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Outdoor Toys of the 80s and 90s

If youre a regular reader, it should be pretty clear your loyal 90s nostalgia chronicler has a serious case of summer fever. As we close in on Memorial Day weekend, the prospect of summertime fun is almost too much to bear. Granted, I dont have any water balloon fights or Jart tournaments scheduled, but the notion of sunshine and the great outdoors still elicits a childlike level of euphoria. For the record, my weekend is still open for Jart tournaments if youre interested in setting something up.

Its a safe bet to say we will never fully recapture that childhood schools-out-for-the-summer level of excitement; there is simply no adult equivalent to that level of anticipation. All the Moon Shoes in the world couldnt eliminate the grown-up stressors we face year round. Though, to be fair, I imagine it would help. Open reader plea: send Moon Shoes. That is all.

Though we may not be able to reignite the spark of summer vacation excitement, we can at least reminisce about some of the toys that made our summertimes so special. If youre lucky, maybe you still have some of these items lying around. Seriously, what I wouldnt do for a Skip-It right about now. Forget the gym membership--that little pink piece of plastic is way more motivating exercise.


Skip-It


Who could have foreseen that strapping a little plastic ball and chain to your ankle could provide hours of endless entertainment? That little progressive counter on the side tapped into the competitive child psyche, allowing us to compete against our friends and our own personal bests while playing quietly in the driveway. I imagine our parents were thrilled for the long-stretches of easily amused and generally exhausting play.


Rollerblades

Kids today may not believe it, but many of us were around for a time when rollerskates were still the gold standard in wheeled footwear. Inline skates were modeled after ice skates, intended for training use on dry land. Soon they were all the rage, a trend from which many of us learned the value of a deeply skinned knee. Regardless, rollerblades will forever be superior to todays alternative. Dont even get me started on those wheelie sneakers. Every time I see a kid rolling by me at the mall, I yearn to buy him a pair of rollerblades. They just dont know what theyre missing.


Moon Shoes


The advertisements for Nickelodeon moon shoes were everywhere, though I never actually knew anybody that owned a pair. Had I been better connected on the playground, perhaps I could have experienced the wonder of spring walking firsthand. Alas, I will never know the gravity-reduced wonder of moonwalking. Until that whole colonization thing goes down. Or maybe if I become a great Michael Jackson-style dancer. Either way.


Super Soakers


One of the most effective ways to beat the summer heat is with a water fight, and we all know the key to winning a water fight lies in the proper arsenal of weaponry. Armed with our Super Soakers, we could outblast flimsy conventional water guns. In case youre not big on Super Soaker trivia, you may be interested to know they were originally branded as Power Drenchers. Or maybe you wont be. Who knows. Either way, the toy makers obviously got their hands on a thesaurus somewhere down the line.


Power Wheels


These much-coveted but oft-denied overpriced mini vehicles undoubtedly caused many temper tantrums over the years. We just couldnt understand why our parents wouldnt shell out the big bucks for one of these babies. If only Id gotten the mock motorbike I wanted, I could be a bona fide Kawasaki ninja by now. At the very least, Id hold a chance at being a proficient Barbie Jeep operator.


Nerf Balls
Finally, a company that recognizes kids throw things at one another and it can really, really hurt. Through the clever use of foam, the quantity of bruises per square inch decreased dramatically. Getting hit in the face just got that much more bearable. Thanks, Nerf!


Little Tykes Cozy Coupe


Heres a fact you might not know about your favorite child-sized vehicle: In the early 90s, it was reported that the Cozy Coupe had outsold both the Ford Taurus and Honda Accord, making it one of the bestselling cars of the time. Its certainly more economical than a Taurus or Accord, plus it gets way better gas mileage. The downside? Sore feet from all the Flintstone-style acceleration. You cant win em all.


Lawn Darts (Jarts)


Ah, finally a toy that combines the tranquil peacefulness of lawns with the terrifying risk of death by impalement. Im not sure how or why these toys ever eked past the watchful eye of safety experts and parent groups, but somehow they made it into production and onto toy store shelves. It wasnt long before the US and Canada issued a ban on the sale of Lawn Darts and urged consumers to "discard or destroy them immediately." Yikes.


