Puppy Surprise

What exactly about the birthing process do toy companies perceive to be so child-friendly? Aside from the fact that labor begets a child, that is. Children are both innocent and inquisitive, and parents have a hell of a time balancing those two conflicting natures without sadistic toy manufacturers coming in and mucking it up with biologically confusing playthings.

In the late 80s and early 90s, Hasbro came up with a glorious marketing scheme guaranteed to disappoint one in five children. "What if we had this animal doll," a Hasbro rep would suggest excitedly. "That has babies inside of it?" The guy at the head of the table would clasp and unclasp his hands, asking thoughtfully, "But how would the children extract the babies?"

A fine question indeed, guy at the head of the table. I'll tell you how. In a natural order-defying act of toy bizarreness, the good people of Hasbro developed a velcro-adhered pouch that children could simply open and close as they please. As you can imagine, this led to inevitable confusion about birthing. A whole slew of Puppy Surprise-toting kids spent years thinking that when you're done playing with a baby, you can simply shove it back into the womb. No problem here.

The "surprise" element of Puppy Surprise referred to the fact that the doll could contain three, four, or five puppies. Kids are fairly simple creatures, and are thus easy to persuade that more equals better. In fact, every child was convinced that as special as he or she was, it was only fair that their doll contained the maximum of five puppies. You can bet parents had a swell old time consoling these children when their doll (as most did) contained a scant three puppies.

Three puppies? Don't insult me, Hasbro. What can I do with three puppies? Five, now that's a fun toy. But three? Come on.



Note that sped-up fine-print speech at the end: "Puppy Surprise comes with three, four, or five baby puppies! One in five Mommy dolls comes with four or five puppy dolls." Luckily, children are terrible at math, or they'd realize they had a crappy 20% chance of achieving the maximum (or even silver medal) Puppy Surprise experience. They are, unfortunately, pretty adept at counting and thus are clearly aware when they are being cheated.

I remember a birthday party at which one of my classmates received a pink Puppy Surprise with five puppies. How was I supposed to compete with that when my spotty mommy doll had been significantly less fertile? This was the precise moment in a child's life when they learn that life is not fair. Luckily for parents, they also learn greed, envy, anger, and all sorts of other fun hard-to-quell negative behaviors. Thanks, Hasbro!

All images from here on out from the exhaustive http://timpersock.googlepages.com. I implore you to check it out. Really, I'll wait. It's the most incredibly exhaustive Hasbro Surprise toy site/shrine in existence. Enjoy!

Fortunately, if you struck out the first time, there were approximately one million alternative variations you could subsequently beg for to try your luck of the litter again. All dolls in the Surprise line had similar by-the-books adorableness achieved by the winning combination of hard plastic faces and soft, pliable bodies. The box assures us that each of our babies, just like us, are unique. Unlike us, their uniqueness is broadcast by a ribbon round the neck declaring the puppy to be of the male or female persuasion.


Hasbro churned out all variations of huggable Surprise creatures including Kitties, Bunnies, Bear Cub, and Pony. Conveniently, in Hasbro world all of these animals and their corresponding offspring were roughly the same size. Lucky for us, the fun didn't stop there! As the ever-competitive toy market necessitates, Hasbro had to milk this concept until the Mommy Surprise ran dry. Let's investigate some of the odder exploits Hasbro undertook in order to continually surprise us:

Drink n' Surprise.

To those of us now immersed in semi-adulthood, this sounds like a typical weekend. Back in the early 90s, however, you would have been far happier to wake up to this surprise the next morning. In this case, if you shoved a tiny bottle of water down your puppy's throat, you could be rewarded with a variable physical reaction. As the tag-line said, "Will your puppy drink n' wet or drink n' burp?" If only we so excitedly anticipated these outcomes in human infants.


Surprise Outfit




These lucky pups came complete with a mysterious box that could contain any type of outfit. Just imagine! Sure, you only had three puppies to speak of, but that one comes dressed as a mermaid. Makes up for it, right?

Playful Hair Surprise


In essence, you yanked on the little guys' till their hair was visible, with blue hair indicating a male and pink a female. The hair could also be re-retracted (yep, two re-s) into the body. That certainly is...a surprise.


There were oodles more there those came from, but they all generally shared the same ridiculous elements of Surprise. There was always some element of unexpectedness that lent some excitement to the toy opening process. After that moment had passed, however, the doll lost quite a bit of its luster.

Unsurprisingly, Hasbro began releasing "sold separately" packs of babies for reasons we can only assume are related to the continuous bitching from the four in five kids whose dolls contained just three babies. Though children delighted in this manner of cheating the system, there was a fatal flaw in the system. The velcro-pouch wombs were just big enough to accommodate innumerable additions to the additional litter.

At least it gave us an easily identifiable means of judging whose parents were child-spoiling suckers: the ones whose Puppy Surprise dolls' painfully bulging bellies dragged on the floor. Served them right. I was stuck with three puppies, none of whom had retractable hair or a mermaid costume. The only thing to console me? My Mommy Doll got to keep her svelte pre-litter figure. In your face, kids whose parents buy supplemental toys to appease their obnoxious children. In your face!

Furby

Technology can be useful in mainly outlets. Growing technology has enabled us to add efficiency to production, precision to medical procedures, and expedite worldwide communications.

It can also make Furbies.

Popular science fiction books and movies would lead us to believe that robots are up to no good, and we've yet to see evidence to the contrary. I'm always nervously eying my Roomba vacuum, convinced it has a vendetta against me for accidentally feeding it so many carpet-based bobby pins. Sure, we've seen are a few kindly fictional robots in the mix (a la Rosie from the Jetsons), but generally we're taught that these robots want nothing more than to overtake us and render us terrified and useless.

Under close examination of a Furby, you'll likely find this scenario morphing into a frightening--though admittedly adorable--reality.

