Nostalgia Time: In 1991, I was able to sell an article on what I deemed, watching Saturday morning cartoons (nostalgia for some other time) were the dumbest new toys being slung at us for the holiday buying season. This was fun (it was headlined by Baby Magic Potty, after all) and I produced one of these articles every year for the next half dozen years. These did NOT sell.
This week I turned up a copy of the 1995 edition. Realizing that some of the hapless children who experienced these toys may be old enough to read on their own, I have reproduced that minor opus, so that you can re-experience the joy or tedium of your childhood discoveries. I have resisted the temptation to change the phraseology, so you can see what sort of blogger I was in The Time Before Blogs.
Heckuva life, working in product development. You’ve got to redesign last year’s cupholder so next year’s Chevillac Gottago can be touted as the newest and most improved car on the market. You have to add a wire or a function to your keyboard every ten days or your computer falls behind the competition. And every fall, you need to come out with new toys that do more than last year’s, or do it better, or faster, or meaner, or cuter.
Bur hey, this is America. Yanke ingenuity gave us the first commercially viable phonograph, the first marketable electric light, the first balloons-and-bluegrass festival.
Of course, it also gave us the Edsel.
So here is this fall’s crop of new toys, all decked out in cute commercials with snappy jingles, hoping to induce Santa to pack them into the sleigh. It is inevitable that one or two come at us that looked good in development conference rooms but which Santa wouldn’t be caught in a chimney with. Those are the toys on my personal Wish List (as in “I wish I knew what was in the minds of the geniuses who came up with these.”
I.BIG JOHN
Any toy featuring a toilet leaps to the top of this list. In this competition, you dump your “green scuzzies” into Big John and pull the handle. Unfortunately, the plumbing is a bit clogged. Your aim is to dump all of your scuzzies and keep the toilet from flushing them all over you. I see this as the educational toy of the year: Dozens of children will be inspired to become plumbers because of this Christmas surprise.
II.SURPRISE HAT SUSIE
Take off Susie’s hat, and you find out what color her hair has been streaked! Jewels drop out of the hat: gee, they’re color-coordinated with that stripe of hair! Ans the hat can turn into a purse!
Any interest taken in this doll after the first five minutes is up to the owner.
III.SUZIE STRETCH
It is NOT a good year for little girls named Susie. This particular Susie is a doll you bind to yourself at the wrists, ankles, and waist, so she can dance with you, run with you, exercise with you, and so forth. But wait! There’s more! At night, you twist her head around so that her second face, the one with closed eyes, is uppermost, so she can sleep with you, too. It’s another educational toy, I think: something to do with teaching us the dangers of co-dependency.
IV.BUBBLE PUP
The 1995 version of “Let the kids run around and knock over furniture” game, unlike previous versions like Grabbin’ Grasshoppers, has a dish full of soapy water that can be spilled on the rug. A fat, benign puppy squats in the center of the game board and blows bubbles, which the players catch in little cups. Since the bubbles break immediately in the cup, arguments about the score can add gaiety to the spills and broken lamps.
V.PRINCESS WISHING STAR
Ask a question, wave your magic wand, and touch the princess. Stars on her head blink “YES”, “NO”, and “?”. The star that remains lit at the end answers your question. This connection of asking questions with waving a wand, disturbs me. Isn’t it another question of how our society is turning away from traditional values into New Age gimmickry? Why can’t the kids use a Magic Eight Ball, like their ancestors?
VI.KARATE FIGHTERS
The problem, I guess, with the classic Rock-‘Em-Sock’Em Robots was that the plastic fighters were fastened down at the feet, and thus unable to kick each other in the crotch. This has now been remedied, thanks to modern technology.
VII.LIBERTY BASE
I guess this is deep I the future, when the Statue of Liberty has tipped a little, and is buried bust-deep in the dust of civilization or something. Anyhow, you use her as a secret military base. Her fce even pops open so your fighters can fly out shooting. This is also an educationall toy: national monuments CAN be functional.
VIII.POWER SPARK WELDER
This machine tool pumps out molten plastic, so you can put toys together after you’ve smashed them. In fact, the commercial tells us we can now smash toys as much as we want. Good. Can we start with Big John?
IX.STAR CASTLE TEA PARTY SET
If you haven’t been paying attention over the last few years, you may not know that the major theme for the nineties is miniature playsets: teeny figures that come with teeny houses or teeny haunted houses, and an endless line of accessories. It is not surprising that someone should have come out with this miniature castle, complete with princess, secret passages, furniture, and so forth. Ah, but not only can you play adventures with this castle, you can also close it all up, dill it with water, and use it at your tea party. The tops of the towers are the cups, and the whole castle is the pot. No word on what the miniature princess thinks of all this. She may be thrilled to have a castle with indoor plumbing.
X.CHICKEN LIMBO
This is similar to the bar you use for dancing the limbo, but in this version a lastic chicken stands over you as you bend yourself under her. If you fail to clear her tail, she emits a wicked, cackling laugh. This is so dumb it is obviously destined to become a bestseller on every college campus from coast to coast.
These are just the top ten. Honorable Mention awards must go to Mimi and the Gor-gons, simply for having the dumbest name of any new product this season, and Barbie’s Mustang, a two-seater that stretches into a four-seater when needed, simply because a list of this nature is not official if barbie isn’t mentioned somewhere.
This 1995 crop shows promise. Whether Big John becomes as much of a classic as Baby Magic Potty, or if Surprise Hat Susie can ever mean as much to us as that pair of boots Barbie had a few years back with rubber stamps in the heels remains to be seen. But the toys of this new holiday season are definitely one more example of the practice of good old Yankee ingenuity.
It shows we’ll sell anything.
Blogsy Babbles 