Slip nSlide


Speaking of dangerous yard toys, heres a classic example of how innocent concepts can go very very wrong. Ill give you a hint when setting up your own slip n slide: try your best to avoid cement or a downhill descent into a wall/sidewalk/pile of jagged rocks/any other bone breakin, tooth chippin slide stopper. It sounds like common sense, but you may be surprised how many people failed to consider the consequences until their child was hobbling around in a cast or sling for the remainder of the summer.

Also, note to college students: It may seem like a good idea to combine a slip n slide with alcohol. It is not. Believe me. Resist your instincts. Your limbs will thank me.

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Our Favorite 80s and 90s TV Puppet Pals

If theres one thing weve learned from TV, its that everything is cuter when a puppet does it. Its a fail-safe formula. A person performs a hackneyed visual gag and we all groan in agony, but an adorable puppet does it and we fall for it hook, line, and stinker.*

Its no mystery that children love puppets, but TV in the 80s and 90s proved that adults have a pretty solid puppet-loving capacity all their own. Puppets often make the best punchlines, giving them an automatic boost in likability in both kids and grown-up television programming. Plus, they never need a stunt double or act like a diva when it comes to contract renewal. Talk about cutting expenses.

Puppet-studded programs may not be the most highbrow fare on TV, but they have a unique style of entertaining us. They allow us to suspend our disbelief to a point where if we can believe this talking toy exists somewhere in real life, maybe all of the magical features that come along with it are possible, too. These 80s and 90s shows didnt need to be realistic or to feature deeply developed characters; we were perfectly content with our cartoonish, overdrawn cliches. So long as they kept feeding us hilarious puppet gag antics, we were more than happy to partake in spoonful after heaping spoonful.


Eureekas Castle


Eureekas Castle was a Nick Jr. gem, giving us a quirky, offbeat world of wizardry and goofy characters. The show revolved around sorceress trainee Eureeka, thickheaded dragon Magellan, peanut butter sandwich-gobbling twins Bogge and Quagmire, the visually impaired Batley, and the vaguely ethnic pushcart proprietor Mr. Knack. The characters were creative and imaginative in a way that bodes well for childrens programming. It may not have been highly educational, but it did teach me to fear claymation Slurms. Those things were weird.


Lambchops Play-Along



If theres one thing kids love more than puppets, its baby puppets. Have you ever seen a more adorable little sheeplet? When I grew up, I was horrified to find that "Lambchop" referred to a cut of meat. Slicing into it for the first time was pretty traumatic, though luckily there was no stuffing inside. That might have scarred me for life. As a device to distract myself from the lambchop chopping task at knife, I just hummed a few bars of "This is the Song that Never Ends." That seemed to do the trick.


Mystery Science Theater 3000



I think our buddy Joel at MST3K had the right idea. If youre stuck orbiting the earth sequestered on a spacecraft forced by the powers that be to watch n endless stream of B-movies, you should definitely use the spare theater equipment to build yourself some sentient robot pals. You should, of course, name them Gypsy, Cambot, Crow T. Robot, and Tom Servo. There are pretty much no other options.


Sesame Street



For many of us, this was our first major exposure to puppetry. Or, equally likely, our first exposure to platonic male puppet roommates who share a cookie crumb-ridden bed and know an awful lot about each others bathtime habits and carrier pigeon preferences. Either way, most of us fell for the cuddly Sesame Street characters, and hard. I mean, a monster who lives in a garbage can? Where do they come up with this stuff?


ALF


Alf Sings "Old Time Rock and Roll" - Click here for the most popular videos

Just when you thought noses couldnt get any more phallic looking than Joe Camels, you met Alf. And then, you knew. This was the be-all-end-all of vaguely suggestive schnozes. ALF stood for "Alien Life Form", which is how we kindly earth-folk classify floppy-looking brown masses who grew up on the Lower East Side of the planet Melmac. ALF definitely had his moments, but his appearance is just a little unsettling. It just feels inappropriate.


Dinosaurs



If after watching this show you cried out endlessly, "Im the baby! Gotta love me!" Im sure your parents were less than pleased with their decision to grant viewership privileges. The show wasnt really directed at kids; it was more of a family sitcom that happened to feature full-size puppet characters. By the time wed realized this, though, wed already moved on to gleefully smacking our fathers on their heads with a frying pan while screaming, "Not the mama! Not the mama!"