Declared the hottest toy of 1998 season, I was probably past the target age for these fluffballs but I was fascinated by their existence nonetheless. Here I was, thinking we were years off from the technology for a fully interactive robot buddy and suddenly, it shows up on toy store shelves speaking Furbish. Parents actually engaged in physical combat to secure Furbies for their loved ones, if that gives you any idea to just how desirable an in-house interactive robot was. It seemed that children everywhere wanted one, but no one had a clue what exactly these things did.

The lifeblood of a Furby is in a computer chip embedded in its fuzzy amorphous form, and it had several relatively clever functions. The thing itself was pretty unnerving. It was cheek-breakingly cheerful and alarmingly reactive to the world around it. Never before had a toy been equipped with the technology to hear, speak, move, and most notably learn. Meanwhile, I was out there accidentally starving Happy Meal Tamagotchis left and right, and felt generally ill-equipped to deal with such a needy toy.

In the Furby Care Guide, the Furbster himself is introduced as follows:

Hey! I’m FURBY! The more you play with me, the more I do!
I love to play and can tell you jokes, play a game, sing and even dance!
Bring me home today and I’ll be your best friend!

I don't know about you, but to me that sounds horribly, terribly, wince-inducingly frightening. That whole "Bring me home today and I'll be your best friend!" part is probably the creepiest thing I could imagine a toy saying to me. The whole thing reeked of Gremlins, and I knew I couldn't be trusted with one for fear of banishing it to a microwave-explosion fated doom.

Furby v. Gremlin

In general, the idea of having any sort of playmate with an on/off switch is a bit disconcerting. There was a sort of dichotomy behind those big, bulgy doe-eyes; in one sense, the things seemed cute and cuddly, but I had visions of it summoning legions of its Furby friends and storming my house, Bastille style.

They were, after all, oddly lifelike for something so foreign-looking. It had touch and auditory censors, enabling it to react to your tickling and verbal commands. The Care Guide claims that Furbies will pick up language in a manner similar to a human child, but in reality it was only capable of absorbing English. The Guide explains:

About My Personality
I speak Furbish®, a magical language common to all FURBY creatures. When we first meet, this is what I’ll be speaking. To help you understand what I’m saying, please use the Furbish® - English dictionary found in the back of this book. I can learn how to speak English by listening to you talk. The more you play with me, the more I will use your language.

I'm sorry, but if that's not one of the scariest things you've ever heard from a toy, then you obviously have suffered some serious childhood toy-related trauma. The instructions with this thing were so comprehensive, you sort of have to wonder how any children managed to play with them at all.

In case you were hoping to brush up on your Furbish, here's a handy little Furbish-to-English guide from the Furby Care manual:

If FURBY asks you a question, say either:
Yes [ee-tay]
Ok [oh-kay]
Yes, please [ee-tay-doo-moh]
No [boo]
No, thank you [boo-doo-moh]
No way [dah-boo]
I don’t understand*
* If you couldn’t understand what I said, I’ll repeat what I last said to you. I may say it a little bit differently, with more English, so that you can understand it better. If you tell me “I don’t understand” too many times, I’ll get sad and frustrated. Sometimes it’s best to be polite and pretend you understand – at least until I learn more of your language!

That last tip is probably the most frightening. What exactly happens when my pal Furb gets sad and frustrated? Again, visions of Gremlin-style debauchery are flooding my mindwaves. That's a pretty vague threat there, Furbs. What are you planning to do if I can't adhere to your standard of politeness? And, more aptly, do I really want my child's toy to become angry and disenchanted with my kid? That seems pretty cruel, considering it's supposed to be the other way around.

The thing also came with pages upon pages of clear, unwavable instructions on how to interact with your fluffy friend. For example:

How to ask "How are You?"
Say “Hey FURBY!” [Pause until you hear FURBY say “Doo?” “Yeah?” “Huh?” “What?” or “Hmm?”]
Then say, “How are you?”
I’ll tell you how I’m feeling.
Make sure you say “HEY FURBY! I love you!” frequently so that I feel happy and know I’m loved.

Geez, this thing is needy. Don't worry, though, there is refuge. Say you accidentally raise this thing to be super irritating, even more than usual. Well, have no fear, it's resettable:

If you would like to teach FURBY English all over again,
you can erase the current memory by doing a reset.
1. Hold FURBY upside down.
2. With the ON/OFF switch in the “OFF” position, depress
and hold the mouth sensor using your finger.
3. While holding the mouth sensor, switch the ON/OFF
switch to “ON.”
4. FURBY will say “Good Morning!” to confirm the memory
has been reset.

Now there's a good lesson for kids: if you don't like something, just hold it uside down and cover its air supply till it complies. Cute.

Of course, the marketers behind these knew how to make sure your kid wouldn't be satisfied with just one Furby. No, it was necessary to shell out the big bucks to buy it a friend. The manual explains:

FURBY Creatures Can Talk To Each Other! Here’s How!
If you want your FURBY to talk to another FURBY in Furbish®, just have them hug each other! Keep their tummies pressed together until their
eyes blink and they start speaking to each other. Once they begin speaking,you can separate them – but they should remain no further than 3 inches apart, facing each other. Keep your handy Furbish®-English dictionary close by to figure out what they’re saying!

It's uncanny the way this thing can seemingly read my nightmares. THIS. SOUNDS. TERRIFYING. Sure, your Furby can be social, just smush it into another Furby, watch its eyes blink in a vacanteerie manner, and they will soon begin plotting against you. What fun!

In 2000, Furby babies were released. Watch them interact and just tell me those things are not demonic.

If this isn't enough to freeze your blood in your veins, don't worry, there's more. I'm not just talking about the newer, more reactive incarnations, either. No, scientists have recently discovered real live Furbies nestled on an Indonesian island. All I can say to these scientists is, don't even think about pressing two of these babies together...one blink and we're all goners.


Check it out:
"Furby Fever" at The Onion
Full Furby Care Guide (source of above quotes)

Lisa Frank

I feel a compelling need to apologize to my male readers for starting this week off in such an exceptionally girly manner. I promise that when the mood strikes, I will write about something fist-poundingly masculine, but for now, I have a serious urge to document the adorable way a kitten looks when trapped in a high-top sneaker. So for the moment, please bear with me; just understand that this bear will be a painting panda wearing overalls.

