Now that it’s Christmas time even for those Scrooges and Grinches that waited til after Thanksgiving to start celebrating, and since we’ve been on the Childhood memories kick, I’ve decided to merge the two concepts. This post will be about what would truly make or break Christmas for a child: The Christmas presents. And I contend, like most everything else, kids toys just aren’t bringing the fury like they used to.
Crayons
Nothing solidified your status in 1st grade more firmly than the quantity of your Crayola Crayons. This caste system was pretty consistent across the board, and Crayola was very much aware of this fact. You have your 64 pack which was an 8x8 cube. This would slap you right in the middle of the social ladder. You got your 98 pack, which was pretty impressive with the built in sharpener, and this meant that you had the orange “Macaroni and Cheese” Crayon, which was pretty bad ass should you ever need to color a picture of noodles or make a portrait of a ginger. AND THEN you get your 120 pack. This miracle from Heaven came in a large booklet form, where each crayon had its own gravity defying slot. You could open the booklet up and turn it upside down and no crayons would even fall out! This luxury edition was only received on Christmas, and was complete with not only Macaroni and Cheese but also Purple Mountain’s Majesty and 3 or 4 unnamed colors with the option to submit your name idea to Crayola. Boom, you’re popular with this bad boy.
Conversely, the fastest way to the bottom of the totem pole is with RoseArt crayons. To this day I’m convinced that only Church Sunday School classrooms are keeping this horrible excuse for an art supply manufacturer in business. Even as a child I knew from just touching these little horror sticks that my masterpiece was going to end up a globby, waxy mess. To the point where I’m convinced their business plan is to rip the wick out of a colored candle, slap some paper around the middle and call it a day. And don’t act like they had packs that exceeded 8 colors. They might have pretended too, but all the greens were the same color once committed to paper. If you’re getting RoseArt crayons for Christmas, well I’m sorry your parents hate you.
(Just look how waxy they are!)
Barbie Fashion Designer
Now I know this will not apply to any heterosexual male that is reading this post, but maybe if you had a little sister, you’ll remember them screaming at the top of their lungs and sprinting to the computer after opening a present on Christmas morning. This was because they just received Barbie Fashion Designer. This incredible feat of technology allowed little girls (or boys, don’t act like you didn’t check it out when your sister wasn’t around) to create outfits for their Barbies on the computer, with various colors, patterns and outfit options, and then print their “mangnum opus” as it were onto polyester covered paper. Then, we’d cut the pattern out, use the stickers provided to adhere the seams, and presto, you have a new outfit for your doll. Little did we know the headache this would cause our parents, as each outfit would suck a brand new ink cartridge dry, the fabric paper was impossible to replace, and the adhesive for the stickers was so sub-par, it was really more “Barbie Stripper Designer” than anything. You’d just be playing with your newly dressed Barbie and she’d be on a date with Aladdin and boom, naked. Clothes fell apart. It was embarrassing to say the least.
Sock-Em Boppers
Apparently the makers of this product were all under the age of 10, had an annoying sibling, and needed a way to punch them in the face repeatedly without getting in trouble. Enter the Sock-em Bopper. This toy was just an inflatable glove that fit on your hand and gave you carte blanche to sucker punch anyone else. The unspoken rule was you could only hit someone that also had a sock-em bopper on, as if that was them admitting they’re ready for a concussion. The blow to the head, although not as severe as direct contact with a fist, wasn’t exactly like getting hit with a cloud. But should someone ever complain to a parent about how hard you hit, you’d completely get away with it because you’d say “I used the sock-em bopper and he had one on too!”. Boom, not in trouble. Even in the commercial, all the kids are just furiously attacking each other and smiling. I wonder how many takes some of those shots took, pausing for bloody nose clean up. Needless to say, I never got this toy because my mom smelled the true purpose of this game from a mile away.
Moon Shoes
According to the commercial, you could strap glorified shoe boxes to your feet with industrial strength rubber bands, and you were practically transported to a zero gravity situation, i.e. the moon. Hardly, but that still didn’t keep each and every kid from stomping around in these bad boys. The only thing that would cause us to again walk as if we were on planet Earth would be for one of the rubber bands to break. And that would generally happen within 1 day of purchase. Nevertheless, kids would flip out for these bad boys, regardless of the fact that I’m beyond convinced that these shoes are the sole reason for childhood scoliosis.
Skip-it
At first glance, one would assume that purchasing this product was right up there with purchasing a pet rock, since all this “game” really is achieving is playing with the physics concept of torque. Why would someone purchase a simple machine such as this when they could recreate it with any number of household items? I’ll tell you why. Because it came with a counter that kept track of how many times you could successfully skip it. Hardly accurate, this counter still made you feel like a champion. One of the darkest days of my childhood was when I was skipping-it in the driveway, and I lost a little control of my path, and slammed my skip-it ball right into the trashcan. I was devastated, it was destroyed. To the point where my mom went out and got me another one almost immediately. As an adult I realize that my mom was probably actually dying with laughter behind my back that I could entertain myself with this for hours. But to be fair, at one point they came out with a jeweled skip-it and the heavy part was a big “jewel”. Beat that.
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