Monthly Archives: June 2012
YAK BAK
Nothing spells fun like recording your own voice and listening to it over and over again. This fun toy led to hours of fun for all around.
It’s a pretty easy concept. Say and then Play. This would record six glorious seconds of your insane genius and then play it back to you over and over again.
After this commercial who wouldn’t want to run and snag one of their own?
I must get me one of these so talking is easier and I can sip my sodas in peace.
ELECTRONIC PETS
Oh, remember the days when you could have a pet of your own to put in your pocket and then forget about? How you forgot them in your desk at school over the weekend and you hoped that they would survive not being fed and loved for a couple of days. Or, maybe you were a great owner and your electronic pet was so happy, till one day you decided you were to old for the little guy.
Introducing……. the wonderful craze of the Tamagotchi and the Gigapet.
The Tamagotchi is a small little alien type species that deposited an egg on Earth to see what life was like, and it is up to the player to hatch and raise said egg to adulthood. The tiny alien child goes through several growth spurts, and will grow up in different ways depending on how well they are provided for (or how well you are able to push all the buttons and give them what they need).
This was every child’s dream to raise a little alien of their own. It really teaches some great skills on raising an alien child. Feed it, love it, and clean up it’s poop. Simple things for a simple pet.
Next we have it’s close cousin the Giga pet. While the Tamagotchi was first released in 1996 in Japan, the Giga pet was the first electronic pet released in the States in 1997. Gotta love the nineties and their electronic wonders. You could choose out of these animals what you would like to love and raise as your own:
- Bit Critter
- Compu Kitty
- Digital Doggie
- Micro Chimp
- Baby T-Rex
- Virtual Alien
- Komputer Koala
- Floppy Frog
Also let’s not forget the sad, lonely, forgotten, Nano Pet. Much like the Giga Pet. Just another brand to get the children excited. Pretty much you had to catch them all.
These were great. And to show you just how much fun you could have with one of your own, here are some commercials to get your nostalgia kicking.
TAMAGOTCHI
I don’t know about you, but if I was watching this and I thought that my friend would Beelzebub out on me, I would not want to play with this toy. Good thing this commercial was the second generation of the Tamagotchi and I was already too old to play with it. And, they were expensive anyway.
GIGA PET
Now, when it calls you gotta stop. Please, do not forget your Giga Pet.
NANO PET
Unfortunately I could not find a commercial, sooooo you can skip a bit. It is just a walk through of the Dino Pet, Just an example of another digital pet….
So now that we are all remembering how much we loved our little e-pals, we can all zoom over to e-bay and buy our own posterity a bit our past. If you still have yours, you should check on it. If the battery isn’t dead yet, your pet probably is.
JELLY BRACELETS
Think back to your Junior High days and try to remember what jewelry you just had to have. I remember distinctly that all the cool kids were wearing these thin, jelly bracelets. We all know that they are easily found at the local dollar store or party palace. For the great price of 100 tickets, you can “win” them at the Nicklecade. Don’t pretend you didn’t want an armful of your own.
As I am sure you all know, there are rumors that these were “sex bracelets” and that teenagers were brazenly snapping off the bracelets of their peers and expecting favors. While I am sure that may have happened, I was completely oblivious to this. I just thought they were cool. Plus, if kids were making games up to colors of bracelets others were wearing, I am sure that the simple act of wearing them was not what started their “activities”. They were doing it before the bracelets were a fad.
I also remember trying my darndest to figure out how they were able to make two bracelets into one. Well my friends…look no further! I have found a convenient video to help teach you how to twist your bracelets. Now you can be in the cool crowd too.
Now you can show off your snazzy bracelet skills to all your coworkers. You can stack them to your hearts content and show everyone what a cool kid you are. All you have to do is head down the little kid aisle at your local shopping mart and grab a pack. But make sure that in order to be the trend setter you are, that you wear them all at once. Everyone knows that the more cheap jelly bracelets that you have on the more popular you are going to be out on the playground.
Remember… keep it cool guys.
MY LITTLE PONY
Since I am a child of the eighties, I decided I would start there. And being a female child of the big-haired decade, I will start with My Little Pony. Every girls dream was to have a pony of their own, and thanks to the major toy company, Hasbro, every little girl was now able to style a mane in the comfort of their own homes.
I vaguely remember the little ponies. But I do have vivid memories of wanting them for my own. My grandma randomly had one at her house, and I always used the ponies as horses for my Barbies to go on dates with G.I. Joe. (I know they had a good time. Who wouldn’t when they are galloping across the melodic, ivory keys of an upright to have a picnic and swim in the cool waters of the Styrofoam Bowl Lake. Every little girl’s dream right there)
My Little Pony was a hot trend at the beginning of the 1980’s. It made it’s debut in 1983 with 6 little ponies named, COTTON CANDY, BLUE BELLE, BUTTERSCOTCH, MINTY, SNUZZLE, and BLOSSOM.
These ponies set the stage for a hot trend of braiding pony hair and galloping across the world. As the popularity rose with these now infamous toys, they went from little plastic ponies, to little plastic ponies with a T.V. show and an internet site. Of course, it naturally follows that if we color our hair and and pledge deep friendships with one another, we can all grow up and be happy and ride across rainbows. Thank you Hasbro for introducing a cute little toy into our lives to make us want to grow up and be better people.
For further reading on the history of My Little Pony, please see their website HERE.
In case the pictures do not do it justice, here is a commercial for the happy little ponies.
And for the road, let us not forget the cute little cartoon show.
Now as you go about your business for the day, try not to forget this little gem of the past. Go ahead and open up that old dusty box of toys and see if you still have that little pony hanging around. Maybe give it’s mane a much needed brush. Or, if you gave her a trim, then go ahead and tell her you are sorry, that you were only a kid and didn’t realize that it wouldn’t grow back til it was too late. Come on, we all did that at some point.
Maiden Voyage
We all can remember the wonderful years of our past. But while we are living our present and looking to our futures, let us not forget the trends that shaped us to where we are today.
This blog has the sole purpose of pointing out the things we have come to forget. It also is for the things that we have conveniently filed away to the back, dusty corners of our memories in the hopes that they will never be remembered again. Thanks to the internet, there is a wealth of poking and prodding for the memories to be had, and I for one am smirking to myself as I begin the maiden voyage to yesteryear and drag you all along with me.
Trends of Yesteryear 