Have Toys Gotten Lamer?

[Nat]

Back when I was a kid, there was Lite Brite, the whole toy aisle be filled with Barbie stuff, there were Knex and Legos, Littlest Pet Shop and Polly Pockets. Now today it seems like toys have gotten lamer. No more Lite Brite, lack of Knex, Legos, and Barbies. The Polly Pockets have disspeared and now they are Polly Fashion which seems to be gone now too. I do not like the new Littlest Pet Shop, I think they look slutty because of the looks of the fake animals. My god what has happened to our toys? They are lame now. I can remember the Creepy Crawlers and now those are gone, the Play Doh seems to be lacking now too. 1990's was the best for toys because that's when they were the best. Now I notice Skipper, Stacie and Kelly are hardly around now on the shelves.

Sadly my own kid won't know how cool toys were when I was a kid because he or she be stuck with the lame toys and won't know any different. I guess I'll be using ebay for the classic toys just as long as the sellers aren't charging too much for them and just as long as the bids don't get too high.

I also notice Little People don't exist anymore because the company stopped making them. I remember the Little Tykes people, they stopped being made too. Sad how toys have to disappear and retire. Pretty soon it might be the View master and the Etch A Sketch. It seems like Fisher Price has disspeared and Little Tykes. Now you can only find them on ebay, in second hand stores or antique stores, or yard sales. Ebay be easier.

[Guest Juni's Cute Baby Lucy]

You should come to the UK, we seem to be getting all the old toys coming back.... in fact there is a lot of nice wooden toys that have become popular in the last 2-3 years, my son seems to have lots of things that are very similar to what I would have had.

Hugs

Lucy

[Pollyanna Fleshman]

You notice it, too? Yes, toys have totally gotten lamer. Bring back the old stuff please, people!

[babykeiff]

Pollyanna / Spokane Girl,

you are truely still baby girls - missing your own toys, and not grown up, but I am NOT critising or condeming you for it. I admire you two cause you have not lost that childish innocence and want.

...and you are correct, political correctness, lawsuits, fear of toxicity, etc. have forced both manufacturers and retailers to sell 'safe' and 'educational' toys - which equates to, boring and non imaginative, expensive - in accessories, etc. and none of the familiar toys that might hurt a child if he or she happens to eat it when the wind is blowing east on the 2nd of Jully while there is a blue moon out. This annoys me - when I bought my own daughter a plushie (3" tall pink bear - yes, most peoples index finger is longer than that) when she was born, this nursery nurse told me to make sure that I took it out of the cot / crib when she sleeps incase she puts it in her mouth and chokes. 1- At that stage, my daughters mouth could not open less that half an inch - and that is when she was yawning - and 2 - I think you all know at this stage my profession. My daughter slept with this bear squished in her left hand. Yea, I even get annoyed with some medical staff

[babyvr6]

No, toys haven't gotten lamer, we've all have gotten cooler . However, for those of you in the UK, apparently the inverse is true .

But I do think that kids TV really sucks now. When I was growing up, TV was awesome. Shows like rugrats, rocko's modern life, doug, and ren and stimpy where the coolest shows ever.

The shows that are on now just suck. Seriously. Although for some reason I reallly enjoy The marvelous misadventures of flapjack .

[sarah_ab]

the best toy we had as kids was a piece of wood painted green. It was a gun, a laser shooter, it was a sail boat, and a space ship, it was what we would toss down for hop scotch and the finish line to races, and it was what we would hide to play "treasure hunt"

I had a few barbies when i was a kid, but never played with them much.

Mostly our toys were basket balls, baseballs, frisbees, soccer balls, ice skates, roller blades, bikes, board games, puzzles, card games... but i DID have a cabbage patch girl

[Yvhuce]

Way back when, we had cap guns (and even cap grenades) and all manner of other toy guns that were designed to look real. And they didn't have those orange safety tips. We had Transformers with more loose parts than a "build it yourself" piece of furniture. Most of these didn't get eaten. They got lost in/under furniture and in the floor vents, resulting in transformers that didn't have hands and stuff because those were projectiles. We also had those disc guns (Peter remembers these in one Family Guy episode), and guns that would shoot those rubber suction cup darts (and would fit in the barrel) with a fair amount of force. Not to mention Zoids. Lots and lots of small parts in those (some of which found their way into those suction cup dart guns). Many of us were also encouraged to play with BB and pellet guns. Hell, even some of our Nerf products could do some damage if actually used as advertised.

[PampersPete]

My favorite toys as a kid were Lawn Jarts(or Jarts as some people called them).

[Necare]

Don`t really know if toys have become lamer, as I don`t really pay any attention to the current toy-trends. But I sorely regret selling my entire Star Wars collection when I was a kid ( a momentary lapse of reason there!), and if the toy shops would miraculously begin selling the original ones again, I would be there in a heartbeat, cash in hand! What has become lamer, slicker and soulless though, is cartoons; no f**king charm in them nowadays; give me the good old Donald Duck cartoons anyday!!

