Controversial and/or Poorly Conceived Toys of the 80s and 90s

Okay, so maybe nowadays kids are driving in their Power Wheels Escalades and undressing their scantily clad Dallas Cheerleader Barbies and the once-maligned toys of the past seem a bit tame. Back in the 80s and 90s, though, these were more than enough to cause a fuss for one reason or other. Be it safety, content, or just good old fashioned blinding strong moral disapproval, parents and watchdog groups were quick to lash out against some of these negligently thought-out toy releases.

We all know some parents tend to be highly overprotective of their children, and in some of these cases their worries seem a bit over-the-top. In others, however, they're pretty damn well-founded. I'm not exactly sure how so many of these toys got past the quality control teams, but a lot of them are frighteningly dangerous. I can only speak for myself, but I generally prefer my toys not to pierce a cornea or eat my hair to the point of skull-rattling. Then again, maybe that's just me.



Teen Talk Barbie


We all know Barbie may not be the most progressive feminist icon of our time, but come on. If you're working at Mattel in the 90s, you should probably at least have an inkling that there are some phrases your doll should never utter.

It's not so much that the doll's lines were filthy and inappropriate but rather insanely stupid. Whoever wrote these lines no doubt had a serious facepalm moment the second these hit the stores. Some of our fave doll's signature lines included:

"Math is tough!"
'"Let's go shopping!"
"Will we ever have enough clothes?"

It doesn't take a brilliant social commentator (though I'm willing to step up regardless) to see that those lines in succession are essentially product suicide. Angry parent complaints poured in, and the doll's phrases were quickly reduced from 269 to a mere 4. Guess she had a lot of inappropriate things to say. Whatever, Mattel. You can give her a wheelchair and a computer, but we know your true intentions.



Snacktime Cabbage Patch Kids



These dolls were pretty perplexing on concept alone. You're telling me I feed my dolly, and the food goes right through her into her backpack? What does she have, some sort of carrier bag form of IBS? It's confusing enough without the added elements of danger and surprise that no doubt came later.

Kids adored these toys. So much so that they wanted to lean in and show affection for their dolls, at which point the doll would mercilessly begin chomping on their long hair to the point of no return. It wasn't much of a consolation that you could find it in the backpack afterward, I'll tell you that much. Fingers made some tasty snacks, as well. I'm sure Mattel thought they were pretty crafty for not including an on/off switch but rather using a simple censor to enable chewing. That is, until you COULD NOT STOP THE DOLL FROM EATING YOUR HAIR. Enough said. Let's move on.



Talking Freddy Krueger Doll




Kids love horror films, right? I mean, who better than young kids to watch terrifying tales sure to induce scary dreams and night terrors for years to come? I know if I were a parent in the late 80s, I would have just loved for my kids to see Nightmare on Elm Street and also own some corresponding promotional merchandise. Aside from the fact that I'm still afraid of the movie myself, that is.

According to this no-doubt highly verifiable ad I found on Craig's List for one of these dolls, the pull-string mechanism gives us six friendly phrases: Hi, I'm Freddy, Welcome To Elm Street, Watch Out Freddy's Back, Lets Be Friends, Pleasant Dreams, Ha Ha Ha Ha!

That sounds. Awful. Seriously. Just, frightening. You know, like the kind of thing I'd like to sleep with in my room so it can kill me in the night.



Garbage Pail Kids

I couldn't find an ad for these babies, so here's a lovely youtube compilation of the cards set to angry music. Enjoy!

Let it be known that I actually was a pretty big fan of the mid-80s Garbage Pail Kids. My parents, however, were notably less keen. This Topps line was a clear parody of the Cabbage Patch Kids, one so obvious that it led to inevitable toy company lawsuits. More interestingly, the line was conceived by Art Spiegelman, Pullitzer Prize winning cartoonist of the Holocaust-themed Maus comics. Wait, what? I mean, I love Maus, it's very moving, but...what? Really?

