dfx proprietary API, and instead I got a Rendition 2200.
The article mentions considering what YOU want, but that can backfire. My dad loved electronic gadgets, and wanted to buy me a GPS device in 2010. I had to show him how pointless that could have been since I already had an Android and had Google Maps in my pocket. A few years ago, he bought me this weather monitor that attaches to the roof of my house, with a little tablet-like display to put on my wall or whatever, and it never left the box. Why would I need this $100 device to tell me the current conditions when I can just pull out my phone?