It's a pretty well-known fact that young girls will ooh and ahh over adorable animals unprompted. Actually, as an adult I must admit I occasionally indulge this need as well, but the appeal of psychedelic coloring has faded significantly. To a child, however, aesthetics are key. In many ways, children are naturally materialistic and superficial because their brains have yet to develop to their full potential in the critical thinking/empathy departments. They need no explanation for why something has value, and they have an aching need to make their peers jealous. In short, they're a marketer's dream.

If you were at least vaguely femininely inclined and desired any sort of non-shunning in your elementary school years, you knew that stickers were the key to your social survival. As long as you owned them and traded them fairly, you were in. But God help you if you even considered unsticking it from its original backing for any purpose outside of regulation-grade sticker-booking it. That was the height of sticker sacrilege, and your status on the sticker social circuit would undoubtedly plummet from such amateur sticker collecting behavior.

Lisa Frank was so much more than stickers, though. It was, if such a thing could possibly exist, a school supplies empire. I'd like to find out which ad agency they used, because truthfully their marketing bordered on transcendent. Although these acid-trip colored animal splattered folders and pencils could essentially sell themselves on visual merit alone, they managed to convince us that we wanted, nay, needed, the entire collection. Just watching this commercial brings me back to a time when my determination to collect every available piece of Lisa Frank merchandise was unquenchable. Also, I owned the spokesgirl's hat in both denim and black velvet.




Collect them all, indeed. Let us briefly explore the products of the warped minded designers whose drug-induced color scheme choices and whimsical animal worlds captivated children everywhere:

Ballerina Bunnies. Graceful, garlanded rabbits who appear to be performing complicated on pointe ballet in a meadow. I will concede that this is probably their natural habitat, but I want to know for whom they are performing at dusk in the wilderness in full costume.


Painter Panda. For some reason, the people at Lisa Frank insisted time and time again that motor skill-deficient cuddly critters possessed some great capacity for artistic expression. Or maybe one of the designers was just especially skilled at rendering paintbrushes.


Hip Hop Bears. I could not actually ascertain their official LF names, but this substitution will certainly suffice. May I just say that those are certainly some hardcore musical ursedaens. I especially like the way that one on the left in the sweet piano shades is rocking the one-strap-on-one-strap-off overall look that so many of us were so fond of. And of course, we all know the true emblem of being legitimately hip hop is emblazoning the phrase on any available patch of fabric.


Roary and Friends. In this drug-addled designer's tripped-out mind, polar bears and puffins frolic together on the candy glaciers in the psychedelic- sparkly rainbow night sky. The puffins seem pretty ambivalent to the relationship, but Roary is giving us a mix between "get-me-out-here"and bedroom eyes.


Love-expressing penguins. Children of the 90s didn't need Morgan Freeman's soulful deep-voiced documentary narration to learn about penguin monogamy. We learned the virtue of penguin love from our trapper-keeper covers, thank you very much.



Hunter. That's a pretty bad-ass name for such a lovable log-hugging little cuddlepuff superimposed over a sparkly/traumatic LSD-experience background.


Hollywood bear. Enough glitter to make a disco ball blush. He seems to be conducting something, as Hollywood-based bears are wont to do.


I have also recently discovered that unbeknownst to me, I am a Lisa Frank character. I curse the people at Lisa Frank for not granting me this type of playground leverage as a child, but also applaud them for recognizing that my parents did not just make up my name as many people have rudely suggested.

Screenshot via LisaFrank.com

Looking at Mara, the Lisa Frank character, is like looking in a mirror. Well, a very poorly tinted fun house mirror if the 1970s and 80s had thrown up on my body and hair respectively. And look, she dislikes bad vibes! My god, it's like they can read my mind. Actually, it looks like she can, as apparently she is slightly psychic.

While I may not have been able to bask in the glory of an eponymous Lisa Frank folder-gracing character, I was pretty content to settle for my hugging penguins and house-painting pandas. If they could hypercolor it and slap the image on a pencil or a party hat, by God, we would be there. And if you could somehow procure the largest and best character-featuring stickers, well then, you just about owned recess.


Check it out:
Lisa Frank Online
Lisa Frank MySpace Skin, for those of you who are into that kind of thing
Buy Lisa Frank Stickers Online

Power Wheels

As kids, there were certain outrageously expensive toys that we just couldn't help salivating over. With a limited understanding of cost-benefit analysis, it was difficult to understand our parents' decision to feed us in lieu of providing us with lavish, overpriced luxury toys. There was always one kid on the block whose parents would buy him every hot new toy that hit the market, and it was the rest of our jobs to whine mercilessly, "But STEVIE has one!"

Perhaps at age six, logic was not our strong suit. While I couldn't tell you offhand what my once-coveted 1993 Fisher Price/Mattel Power Wheels Barbie Jeep cost, a quick trip the current Power Wheels website reveals that a 2009 Barbie Cadillac Escalade Custom Edition (and yes, this exists) costs $374. I'm sorry, maybe you didn't catch that. Three hundred and seventy-four dollars. For those of us who know have some basic grasp of monetary value and/or are faced monthly with important financial choices, we can hopefully all recognize that this is absolutely insane. I don't think my parents made that large of a down payment on my first real car.

The 2009 Barbie Escalade

Power Wheels were remarkable little battery-powered machines that allowed children a level of neighborhood street-roaming autonomy that bordered on potentially negligent. A closer examination of the Power Wheels brand indicates that their vehicles are typically marketed toward children ages 12 months to seven years. I don't know about you, but one year after I pop out an infant, I don't plan on letting him tear recklessly through the cul-de-sac in a miniature Ford Mustang. These children can barely walk, and we're letting them drive? Maybe it's just me, but something about this seems a tad askew.