[Bettypooh]

I dunno about lamer, but definately less imaginative, more commercialized, more battery-powered, and more expensive As a child when I visited with a lot of my relatives we had nothing but our imagination to play with There might be one doll among three girls and one baseball with a stick for a bat among three boys in a good day- yet somehow we still had lots of fun Try that with today's kids Most of them are totally lost when the power goes out and they lose the TV, video games, internet, and texting Toys are safer now but I remember very few incidents where a toy caused harm unless a kid was trying something stupid with it.

Bettypooh

[Codymoogle]

Toys now require no imagination, they're all battery powered and electronic, basically giving no room for imagination, and that's just sad. Same with TV shows - they suck and leave nothing to the mind! My baby sister (who is 10) always gets online and what is most of what I hear from her? "I'm BORED!"...She wouldn't be as bored if she had imaginative toys and TV shows, etc...*shakes head*...Just sad.

~ moogle

[wetbed24]

Lamer indeed. I remember sitting in a sandbox with Tonka trucks made from rusted jagged metal. Why don't they give those to kids anymore?? As far as todays toys go - everything is computerized now, so a lot of creativity went out the window. Action figures are being replaced by virtual action figures (video games.) Nothing against video games though.

[guitar_a_goo_goo_ga]

10 toys that made you gay

[alex 04]

i think toys have got lamer and cost a lot more for toys that only last that it feels like 5 mins then there broken

[timmyc]

I think every generation probably thought they had the best stuff, the best music, the best tv whatever they we used too. Too me now everything is so mass produced cheap plastic made in China junk but 20 years from now, people will be looking back fondly at what they had. The video games are way better now I would have loved an ipod when I was in highschool and would have what the heck is a cell phone ? But I think everyone will have some things they were attached to and associate with. I think the same goes for diapers, in many cases the diapers we remember as kids or got into as teens are what we seek as adults.

[hidden]

one word: Bratz

this franchise and others like it have completely ruined how youngsters should act. elementary school kids should not be worried about jewelry and mini skirts yet.

look at some old tv shows and then look at tv shows today. back then, they wore what was comfortable and didn't care about anything else.

i agree that toys today are getting more lame (only know about the above since saturday morning tv is on sometimes in background (haven't been in a toy isle in about 7 yrs)) but tv shows have gone down hill as well...

[Yvhuce]

Right on. Though, I have to admit that the new Knight Rider is better than I expected. Though, it's more akin to Viper than the original KR... When I was a kid, we had the best shows: Knight Rider, The A-Team, MacGuyver, Airwolf, The Dukes of Hazzard, The Fall Guy, and several others. Most of those were cancled with ratings that today's shows would kill to achieve. They were also longer, with fewer commercials to interrupt them. Nowadays they have to cut out about 5 minutes or so out of them to show reruns. Thank God for DVDs... And not to mention the merchandising! I still have an old Eartle versions of the General Lee, Fall Guy truck, and A-Team van. Nowadays, it's all cartoon-based toys, cause the political correctness has infected the toy makers, so they can't make the toys supporting the badass vigilates.

Of course, the converse is true of videogames... They were rather lame, for the most part, and often were effing unwinnable and soul-crushing... After a while, a game that can't be won just becomes a source of frustration and anger, not enjoyment. Now, I don't mind a challenge... But I really hate it when I put work into something that doesn't ever bear fruit... It's like building a house from the ground up and then someone taking a bulldozer to it... That's just wrong...

And movies... The late 70's-90's is perty much the apex of movie making. Things started going downhill with the Matrix... Though some good ones occasionally get made, they're the exceptions. It used to be that movies were worth the high prices to see them... Now, they're mostly missable in theaters, to snag the cheaper DVD version that's better than the theatrical version. Try as they may, they'll never be able to match the awesomeness of movies like The Thing, or the first 2 Alien movies, or either of the Predator movies, or the original Die Hard. No... Nowadays, they have to have their CGI effects that still aren't convincing enough and cause the actors not to act convincingly enough when reacting to them. Show a modern day action hero one of Stan Winston's monster effects and they'd wet themselves in terror...

[Pollyanna Fleshman]

The trikes today suck also, as they are this stupid plastic. I did not want to buy them for the kids, so I allowed them to play on my trike, the one from when I was a child, which is practically all metal. Who wants stupid cheap plastic?... I wasn't wasting my money. And where the hell are the tinker toys?

[babyfett]

Oh the good old days when we had Tonka toys made out of metal and you could play cowboys and Indian's with a toy gun without that gay orange tip.

[sarah_ab]

And where the hell are the tinker toys?

toys r' us right next to hte lincoln logs, k'nex, legos, and other building toys... usually around the board game and craft section

[Nat]

I saw the Tinker Toys at The White Elephant here in Spokane. Their old school toys are disappearing off the shelves so that place is getting no fun now. I managed to have them get the back unlocked for me so I can look at the old toys back there. Ah the good old times, even the baby toys seemed cooler back then. I was hoping that was where they put their old school toys but wrong. Maybe they got purchased is why they are gone. But I found old school Littlest Pet Shop and it was Beethoven 2nd so I bought it. I was hoping they have others but they didn't. Only the same kind.