Do you ever look at your kids’ toys and think, “Who the hell thinks up this stuff? Why are kids’ toys so stupid these days. Our toys were so much better.” (High-pitched voice) but were they, though?
I’m a child of the 80s and 90s too, I get it, we’re the best generation, yadda yadda yadda – but our parents deserve some kind of award for dealing with a good deal of our toys. Let’s explore some highlights.
13 Toys From Our Childhood We Can’t Believe Existed
Garbage Pail Kids
Someone somewhere said, “Cabbage Patch Kids, but gross and offensive.” My cousin’s bed was covered with the likes of Moist Joyce (and her over-filled diaper), and Joel Goal (golfing with his own eyeball.)
When you get annoyed by the dozens of Pokemon cards cluttering your house, remember that they could be Garbage Pail Kids.
Giant Pacifiers
If you were cool enough, you wore a plastic pacifier around your neck. Why? No one knows. They varied in size, came in a bunch of eye-hurting colors, and served no purpose other than to identify whether or not you were rad.
Clackers
Think flossing and dabbing are irritating? What if they made noise? Clackers were literally a device with two plastic balls that banged together to make an annoying and repetitive sound, for hours on end. I was only allowed to play with mine outside. Sorry neighbors.
Slime Everything
Yes, our kids make slime, true. But they don’t have toys through which to filter this slime on the living room carpet. Everything from Ninja Turtles to He-Man had real slime that poured out of somewhere. As a bonus, sometimes that slime was supposed to be snot.
Goosebumps Monster Head Maker
It was like Mr. Potato Head, but a decomposing fleshy skull. It even came with pretend insects to eat the corpse. Fun to play with Grandma, right?
Furbys
Sure, these made a comeback, but they originated in the 90s. Well, actually, they originated in Hell, but during the 90s. They don’t shut off. They talk non-sense whenever you come near them. If you haven’t tip-toed around, trying not to wake the Furby that won’t shut up, were you even a 90s kid?
Slinkies
It had a great jingle – that’s how it hooked you. “But Mom, EVERYONE knows it’s Slinky!” But Slinky sucked. It never walked down the stairs, that was bullshit. It did one, maybe two stairs, then sat there looking at you like, “What are you gonna do about it?”
We had to make it useful somehow, so naturally we saw how far we could stretch it around the house, until it either came flying back and hit us in the face, or got tangled irreparably. How has this toy survived?
Perfection
What does a heart attack feel like? Play Perfection and see.
Pogs
What the actual fuck were Pogs? Circular cardboard we spent good money on. Like bar coasters, but smaller, and less useful. Did anyone know how to use them? No.
They were merely a status symbol. They who had the most Pogs won the playground.
Madballs
Madballs were Ugly Nerf balls, basically. You were supposed to put them in the fruit bowl and stuff, in case you had spectacularly stupid parents who would fall for that. They didn’t even bounce properly because the lumpy, ugly faces made their surface uneven. Defective, ugly balls, essentially.
On the bright side, Defective Ugly Balls would be a great band name.
Tamagotchi
Want to suck so badly at something that you make it die? Tamagotchi is for you. Either you were an exceptionally responsible child, and what is more fun than being obliged to be responsible for something, or you were a normal kid and you killed your virtual pet because of your own negligence. Yay!
Troll Dolls
Remember that cute movie from a couple of years ago, with Justin Timberlake and Anna Kendrick? Weren’t they cute? Yeah, our Troll Dolls weren’t like that. Ours looked like if Moe from The Simpsons mated with a cotton candy machine.
Boglins
Why Boglins and not just goblins? I don’t know. But they were goblins. And their skin felt real, this was one of their selling points. Not knowing what real goblin skin felt like, we just took their word for it. They came in cages. They were puppets. They had human-looking eyes. They were absolutely horrifying.
So the next time you wonder what today’s toy makers are thinking, remember what we had – and remember that in addition to these sketchy toys, we also had commercials for them.