Regardless of my current staunch anti-insanely-dangerous-toys stance, back in the day I would have killed one of the neighbor kids for one of these babies. Really, I would have. I'm sure there was one bad apple that no one really liked and wouldn't be missed. In this fantasy, the kid's last will and testament would be read publicly near the swings at the local playground and I would receive his now displaced Power Wheels Kawasaki Ninja rider. It was a beautiful dream, but unfortunately none of the kids in my neighborhood were rich enough or had the type of buy-your-affection parents to warrant such a glorious, though ultimately tragic, outcome.

While nowadays parents make a big fuss over gender neutral toys, dress their children in yellow, and encourage boys to play with dolls to theoretically increase future sensitivity, back in the day we had more clear cut lines of gender differentiation. If a boy ordered a Happy Meal, he received a Hot Wheels toy. For a girl, the Happy Meal contained a Barbie figurine. It didn't matter what your preference was, toy marketers chalked it up to basic biology and that was that. This theory was certainly a cornerstone of the Power Wheels marketing campaign, with distinct gender specific targeted ads.

For girls, we had Barbie, our alleged doll role model and favorite cheerleader/soccer player/teacher/fairy princess/dentist we knew. What can I say, she was a pretty accomplished gal. We can only assume that on the merit of all of the aforementioned achievements, she was rewarded with a significant toy car endorsement deal:





For those of you stuck at work or othrewise incapacitated on a watching-videos-without-being-caught-slacking front, let me transcribe the ad song's lyrics for you:

The buggy's all packed, so here we go
Headin' for the beach with my best friend Flo
My Barbie Beach Buggy's really puttin' on a show!

Pow Pow Power Wheels!
Pow Power Wheels!
C'mon Flo, let's really go!

Pow Pow Power Wheels!
Pow Power Wheels!
Power Wheeeeeeeeeeels!
Now I'm drivin' for real!

Power Wheels Barbie Beach Buggy. What a way to go!

...(Adult supervision required).

This really begs the question, how can I get set up with a lucrative children's toy ad campaign writing gig? I can't imagine less work going into, well, anything. I guess they knew how much this product spoke for itself in terms of desirability, allowing them to rhyme the word "go" with itself two additional times. Nonetheless, watching this ad even as an adult, I'm completely sold on it. I could care less what she's singing, just insert me into the Beach Buggy and I'll be on my merry way.

For the more glamorous first graders, Power Wheels had a different Barbie model:




First things first. This thing comes with a car phone? Most of our parents couldn't afford these amenities yet, and we're giving them to six-year olds? It sounds as if this was recorded by the same jingle singer as the first, we can only assume they paid her for a two-fer. This is essentially a remixed version of the first song, only this time, our girl got some lines. The only problem? She's six and an adult woman's voice is coming out of her mouth. I do love the way her mom sort of shakes her head at her daughter as if to say, "Oh, you!" Hey Mom, you bought the damn Lamborghini, don't act so chagrined by her endless gloating. On an aside, the star's Blossom-style hat was a major staple of my wardrobe at the time.

And for those of you out there with a Y chromosome, well, this one's for you:




The gender role stereotyping is a tad over the top here. You're not in a crappy little kid's battery-powered Jeep, you're part of the CHEIF ADVENTURE TEAM! I can see why they'd want children with their ineffective slow vehicles on board for such an important rogue underground organization. For some reason, these ads also feature adult voices emanating from children's bodies. I don't quite get what was going on here. Was this supposed to represent the required adult supervision notably absent from the ad? Could these kids not be trusted with their two-word lines? We may never know. All we know is how bad-ass those kids look with those walkie-talkies. For some reason, they also drive through an oddly assembled configuration of doves. Had they just been released for a wedding? Again, this is a question perhaps best left to professionals. We can only assume that's highly classified top secret CHIEF ADVENTURE TEAM business.

It wasn't all fun and games with these marvelous machines, though. Lucky for us who are still pouting over our parents' inability to magically produce one of these under a Christmas tree or at a birthday party, these things certainly had their dark side. What's a good 90s toy without some form of parent-sponsored reckless endangerment?


In 1991, the 18 Volt Porsche 911 was recalled for defective parts. Before we ask what people are thinking buying their children a miniature version of a car with a six-figure price tag, let's examine what exactly went wrong here. A defect in the foot pedal could force the car to stay running while disabling the braking function. I don't know about you, but there's something decidedly humorous in the image of a five year-old child barreling at top speed (at a maximum rate of two point five miles per hour) with no end in sight. An honorable mention for hilarious visuals is awarded to the once-distracted parents, now chasing their kids down the street and attempting to extract them from the miniature vehicle before it makes a crash landing into a freestanding mailbox.

Power Wheels issued a second recall in 1998 on a different model for potentially faulty battery connections. The most amazing thing about this recall was in the instructions it gave for repairs; they required you to bring the vehicle in to an "authorized Power Wheels Service center" What, are there many garages out there performing black market repairs on kids' toy cars? Is it that difficult to regulate the industry?

As you venture into adulthood, the choice to buy or not to buy a Power Wheels car for your child is yours and yours alone. The real question is, is it worth dipping in to the college fund to allow a 12 month-old infant a shot at driving practice?

Slip n' Slide

You'd think with a company name like Wham-O, Inc., people would know to take these products seriously. Slip n' Slides may have slid onto the scene in the 60s, but it was not until the 90s that we got to see some good old-fashioned ambulance-chasing legislative action. The 90s showed a distinct rise in the level of safety-consciousness on the part of overanxious parents desperate to helmet and pad their children to the most insulated degree. Contrary to popular 90s parent opinion, children had once lived in a world without safety features and generally lived to tell about it; those who did not were simply sucked up by the forces of social Darwinism. In the 90s, however, the tide began to turn.

Some would say we were fighting nature. We were protecting the weak. Defying the forces of nature that acted to weed out this type of risky irresponsible behavior.

Others would say that perhaps we never should have been sliding down an glorified sheet of cheap plastic lubricated with hose water into rocky backyard terrain in the first place.