Garbage Pail Kids were trading cards depicting disgusting and allegedly offensive characters. These winners including Valerie Vomit, Adam Bomb, and Foul Phil, all starred in their own trading card complete with stomach-turning illustration. Kids delighted in them, but adults were less than convinced of their trade value. They were quickly banned from schools and parents complained about content in droves. That did not, however, stop Topps from coming out with a movie and a cartoon. Long live the franchise!



Lawn Darts (jarts)



Who doesn't love a fun afternoon of outdoor games with their families? Well, probably the over 6000 people injured by lawn darts could stand to live without it. Or who knows, maybe they can't stand. Or live, for that matter.

Damn Jarts. They seemed like such a good idea at the time. Who doesn't love throwing a sharp metal object at top speed toward their opponent? Sounds pretty win-win to me.

The real issue was that these things stuck to everything. The CPSC warned following a recall that "Lawn darts can cause skull punctures and other serious injuries. CPSC urges consumers to discard or destroy all lawn darts immediately. They should not be given away since they may be of harm to others." Ouch. Skull punctures. It's hard to believe that thousands were injured and a few killed before this product was taken from the shelves. It was kind of fun, though. You have to admit. If you lived, of course.


Hopefully next time you're designing a toy to embrace sexism to puncture eyelids, you'll remember some of these mistakes of the past and at least add some sort of warning or disclaimer to the packaging. Yes, these ideas were generally ridiculous, but many managed to grab media attention by being incredibly popular. It doesn't matter if a toy may kill you or distort your sense of morality, sometimes you've just got to have it. I'm only hoping it did not include a Cabbage Patch Snacktime Sweeney Todd style haircut.

Songs We Totally Did Not Understand As Children

Ah, the age of musical innocence. Back when we could spend hours recording mix tapes of songs off the radio and blasting them at full volume in our rooms from our then top-of-the-line boom boxes, never once giving a second thought to a song's deeper meaning. In all truth, song lyrics mean very little to children. At best they're just a bunch of filler words to get us through to the next catchy chorus or bridge. Sure, they were helpful to learn for singing-along purposes and to look cool in front of our friends for knowing all of the words, but as a concept they seemed pretty arbitrary.

Yes, naivete is a magical thing. For a finite but glorious period of time, we as children all got to bask in glow of our misunderstanding of safeguarded, unexplained thinly-veiled references to all sorts of inappropriate content. That's one of the most wonderful things about children. They're always more than happy to accept something at face value. Why should anything have a deeper meaning, or even a meaning at all? Songs existed solely for our enjoyment and were in no way infiltrated with all sorts of subliminal smut. Or so we unsuspectingly assumed, that is.

Though the list is far from complete, here's a choice selection of 90s* songs that we all no doubt bopped around to at one point or other without giving a second thought to its less than kid-friendly content:


Cherry Pie

Warrant - Cherry pie
by krematoria

If ever a song was written specifically for the purpose of having dead-eyed strippers gyrate shamefully to its beat for years to come, it was Warrant's Cherry Pie. As a child, it was sort of like, hey, what a catchy melody! And I love desserts! Who doesn't love desserts? Yum! It seemed like a no-brainer.

The metaphors in the song aren't even trying. I mean, it's about as up front as you can get without explicitly whipping out a diagram of the female anatomy and using a laser pointer to highlight its finer points. I'll spare you the gorier details, but suffice it to say that if you can't catch the references as an adult then it's likely you've lived a clean bubble-bound existence. Congratulations.



New Age Girl (Mary Moon)

Featuring clips from Dumb and Dumber! Can you get any better than that?

At the time, I was pretty fooled into thinking this song was educational. After all, it taught me the word septuagenarians. That's got to count for something, doesn't it? And it was in Dumb and Dumber, cementing its status in my mind as a work of pure mindless entertainment

For those of you who haven't heard the song in ages, the chorus goes a little something like this:

Mary Moon, she's a vegetarian
Mary Moon, Mary Moon, Mary Moon
Mary Moon will outlive all the septuagenarians
Oh she loves me so, she hates to be alone
She don't eat meat but she sure like the bone

Is that bolding too subtle for you? I could add colors or maybe animated fireworks if that would help. We used to sing this song on the playground, for God's sake. Where was the adult in this situation to tell us it's not exactly good form to scream out, "She sure likes the bone"? Who were we to know?