Muppets Tonight



There have been so many incarnations of The Muppets over the years its become difficult to differentiate between one series and another, but for the sake of 90s nostalgia well single out Muppets Tonight for brief examination. The show hinged pretty heavily on celebrity guest appearances and wasnt especially a standout in the long line of Muppet shows. I must say, though, the Baywatch parodies were worth a chuckle or two.


Fraggle Rock



That is some seriously rockin theme music. I probably havent seen this intro since 1992, yet somehow I find myself singing along with a surprisingly adept command of the lyrics. Its catchy, right? Its got that sparkly puppet charm sprinkled liberally throughout. Well done, Jim Henson studios. Well done, indeed.

Fraggle Rock managed to slip in a bunch of heavy issues while we were busy enjoying the musical numbers and highly colorful wardrobe selection. Some of us also spent a fair amount of time giggling over the fact that there was a Fraggle named Boober. I mean, Boober! Can you beat that?


Cousin Skeeter



Who knew a marionette could be such a bad-ass? It probably speaks volumes about my level of maturity that the theme songs phrase, "Skeeters what I want" amuses me in a slangy double-entendre kind of way. I dont think Ive advanced much in behavioral age since the days this show originally aired.


Unhappily Ever After


This show gave many of us an unquenchable desire to own a crass, wise-cracking stuffed rabbit. Mr. Floppy was just so adorable. His looks were, anyway. His personality could probably have used a bit of a tune-up to align with his cherubic appearance, but it all just contributed to his puppety charm.


Weinerville



If you had to pick the most terrifying mode of puppet, Id say human-head-on-tiny-puppet-body would fall pretty darn close to the top of the list. Weinerville was a Nickelodeon cartoon/live-action variety show based on the comedic stylings of Marc Weiner. The characters were undeniably creative, but they still seem a little creepy to me. Add cross-dressing to the giant head/tiny puppet body mix and be prepared for the wrath of Weinerville.


Whatever the reason, puppets had a hold on us. Maybe we just dont watch enough Nick Jr. anymore, but the proportion of puppets in prime-time programming seems to have persistently plummeted. Its too bad, really. A lot of todays shows could probably use a good puppet boost. Just think: if this weekends Oscars had used puppet presenters, wed have been far more likely to push through to the bitter end. Just a thought.




*This is not a typo, its just a terrible, terrible play on words. Had I been a puppet, you would have been all over that one

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Popular Young Childrens Books of the 80s and 90s

Childrens authors set the groundwork for a new generation to develop a deep love of reading, so its critical that their output is engaging and amusing enough to hold our limited attention. Plus, our parents often bore the burden of reading these books to us again and again until they could have recited them from memory, so it helped if authors could throw in some humor that satiated the appetites of both adults and children.

These books satisfied both criteria in balance and firmly established a place in our collective nostalgic heart for their silliness, fun, and wit. Lets take a stroll through the magical world of 80s and 90s young childrens books. Youll laugh, youll cry, youll develop a catchy rhyming scheme. Dont blame me if you start talking Seusically, though. It should wear off in 10-12 hours.

If You Give A Mouse a Cookie



We all know what happens when you start giving mice cookies. Theyre insatiable little rodents, really. At least thats the central message of Laura Numeroffs If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. Hell just keep bleeding you dry with favors until he finally just wants a cookie again. Theres just no winning. Maybe if you try giving a Moose a Muffin or a Pig a Pancake things might turn out differently. Maybe.


Love You Forever


If youre a leaky-faucet type crier easily set off by emotional material, be warned that youll release the floodgates by the last cycle of "I love you forever, I love you for always, as long as youre living, my baby youll be." The book details the relationship of a mother and her young son as she recites the same refrain to him at various stages of his life. Near the end of the story, the adult child recites it back to his dying elderly mother and finally to his own infant daughter. The book resonates well with adults and children alike; it seems the older you get, the more likely youll want to keep a full box of tissues nearby when you pick this one up.


The Eleventh Hour and Animalia




I spent somewhere in the neighborhood of three years trying to trace these gorgeous illustrations in hopes of miraculously transferring Graeme Bases incredible art talent onto my own hopelessly skill-free hands. Bases books may be visually enchanting, but in the case of The Eleventh Hour theyre also incredibly tricky. I still havent managed to solve all of the many riddles embedded in the story. I almost caved and broke into the solution in the back, but Im still holding out hope that the answer will just come to me.