Parents succumbed to children's begging for Slip n' Slides largely on a cost-efficient and effort-exertion level. You could either install a pool, pack up every possible necessary belonging and lug it to the faraway beach, drag your kids to the suspiciously grimy public pool...or you could just run the hose over a giant sheet of yellow plastic in the backyard. Which would you choose? The answer seemed pretty clear. Or at least clearer than the public pool.

Slip n' Slide.




I know there's a Wham-O! Hula Hoop ad on the end of this, but I couldn't help myself when I saw it. It's just so 90s.


The name doesn't leave much room for questioning. No, this was a straightforward product, through and through. It didn't seem necessary for it to come with a dictionary-size manual of directions and warnings. What would they possibly say?

Step one:
Remove Slip n' Slide from package and unroll unto level ground.

Step two:
Place running hose at edge of Slip n' Slide.

Step three:
Slip.

Step four:
Slide.

Wasn't that pretty much it? You slipped, you slid, you laughed in the face of the scorching hot sun's attempt to swelter you, and called it a day.
In reality, the problem was probably not so much with the product as with the parents. In a time where everyone was quick to assign blame to anybody but themselves, it was easy to call foul on a faulty product or unsafe design. However, there were many actions taken by lackadaisical parents that were more than likely the underlying culprits of these purported Slip n' Slide injuries. In case you were unaware, I am happy to share with you a few tips for care and use of your Wham-O Slip n' Slide:

1. Do not place in an area generally abounding with rocks and boulders. I don't even know if I'm supposed to share this type of highly classified information, but some scientists report that boulders can be damaging to heads upon forceful contact.

2. Do not place your Slip n' Slide on a steep hill. As much fun as if may be to go barreling headfirst at full speed down a miniature mountain, the plastic sheet has to end at some point. Then you're simply plunging headfirst into the ground, which I've also been told can be a tad on the painful side.

3. Enormous, oversized, supposedly responsible adults should not use a toy intended for children.

4. This especially goes for any time when these adults are intoxicated.

5. FYI, this includes fraternity parties.

6. And really, any kind of party.

7. Because honestly, this product is recommended for ages 5-12.

8. And while we're on the subject, why the hell are you using this as an adult?

9. Again, I'm not sure how much clearer I can make this.

10. But just to reiterate, really, a terrible idea.


In the 90s, the major lawsuit-prompted injury warnings were not based on injuries sustained by unsuspecting children. The injuries were generally caused by grown-ups attempting to join in on the fun, especially while highly intoxicated, and smashing their spinal column in a paralyzing manner. Teenagers and adults would slip and slide as the directions indicated, but failed to take into account that they were approximately two to three times the size of the recommended users. When coupled with the mere inertia garnered from their notably heavier weights, this was certainly a cause for concern.

What should have been concern for the right-mindedness of these adults was morphed into concern over a lack of safety features. Because really, a product should probably include every possible cause of injury or death in its packaging. I'm not sure your level of marketing expertise, but it's fairly safe to say that a 3000-word brochure on potential causes of death isn't always a major selling point for your product.

Just in case you were curious (which no doubt you were!) here's a handy excerpt from the US Consumer Product Safety Commission's report on the matter:

WASHINGTON, DC -- Kransco Group Companies and the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) warn consumers that WHAM-O backyard water slides, manufactured by Kransco and WHAM-O for years as popular summertime toys for children, should NOT be used by adults or teenagers. The toys were designed for use by children only. Use by adults and teens has the potential to result in neck injury and paralysis.

Alright, seems pretty straightforward. Go on, CPSC.

Because of their weight and height, adults and teenagers who dive onto the water slide may hit and abruptly stop in such a way that could cause permanent spinal cord injury, resulting in quadriplegia or paraplegia. The slider's forward momentum drives the body into the neck and compresses the spinal cord.

Ouch. But again, makes sense.

Kransco reports that seven adults who used WHAM-O slides suffered neck injuries, quadriplegia, or paraplegia. A 13-year- old teenager suffered a fractured neck while using a WHAM-O slide. The incidents occurred between 1973 and 1991.

Considering this report was released in the early 90s, that's a pretty troubling grace period before taking a clear stand on this. Oh, you know, it's been happening for 18 years, but we wanted to make sure this lifetime paralysis was the real deal.

According to Kransco, 9 million WHAM-O water slides called Slip 'N Slide, Super Slip 'N Slide, Slip 'N Splash, White Water Rapids, Fast Track Racers, and Wet Banana were sold nationwide from 1961 to February 1992. The slides are long plastic sheets with stakes to secure the sheet to a flat lawn free of rocks, mounds, and depressions. Some slides included an inflatable raft to slide on the plastic sheet; others may have an inflatable pool at the end of the slide.

Oh no, not Wet Banana!

CPSC and Kransco urge adults and teenagers NOT to use the WHAM-O backyard slides. Consumers should read the warnings and instructions on the box and on the toy itself which state that the product is NOT intended for adult use. Adults should instruct children how to use the slides safely.

So there you have it. Slip n' Slide. Sure, it may be risky, but again, who wants to schlep all the way out to the beach when you can lay out a bright yellow roll of cheap, non-durable plastic?

Case closed.

Nickelodeon Gak

If there's one thing we know, it's that nothing entices a child like mysterious scientific compounds. If it's been whipped up in a beaker or heated over a Bunsen burner, I assure you, they would like a part of it. In fact, if you could just package any potentially toxic experimental remnants in your lab and ship them to Mattel and TYCO distribution centers nationwide, that would probably be easiest.

Gak was one of those inexplicable phenomenons that only children could understand. It served no direct purpose outside of our general distractability and bemusement. Gak was a perfect blend of slime and silly putty with whoopie-cushion-style talents. Suddenly, you had in your possession a messy, slimy, hyper-colored, fart-producing goo. As a child, what's not to love?