Waterfalls



I don't know about all of you 90s kids, but TLC's CrazySexyCool was one of those CDs I played on repeat for oh, I don't know, about two years. I loved TLC. Or at least I thought I did. I really dug "Waterfalls". I mean, really. Everyone loves a natural scenic vista, no?

Apparently not. All this time we're thinking they're singing about some lovely water-rushing scenery, they're really giving us a message about the dangers of drugs and unsafe sex. I know, I know, I didn't get it either. Obviously I never saw the above uncut version of the video.

They were pretty sneaky about it., too Those 3 letters that took him to his final resting place? HIV. If I had known or remotely understood the context, I probably would have spent a good deal less time dancing around carefreely to the song. My bad.


Little Red Corvette

Little Red Corvette


Oh, Prince, you naughty, naughty Shetland pony of a man. How can you give us a song that seems on the surface to be about a cute little sports car but is actually suggesting to us all sorts of hoo-ha references? When he said he wanted to tame my little red love machine, I thought he wanted to do a little tuning up under the hood. I mean, give me an all-over inspection. Dammit, are there any car processes that don't sound chock full of innuendo? I've got it! He's going to change my transmission fluid. Wait a minute...




Brick

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Don't hate me for selecting the pop-up version of this video. I know it diminishes the emotionality...that's why I like it. Thank you for your understanding.

This was one of those songs that was hauntingly beautiful in a way that should have been suspicious enough to tip us off, but more often than not failed to warn us of the serious adult-themed content. Ben Folds Five was famous for putting out quirky, silly music, so there's really no way we could have known even on the off chance that we were legitimate child fans.

Sometime in college after I hadn't heard the song in ages I suddenly remembered it, downloaded it, listened, and immediately felt an unquenchable urge to sob for an indeterminate period of time. I didn't know. In case you didn't either, the song is about an abortion. The song is incredibly heartwrenching. As a kid, I thought, wow, what a pretty song. Listen, there's some piano. Hey, why is everyone crying...?




Semi-Charmed Life



I'm not embarrassed to admit I'm still a loyal Third Eye Blind fan. I went to see them way back in eighth grade and then again this past year when they premiered Ursa Major at South by Southwest, and I have to say I'm still feeling it ten years later. Semi-Charmed life, was, without a doubt, one of my favorite songs as a kid. It was catchy, it was uptempo, and it was sort of fun to see if I could keep up with singing along to the warp-speed lyrics.

Until I bought the CD, the edited version I recorded off the radio said "Dkjadcjkajdflkd will lift you up until you break". On the CD, however, I found those suspicious jumbled words to be "doing crystal meth will lift you up until you break". Which still meant absolutely nothing to me. I was a kid. What did I know from drugs? I just liked the part that went doot-doot-doot-doot-do-do-do-doot. My mistake. Whatever. I still like it.


It's totally possible that many of you were better informed children than I was, but it's a lot more likely that you were scratching your heads right along with me. I prefer to remember these song they way they were in my mind's eye, though--simple, innocent, and made expressly for my appropriate musical enjoyment.



*I know Little Red Corvette came out in the early 80s but you need to understand I sort of have a thing for Prince. We're both from Minnesota, and anyone from Minnesota knows of and fervently loves Minnesotan celebrity. It's in our rule book. It comes right before the pronunciation guide for "Dontcha know?"

Clarissa Explains It All

Nowadays, marketing to the tween demographic is a no-brainer. Networks like the Disney Channel make a large chunk of their profits off a tween audience, and it's become generally good entertainment market practice to appeal to the eight-to-twelve set. Back in the early 90s, however, there had yet to be a major leap in marketing to preadolescents. There was a wealth of children's programming and teen-programming, but very little in the way of in beTween.

Nickelodeon was pretty pioneering in Tween entertainment, particularly with its popular sitcom Clarissa Explains It All. Clarissa Explains It All featured a star who was conveniently on the younger age of her teenage years, allowing the network to promote the program to teens and tweens alike.

