Old School Toys

How f***ing cool were toys back in the day!? Lots cool…they were lots cool. Well, WUWO has decided that they are, still cool, so we hope you’re ready to open up that loft, dust down those toys and get all smiley with our list of some of the most awesome toys from back when. Yaaay!

Pogs

Pogs most successful period was in the early-to-mid nineties where every kid worth his salt would own a decent stack. Sometimes just collected, other times played. The rules of the game were simple: make your opponents Pogs do cool flips and shit…alright, alright! Calm down, it has a little more structure than that. Each player has their own stack of Pog, which include special Pogs called; ‘Slammers’. ‘Slammers’ are different to the common Pog in that they vary in weight and thickness. These Slammers are then hurled towards a stacked up pile of Pogs (one Pog on top of another and an equal amount of each player’s Pogs) by whoever’s turn it is and whichever Pogs flip over are after that collected by that person who threw the slammer. The game ends when there are no more Pogs to flip. The winner is the person with the most Pogs flipped and if you all decided to play for keeps then you keep the Pogs you’ve flipped.

• Pogs were banned from many schools as they were seen as a destructive force in the playground which distracted from learning. This explains why no one learned anything in the mid nineties.
• The mid nineties’ explosion of Pogs was so big that both Tony Blair and Bill Clinton were pictured playing with them, which begs the question: why weren’t they running their countries?
• Most adults who use to play Pogs still keep their slammers in their chest pocket to stop from unexpected gun fire (or expected gun fire)
• Pogs are nowadays commonly referred to as ‘Little circular babe magnets’, which are pretty much the most important thing humans have. If one were to take a look at the Pog selection of some of the most successful people alive, the results would astound you.

Yo-yos

There’s that moment when you don’t know. You don’t know if your Yo-yo will hit the ground or not. You don’t know if your precious toy will shatter into pieces. A moment where time slows, a moment that matters, a moment that Yo-yo’s. Everyone knows what a Yo-yo is and everyone knows why they’re great.  With a Yo-yo you could do a bunch of mad moves like ‘Rock the Baby’ that you incidentally cannot do without a Yo-yo (unless you do the much more boring thing and get a baby). For reasons that are clear to everyone, Yo-yo’s are taken very seriously by many. With many competitions being hosted worldwide, none are bigger than the ‘World Yo-Yo Contest’, where people from nineteen different countries compete in six different divisions.

• Yo-yo’s date back over 2000 years with some evidence for their existence dating even further in the past to Ancient Egypt.
• There is a ‘National Yo-Yo museum’ in Chico, California, which houses the ‘Big-yo’; a 256lbs, which cannot really be used by man, but is said to be “fun stuff” for California’s local Dinosaur.
• Legend says that Yo-yo’s were once used as weapons. They would have spikes on them and would be slung at an enemy from a hidden position. Understandably this function is banned from most schools.
• On April 12th 1985, the first Yo-yo was taken into space. Reasons as to why this happened vary from the astronauts being bored with outer space to them being used as an abstract form of communication with Aliens.

Tamagotchi

Tamagotchis are egg-shaped computers, which usually include three buttons so that a user can take care of an on-screen creature by feeding, cleaning, playing with and generally caring for. Tamagotchi’s landed on earth in 1996 supposedly from planet Tamagotchi (surprise, surprise) and are an alien race that was most likely evicted from their planet for being too needy. Early Tamagotchi’s could die if the user didn’t feed them every thirty minutes and this attention seeking is exactly what cost them their popularity in the end, with them being banned from many schools for distracting children from learning all the things. Experts argue that even if the Tamagotchi’s weren’t banned from most schools, they would still have faded in popularity due to them being “kind-of rubbish”.

• There is an online community where retired Tamagotchi’s can go (http://new.tamatown.com/) to live out their twilight years, presumably playing bingo and telling each other their war stories.
• There are over 40 different versions of the Tamagotchi, which begs the question; why?
• A Tamagotchi’s constant need for attention supposedly influenced apple when creating the iphone. This explains why most iphones owners are constantly fiddling with said iphone, as their iphone might starve or poop itself if left alone.
• Tamagotchi are still in production and it is unknown when they will return to their home planet.

Furby

These little sh**s are kind of scary to be honest. They seem a little too happy for Hamster robots; certainly happier than your average hamster robot. It should, however, be noted (..noted? Who’s taking notes) Furbies are not actually meant to be hamster robots. Furbies are said to be their own species. This species starts off speaking their own language (cleverly named-’Furbish’…) but they go on to learn parts of an actual proper real language. Which language, would depend on their setting as they were popular worldwide during the late nineties having sold over 40 million units. The amount of Furbies sold is especially scary when considering that some countries do not even have 40 million people. Which means there are more Furbies out there then there are people in Canada…someone should warn the Candian Prime Minister of a potential Furby uprising.

• In 2005, Furbies were reintroduced with a new version called the ‘Emoto-Tronic Furby’, which have a voice recognition system, a more emotive face and are worryingly larger.
• Furbies speaking function was translated into 24 different languages. However, Furbish is not known by many and said to be only spoken by people who are ‘really cool’.
• Furbies speech consists mainly of commands like “Show me a Dance” and “Go to Sleep Now” but they also have a suspicious thirst for more knowledge of their human owner with questions such as ‘Are you hungry?’ and the vicious ‘How are you?’
• The manufacturers of Furbies were said to be inspired by the 1984 James Cameron film ‘The Terminator’. In ‘The Terminator’ robots become self-aware and take over the world. The main difference is that Arnold Schwarzenegger is neither small nor fluffy.

Don’t worry if your favourite toy didn’t make the cut, Old School Toys Part two is coming. What do you want to see in Part two?