"Playing with" Gak could potentially pose an issue. There was nothing you could really do with Gak. It wouldn't maintain a shape like play-doh or silly putty, and it dried out easily if not tended to properly. Not to mention it made your hands smell terrible. Really, just awful. I don't know what they made that stuff out of, but it was remarkably potent. And God forbid you played with Gak within a 10 mile radius of carpeting. The consistency of Gak was rather drizzly and hence prone to all sorts of droppage. Many of us child Gak enthusiasts were forced to incur the wrath of livid parents upon the realization that we had just smushed a tubful of purple mystery goo into their padded berber.


The Nickelodeon/Mattel team was smart enough to realize that despite the obvious mesmerizing qualities of Gak, it would only hold a child's attention for so long on its own. Sure, the clever transparent plastic star-shaped containers (known as "Gak Splats") made it entertaining to re-squish the Gak back into its packaging, but squishy fart sounds alone can only take a toy so far. Luckily, they had conceived of a few other brilliant Gak-related devices from which to accelerate the franchise:

Observe, a commercial for the original Nickelodeon Gak:



As a service to all of you, I will forgo my limited sense of propriety and just come right out with it: I owned an inordinate number of these Gak splatting devices. They were incredibly simplistic in their design, and despite their giving use to the Gak substance, they still served no practical purpose. Let us explore, if you will, a few of the marvelous Gak tools by which we were endlessly entertained:

The Gak Inflator
This was an incredibly mechanical-looking device for its absolutely unnecessary existence. The major aim behind inflating Gak was to shove air into a thin pocker of Gak to produce a chewing-gum style bubble. You would simply insert the Gak, pump the device, and inflate a Gak bubble until it burst. This product deftly circumvented the question of "Why?" and went directly to the "Why not?" Why not inflate a bubble of flatulent goo? In fact, why not create a colorful plastic device with the specific intention of bubbling Gak? As an adult, you may see through this faulty (read: lack of) logic, but as a child it all made perfect, satifyingly-poppable sense.

The Gak Vac
A sort of inverse to the Gak inflator, this piece of toy equipment served the sole purpose of vacuuming up Gak into a chamber and subsequently spitting it back out with the press of a button. The more sadistic amon us would employ action figures on which to splat the aforementioned Gak. This was sort of an at-home version of Nickelodeon's classic sliming action. As a result, my Barbie's hair has yet to recover from it's green Gak deep-conditioning treatment.

The Gak Copier
Whenever I'm scribbling away on an etch-a-sketch or a Magnadoodle, I often think to myself, "You know what would be really super? If I could imprint this image temporarily onto a sticky rubbery substance." Luckily Mattel's telepathy department was hard at work that day and devised a device, so it seemed, to meet my specific doodling needs. The Gak copier allowed children to draw an image, close the device with a fresh coating of Gak on one side and the drawing on the other, and transfer the image onto the Gak. While the device was more of a glorified heavy-book-to-close-it-in, I would not recommend using a book from your own home by which to complete this copying. I know my parents certainly would not, after I ruined the M volume of our Encyclopedia Britannica. I just wanted to see if I could transfer the image of a manatee onto a wad of Gak. FYI, you can not.

Gak came in all sorts of other varieties; glow-in-the-dark, scented, multi-packs...the possibilities were truly endless. One key thing these Gak products all shared was the ubiquitous Gak-specific warning label:


I don't know if you were aware, but Gak is a trademarked product. I probably shouldn't even be using the word Gak, considering the amount of mini-TMs they have plastered on this thing. I can only imagine I'm infringing on their copyright by thinking about the product at all.

They certainly made good use of their bold, all-caps lettering capabilities. GAK IS NOT A FOOD PRODUCT. You have to sort of respect the way they put this directly after the phrase "Gak is non-toxic." It's like telling Gak-crazed childen, "Sure, this stuff may not kill you on contact, but please refrain from eating an entire Splat of it."

It's also very kind of them to include directions for how to re-moisturize your disgusting, stringy, dried-up cornhusk-esque Gak. Simply "work in" some water! Perhaps it's just me, but the phrase "work in" seems unnecessarily gross and potentially graphic. Why can't we just add a teaspoon of water? Mix with a teaspoon of water? No, that will not do; it's preferable to massage in that water gently and tenderly.

Oh, and by the way, don't even THINK about playing with Gak on, well, anything. I can understand the carpeting part, but varnished and unvarnished surfaces? Isn't that, um, everything? I may be mistaken here, but I assume that if it's not varnished, it's unvarnished. In what sort of an environment is it safe to play with Gak? An anti-gravity simulator? I suppose the cleanup would be simple. Just use the Gak Vac!

Also, dry cleaning will not remove Gak. Don't even try it, buster. All hope is lost. We warned you about playing with Gak on surfaces, didn't we?

Despite all of these warnings, we still craved Gak splats with a near-religious fervor. Sure, those warnings could be a bit ominous to adults, but hey, we were kids. All we cared about was sliming GI Joes and producing endlessly hilarious Gak flatulence.

But never, ever on the carpet.


Check it out:
How to make your own Gak

Bop It

Bop it!




Twist it!





Pull it!




Bop it!

Twist it!

Pull it!


Bop it!
Twist it!
Pull it!

Bopit!Twistit!Pullit!

Bop it was endless hours of fun. Well, endless hours of preoccupation. Okay, maybe just endless hours sacrificed to almighty commander, Bop it.

In the 1990s, parents, teachers, and toy-makers must have sat down and had a meeting. "Kids just aren't obedient enough," the adults probably lamented. "They're always going outside to play and they refuse to sit still and obey our persistent two-word-followed-by-exclamation-point commands."

How could we solve this conundrum of noncompliance?

Bop it.

The notion that the original toy, featuring only three functions, could hold the attention span of an eight-year old is a somewhat baffling one. The toy was essentially the at-home version of the doctor's office knee-jerk reflex test. A small audio system embedded within an oblong piece of plastic would issue forceful, pleasantry-free commands instructing the player on which function to manipulate.

"Bop it!" the machine would urge. And we would comply, locating the bop-centric button and bopping accordingly.