Though the show confronted teen issues, it didn't do it in the Very Special Episode style so popular with contemporary family sitcoms. The stories were told through the lens of Clarissa's quirky and ironic personality, with a whole bunch of ridiculously awesome 90s fashion risks* thrown into the mix.

The show also featured an outstandingly catchy theme by Rachel Sweet, whose incessant na-na-na-nana-ing punctuated with well-timed "alright, alrights" and "hey cools" made it difficult not to want to at least hum along.



At the time I remember the incredible fervor with which I coveted her outfit in the opening sequence, though in retrospect it's a tad bit trampy. I had innumerable arguments with my mother about midriff shirts, as no doubt many young 90s girls across the country were having with their respective parents.

Here our parents were, thinking Nickelodeon was wholesome programming, all while its subliminally encouraging us to go seeking Clarissa-grade streetwalker boots, tights, and miniskirt combos. In all fairness, I still think she totally rocks it, so I suppose its moderate sluttiness is excusable.

Clarissa was famous for breaking the fourth wall with a frequency that would make Zack Morris blush. This wasn't an occasional wink or nod to the audience, she went all the way with Ferris Bueller-grade audience-directed monologues. It was almost as if she were just some friend of ours who happened to live in our television set. She was funny, she was honest, and most of all, she was an individual in every sense of the word.

From the very beginning, Melissa Joan Heart gave Clarissa that X factor of immediate likability. Watch her introduce herself in this segment of the first episode and just try not to think she's just a little bit cool. It's nearly impossible.



The first episode was a bit risque in terms of thematic content as it centered around Clarissa's plot to eliminate her irritating little brother. It doesn't exactly sound like the stuff great kids' programming is made of, but it managed to pull it off in a lighthearted and comic enough way to make it work and sufficiently endear her to us as a character.

We see many of the recurring gimmicks in the first episode, showing just how well-developed the series was upon its inception. The show made use of all sorts of visual aids that would handily appear in the right-hand corner of our screen, later the basis of CNN--the Clarissa News Network. She has a miniature alligator named elvis that lives in a sandbox in her room, and her best friend Sam stops by via a ladder hooked to her second-floor window. There were flashbacks and musical cues. It all flowed together nicely, creating an original work of kid-driven entertainment.

What I wouldn't give for a little headline image to come up alongside me as I address the audience directly.

The show was smart and fast-paced, and it talked to kids rather than at them. Sure, there were some hints of what is considered right or wrong, but it wasn't shoved down our throats After-School Special Style. This wasn't Full House or even Saved By the Bell. It wasn't about learning lessons, it was about commiserating with a preteen-to-teen-age character who was going through all the same things we were.

We'd all suffered her humiliations and dealt with similar growing-up traumas. Clarissa was a role model without being a Pollyanna. She wasn't necessarily who our parents would pick to guide us, and that's a lot of what we liked about her. She's who we would have chosen, after all.

It's also notable that Clarissa was among the first Nickelodeon female leads. It's nearly unthinkable in the days of Hannah Montana and its ilk that children's networks didn't see young girls as a legitimately targetable demographic, but in the early 90s it was still all shiny and new. Clarissa wasn't much of a girly girl, allowing her to appeal fairly well to both genders.

Clarissa totally had the best 90s style. Keith Haring t-shirt, open graphic neon button down, and coordinating scrunchie perched right at the top of her head. Pure 90s perfection.

Clarissa fakes sick to avoid a school play, laments being forced to wear an uncool outfit on picture day, yearns for her driver's license: in short, we didn't have to love her because she was extraordinary, but more because she was ordinary. For once, the networks had gotten it right and put one of our own kind out there saying the things that we say, doing the things we do, and being annoyed by the things that annoy us too. She was like a cooler version of our preteen selves. After all, she had her own theme song and news network; we couldn't exactly compete with that.




*Am I the only one who automatically associates the phrase "fashion risk" with the movie Girls Just Wanna Have Fun? It just makes me want to say, "You're taking a fashion risk, I like that. Just don't do it on TV." Anyone? Anyone? Just me? Okay then.