The True Story of the Three Little Pigs and The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Fairy Tales




Revisionist fairy tales can be a lot of fun, and this Wolf-narrated version of the classic Three Little Pigs story is no exception. Our allegedly mistakenly accused suspect, Alexander T. Wolf, describes his troubles in borrowing sugar to bake a cake for his Grannys birthday. Is it his fault he has a terrible cold and that pigs build inferior non-sneeze-resistant houses? How could you let a delicious ham dinner like that go to waste, after all?

Along the same lines and written by the same witty author (Jon Scieszka), The Stinky Cheese Man gives us an irreverent look at some of our favorite classic fairy tales. The Gingerbread Man is the Stinky Cheese Man, The Really Ugly Duckling just grows into a Really Ugly Duck, and Little Red Riding Shorts manages to outrun the wolf on the way to Grandmas. The book is a bit chaotic, but its legitimately clever and witty, too.


Arthur Books


Marc Brown was clearly onto something when he created this lovable anthropomorphic eight-year old aardvark named Arthur. Populating Arthurs hometown of Elwood City are a host of other cuddly animal characters with varying socioeconomic backgrounds, leading me to find that yes, you can indeed be jealous of a fictional monkey. Darn you, Muffy, and your enviable rich-monkey lifestyle.


The Jolly Postman


Kids have pretty short attention spans, so an interactive book is always a major draw: its like a combination book/game rolled into a neat little package. To be delivered by a postman. A jolly postman.

In The Jolly Postman, our hero postman maneuvers from one fairy tale house to another, delivering correspondences (an apology note from Golidlocks and the 3 bears), junk mail (an advertisement for "Hobgoblin Supplies, ltd."), and even threats of legal action (the case of the Wolf v. Miss Riding Hood.) The jolly postman stops for tea at each home, delivering letters that we as readers could physically open and read.


Chicka Chicka Boom Boom


Learning the alphabet can be pretty boring, so imagine how relieved we were to find a book that turns dry and humorless letters into cute anthropomorphic characters. Our fearless letters climb the tree in orderly A-B-C succession, only to fall back down and sustain alphabetized injuries. Ouch.


Where the Wild Things Are


Monsters might seem like a scary, lurking under the bed prospect until we learn that in our imaginations we can just dance with them in a wild rumpus instead. Sounds like a decent solution to me. The back-story is possibly as entertaining as the tale itself: author Maurice Sendak had initially planned for the book to feature wild horses, but his publisher shunned Sendaks sub-par horse drawings. Sendak replaced the horses with caricatures of his Polish Jewish aunts and uncles: Aaron, Bernard, Emile, Moishe, and Tzippy. I imagine they were thrilled to find their likenesses titled "things."


Berenstain Bears


This friendly bear family has been teaching kids valuable life lessons for generations. I believe I read the Visit to the Dentist book at my own dentists office at least twenty times, which helped assuage my fear of the infamous yankers while simultaneously teaching me about the untapped goldmine of cash at stake for my expendable baby teeth. Win-win.


Amelia Bedelia


What do you get when you combine a charming rhyming named housekeeper and a penchant for extreme literal interpretation of simple instructions? Pure childrens book gold. Amelia Bedelia draws the drapes by trying her hand at sketching the curtains and prunes the hedges by sticking prunes in them. We learned the value of simple vocabulary and double meanings, plus I got some great ideas for how to make a mockery of my household chores,


Oh, The Places Youll Go!


Though it may have become a cliche gift for recent graduates, Dr. Seusss final book is ultimately inspirational and sweet. The book details our protagonists travel through uncharted territory, complete with setbacks and triumphs. So go ahead, give it to your graduating cousin or neighbor. Hell probably be able to start a collection with all of the copies he receives, but he may just learn a valuable lesson about endless possibilities.


The Rainbow Fish



This book seems pretty innocent with its message of sharing, so imagine my surprise in discovering its taken some flack from critics for allegedly promoting a socialist agenda. Its a pretty preposterous accusation; its enough to make you wish yourself back to a simpler time when you didnt know what things like "socialist agenda" even meant.


Stellaluna


Fruit bats are adorable and owls are evil? What kind of crazy mixed-up pre-Harry Potter owl love affair world is this? Stellaluna is separated from her mother and is raised with a nest full of baby birds, the mother of whom admonishes her for hanging upside down like, well, a bat. In case you were worried, she does eventually reunite with her mother, but the book has a bit of a melancholy feel through the whole "be true to yourself" message.

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