"Twist it!" the contraption would prompt. And so we diligently twisted, maneuvering the crank.

"Pull it!" the device would insist. And so we pulled, slightly dislocating the handle on the opposite side.

That was it. I mean, that was it. The entire toy. Sure, it started slow and gradually built speed in its commands, but that was the whole shebang. If nothing else, Bop it taught the wrenching pains of stress and mounting pressure to perform onto young, unsuspecting children. Our hearts would beat quickly, our blood pressure would soar; to examine our physiological response you would think that we were experiencing extreme anxiety over a big boardroom presentation or an impending job promotion.

Like its similarly (though slightly more enthusiastically) titled 90s toy cousin, the Skip it!, the main objective that kept us sadistically coming back for more was the personal best scoring function. On an aside, it seems that at this time, Hasbro's marketing team was padded with semi-literate foreigners with a limited vocabulary and a penchant for profuse punctuation. Let us briefly envision a marketing meeting at Hasbro in the 1990s:

Marketing Director: Alright people, we've got two new toys to name.
Team Member: What do they do?"
MD: Well, one you have to bop and the other you have to skip.
TM: Great, we've got our first words. Could we possibly identify them by definitive, meaningful pronouns?
MD: No, no, I think we should go with "it". Gender neutral, flexible meaning. The feminists will go wild for it.
TM: Okay, so can we leave it at that? Bop it and Skip it?
MD: It seems to lack a certain pizazz...it needs some punctuation to punch it up a bit.
TM 1: Question Mark?
TM 2: Semi Colon?
TM 3: Ellipse?
MD: We're not quite there...
TM 4: Exclamation Mark? But only for the Skip it, let's not push our luck.
MD: Bingo! Team member 4, you've been promoted to head of the Hasbro toy naming department. Ingenious!

But again, I digress. Bop it may have been simple and exclamation-point-free, but it did have a certain charm. It was endlessly frustrating in an encouraging, self-improving way. Bop it (at least the early, non-sellout model) was refreshingly simple and required a great deal of concentration. This was Simon for the colorblind, whack-a-mole for the vegetarians. For every 10 points a player earned, Bop it would give you a congratulatory burst of audio and bragging rights to lightning-quick albeit unnecessary reflexes. The Bop it knew better than to let us become big-headed from our victories, though. For every mistake, the Bop it would cackle maniacally at your general ineptness. It was certainly humbling, if a little cruel.

Of course, as our generation evolved into miniature multi-taskers, so too did the Bop it evolve and betray its original design and develop into a more mature "extreme" version of itself.





Though not completely true to tradition, the Bop it Extreme had its high points. Just imagine, now you could also spin it! And flick it! How did they ever achieve this brilliant feat of engineering?

In a crazy twist of toy-naming fate, Hasbro's latest rendering of the Bop it toy (scheduled for a 2009 release) is a throwback to the Hasbro of the 90s and their distinct brand of earnestness and zeal that so defined their work. The new 2009 version of the Bop it will be called...

Wait for it...

Wait for it...

BOP IT!

With an exclamation point.

Sorry Marketing Team Member 4.

You're fired.

Super Soakers

Kids today have it too easy. Forget the value of dedication and hard work that so defined our generation. Their need for instant gratification continuously pushes aside their pioneering spirit of industry and diligence.

That's right, I'm talking about water guns. In our day, we knew the meaning of painstaking commitment to getting the job done. There was none of this "press the trigger and water sprays" nonsense. We would pump those Super Soaker air-pressure chambers until our fingers blistered, but it would all be worth it to spray our friends standing fifty yards away.

Originally christened the "PowerDrencher", Super Soakers burst onto the scene at the tail end of the 1980s. Approaching the 90s, toy water gun producers had fallen upon hard times, garnering flack from all sides on their regrettably realistic renderings of actual weaponry:

(image of Larami Uzi via iSoaker.com)

With parents and lawmakers increasingly conscious of how violent toys and media impacted the impressionable youth of America, these troublingly accurate imposters were on the way out. Water guns needed a new, updated image to distance themselves from their connotations of violence and war. What they needed was a light-hearted, neon-colored remastered water gun prototype with a distinctly non-military name.

At the prime meeting of timing and technology, inventor Lonnie Johnson and toy-maker Larami teamed up to produce a new water gun that fully diverted from the warlike water weapons of the past:



Super Soakers had a distinctly different tone from preceding water guns, and the ad conveys the odd sense of whimsy associated with their product. Though the commercial prominently features the theme of revenge, we can only assume that stereotypical 90's rich girl Buffy really had it coming. Also, who could resist the throwback to the Blues Brothers in their execution of their masterminded pool party-ruining scheme? This is 90s advertising as its finest.

Revolutionary in design, Super Soakers required their wielders to pump pressurized air into a separate chamber on the water gun that would build up the power to shoot water at great distances. While updated models abandoned this arm-exhausting mechanism, a great deal of the fun was contingent on that re-arming period. You felt that you had really earned that shot. You worked hard for it, and the results were spetacular. Plus, there was that awesome water bottle chamber with super-accesible fillability.

Unfortunately, while Super Soakers of today may possess greater power and precision, their R&D department's insistence on churning out novel products have led them to...well, new lows. In an effort to keep this blog in the PG range, I am not going to comment on the following video. Rather, I leave it to you to deduce from it what you will. Let's just say it stirred up quite a bit of controversy among children's advocate groups for its...provacative implications. I'm going to leave it at that.




Check it out:
Super Soaker Evolutionary Family Tree
AV Club Spoof of Hasboro Oozinator Marketing Meeting

Creepy Crawlers

Although Creepy Crawlers were originally produced by Mattel in the 60s by way of the ambiguously named "Thingmaker" toy oven, the product was revived by the Toymax company in the 90s with a (theoretically) less lethal light-bulb powered heater called the Magic Maker. These kits were a kid's dream; like so many of our other beloved 90s toys, they held no underlying value over pure fun and amusement. With the new safety features in place, ToyMax unleashed the retro phenomenon of plasticized bug-making to a new generation.

