Retro Week: Toys

You weren’t a kid if you didn’t have toys and the 90’s was full of wonderful toys to keep us entertained for hours. At least until video games and cartoons were invented and ruined our attention span.

Pog’s
Everyone I knew had a collection. These got banned from our school for creating gambling addictions on the playground. By the way, does anyone know what the deal was with the “poison” pogs? They weren’t named after an 80’s pop metal act, but they did something if you flipped over it in a game. Remember going up against a kid that had like a two-ton slammer? Such an unfair game.


Slap bracelets
Grade school wasn’t complete without having a kid slap his bracelet every two seconds in class and having the teacher take it and put it in her desk.


Beanie babies
Even I had a massive collection of these. They were like pokemon, but instead of creepy Japanese creatures, these were based on real animals.

Creepy crawlers
You could make your own bugs and scare your sister and her friends. An essential young lads toy.

Tamagatchi
These were like having a baby, but instead of a baby it was really just a pixilated blob. And when it cried it made a horrible beep until you fed it. And you had to clean up its virtual crap.


Silly putty
Put it on comics and see it on a green background. I guess that’s cool. It bounced as well, so double bonus.

Skip it
I think one time I got to nine. I told everyone and ran around the playground until I fell asleep behind the kickball backstop.

Stretch Armstrong
Stretch him and he grows, or break him and have gross ass corn syrup get all over your Ducktales PJ’s.

TMNT Pizza shooter
My personal favorite toy as a kid. I’d line up my Ninja Turtles and G.I. Joes and other figurines down the hallway, and shoot vicious cured meat pizzas at them. I miss being a kid.

Koosh ball
I don’t know who named these, but they sound vaguely sexually.

Magna doodle
Like an etch-a-sketch for those who were retarded.


Slip n’ slide
The best way to get skin burns on your stomach for the summer. I loved the one where you jumped through the mouth of a crocodile.

Spiragraph
Make cool designs that end up all looking exactly the same. Another toy that most of the “designs” were crap, but every once in a while, they looked wicked cool.


View masters
The coolest way to see stills of your favorite cartoons and comics. Probably one of the best inventions, binoculars for cartoons.