In reality, the child's role in creating a tray of Creepy Crawlers from a selection of insect molds was relatively limited. The only real decision-making lay in with which colors of Plasti-Goop you would choose to fill the tray. Yes, that's right, Plasti-Goop. The ToyMax 1990s remake retained the 60s terminology for this unknown chemical compound, continuing to cloak the toxicity of these substances in vagueness.

This was the toy for the little boy who desperately yearned to own an easy-bake oven, but was less keen on the public shaming it would bring from his male peers. It possessed similar light-bulb heating technology and yielded tangible goods without forcing boys to don an apron and frost heart-shaped cupcakes. These bug trays were about as macho as it got for the age 6-10 demographic. The aptly named Creepy Crawlers contained die-cast molds in the shape of millipedes, spiders, beetles, horseflies, worms, and all sorts of other creeping insects with that distinctly male appeal.

The major problem with this male-centric toy marketing was that it left us right back where we started. Little girls were no longer satisfied to be banished to their paltry pastry-packing easy-bake ovens. What ToyMax needed was something with some more feminine appeal that required no new technology and a coat of pink and purple paint on the plastic Magic Maker.

I admit as an unauthentic Creepy Crawler enthusiast, this was actually the model I owned. Yes, that's right. The rubberized Plasti-Goop charms on the blond girl's Blossom-esque hat were far more my speed than the decidedly more icky insect version. No longer did I have to stare wistfully at the television every time a creepy crawlers commercial came on, wishing I too could create useless items out of light-bulb cooked Plasti-Goop. They started making Plasti-Goop in all sorts of colors in the pastel family, and all was well in the world again.

Despite these variations, the real seller was the original (well, second generation original) Creepy Crawlers. It even spawned a television cartoon series under the same name, which ran two seasons from 1994-1996. The cartoon was not just based on insects themselves; rather the plot was premised on the actual features of the toy itself. In the Creepy Crawlers television series, a young boy working in a magic shop creates a version of the ToyMax Magic Maker with unfortunate results: mutant "Goopmondo" bug monsters named Hocus Locust, Volt Jolt and T-3. I know, it makes perfect sense. The best part of the show was despite the fact that it was created through a partnership with the ToyMax corporation and used their trademarked devices and terminology, the show rarely used the toy in a fashion anywhere near consistent with the procedures of its real-life counterpart. For example, characters often poured Plasti-Goop directly into the Magic Maker, which may not have caused any significant cartoon damage but certainly would have tragic light-bulb-burn-related consequences in real life. For a toy relaunched on the foundation of its new and improved safety features, ToyMax certainly gave children of the 90s a lot of ideas of how to circumvent the safety precautions.

Thankfully, kids today are not without their own rubbery oven-cooked insect toys. The Jakks Pacific toy company recently took over production of creepy crawlers, which look to be exactly the same as the 1990s version except they slapped a plastic bug on top of the Magic Maker. Very original. However, we can appreciate the suggested uses for Creepy Crawlers as a means of terrorzing your family and making them regretting ever purchasing this overpriced piece of plastic in the first place. Because isn't that truly what it's all about?

Skip It!

Ever fancied owning a toy that eerily resembled a ball-and-chain? It's fairly plausible parents saw the comparison and immediately swarmed toy stores in droves, begging to own this tedious yet endlessly entertaining device designed to keep their child in one spot for an absurdly extended period of time. The apparatus was mind-blowingly simplistic. A plastic ring that fit around your ankle was attached to a ball that spun 360 degrees as you skipped over it. It was essentially the poor man's jump rope, except that it cost a whole lot more and you couldn't play with a friend. I guess you could call it the lonely man's jump rope.

Skip-its burst onto the scene with a series of commercials that aired during Saturday morning cartoons and alongside favorite Nickelodeon TV programming. I remember this ad so vividly from my own childhood, but watching it again just makes me want a Skip-it all over again:



While the market was ripe with cheap rubberized imitations, nothing could stand up to the ingenuity of the Tiger Toys original. The most prominent and celebrated feature, as described by the above commercial:

"The very best thing of all! There's a counter on the ball! So try to beat your very best score! See if you can jump a whole lot more!"

Seeing if I could jump a whole lot more became the most important thing in the world, as suggested by the hypnotizing slow motion ad. I would park myself in the front of my driveway, strap that godforsaken flimsy piece of shocking pink plastic to my foot, and skip myself till I could not breathe (or until that pesky ball bruised my ankle so much that it inflated to the size of an overripe eggplant). That counter became the bane of my (and all of my neighborhood friends') existence. There was no worse admission of failure than having to press that "reset" button.

I do, however, appreciate the way that commercial shows ways that you can make this lonely solo exercise in tedium a group effort with one person spinning and one person skipping. This was pretty much never the case. Use of the Skip-it was generally relegated to times at home when your family was desperate to get you out of the house but couldn't find you a playdate.

Watching this quintessentially 90s toy commercial, it makes me wonder what happened with these kids and the singer behind the catchy Skip-it jingle. Do you think these people have this gig buried on their show-biz resumes somewhere? Bringing it up at high-profile auditions?

"Well, I've never done feature films, but I was the vaguely multicultural background kid in a Skip-it commercial back in '91. You may recognize me from that."

But I digress. The genius of Skip-it was not in its brilliant ad campaign or flashy features, but rather in its simplicity. It's hard to imagine the technologically inundated children of today occupied with such a monotonous exercise. Then again, it's probably more difficult to imagine our current multi-tasking blackberrying selves being satisfied with standing alone on a driveway somewhere, jumping with no goal other than to jump. These days, we'd probably be skipping it with a bluetooth wedged in our ear.

Unfortunately, it's too late to revive our beloved childhood toy. Ever since Hasboro Toys sucked in our once beloved Tiger Toys (the original manufacturer's of the Skip-it), things have never been the same. I leave you with these photos of the sad, sad, state of modern-day skipping toys. Oh, how the mighty have fallen.