Pointless Nostalgia 7: Imagination Not Included

'Tis the season, my friends! It's almost Christmas!

Now's the time to whip out all those special holiday season traditions, if you haven't started doing so since the day after Halloween. It's time to spend quality, touching moments with family and friends, mostly because you have to - it's the law, or something. It's that time of year when you eat a boatload of chocolate, candy and every other sugar-infested confection, enough to almost develop diabetes in record time. It's the only time of the year that you can get away wearing turkey gravy-stained pajama pants, and that decade-old "Beaver Canoe" sweatshirt for 2 weeks straight. It's time to dash through the snow, walk in a winter wonderland, and roast chestnuts on an open fire (has anyone even eaten a chestnut? I imagine they taste like eating a chunk of particle board).

And speaking of chestnuts, I'd like to dust off an old theme, with the triumphant return of Pointless Nostalgia! With PN posts, I get to reminisce about the good old days, the not-so-good old days, and those days where I'd just watch television and eat a frozen Coke that I put in the freezer the night before. Since it's close to Christmas, every medium we have (television, radio, newspaper, internet) is saturated with advertisements for children's toys. Basically, Christmas is still pretty much for the kids (unlike Halloween, which has been forcibly taken over by adults in pimp and skank costumes), so I'd like to look back on some of the toys that have come and gone in my lifetime. Nowadays, toys come complete with imagination and complex moving parts, but when I grew up, you had to supply imagination yourself, because the toy was pretty simple. And sometimes, it was just dumb.

Here's some examples of toys that seemed like a fun idea at the time of reception at Christmas, but were ignored 5 minutes later:

Mr. Microphone

Some inventive genius thought that kids would seriously go bonkers for this toy, because really, every kid is an attention whore from birth. Mr. Microphone enabled any one to dial into an FM frequency, and talk like they're on the air. Supposedly, kids are supposed to marvel at the thought of being on the radio. Granted, every kid jumps at the chance to annoy their parents, friends and everyone else around them, but this got old fast. Basically, after the first "Helloooo!", the kid (or adult) gives up on trying to say anything good, and resigns to just making farting noises until even that gets too dull. However, the commercial would have you believe that this is the greatest invention since insulin.

And for a second commercial, see here. I want to face-punch the people at the start.

PogoBall

This was actually popular for a time in the late '80s, and I know that many of my friends had one or two (they wouldn't share with a sibling). It was supposed to give the joy of a pogostick, but without the handy pole. You'd put one foot on it, then try to get your balance with the other. The second part took about a decade to accomplish. Kids with bad coordination were fucked. It was a nice idea, but it ultimately failed, despite its fad status. Why? Because advertisers forgot that kids are fucking lazy, especially once video games became omnipresent, and trampolines became must-haves. However, if you got a fat kid to try it, it did provide something to laugh at.

Snoopy Sno-Cone Machine

A toy company's goal is to create a toy so awesome, that it makes kids throw batshit-crazy temper tantrums when they see it. This toy wasn't one of those toys. I remember one of my sister's friends had one, and I thought "That's awesome! I must have one NOW!". You just put ice cubes in the top, turn the crank, add the sweet sauce, and you've got an instant sno-cone! Looking at it now, it's basically just an ice crusher, and an impossibly hard one at that. No kid likes to have to do work when he or she plays, and this fucker was hard to operate. As this video shows, you have to be an adult to use it, taking away an important rule of toys: Kids have to be able to have fun with it unsupervised. Just like these kids:

This toy fails, because as I mentioned above, I found a better way to enjoy an ice treat. Coke in the freezer. Works every time.

Magic 8 Ball

I can't believe that these are still around, but you can still see one in someone's house in their room, or on a business person's desk, as a result of a shitty Christmas gift exchange. If you do see one of these in a person's possession, and it looks recently used, instead of high on a shelf of other forgotten junk, get the hell out of there. That person should not be communicated with, because they can't make their own decisions to save their life. When I was a kid, the novelty of the 8 ball was asking it questions indicative of a precocious nature, you know, for fun. Asking the ball, "Does Molly like me?" or "Will I get a better Christmas present next year?" were common questions. Unfortunately, the 8 Ball was not magic. It just fucked with you. Giving you answers like, "Outlook not so good", "Concentrate and ask again", or my personal favourite, "Better not tell you now" (why the fuck not?), just fooled with your mind. After a while, you just kept shaking it until you got the answer you wanted. For some reason, I never received "Yes", to my question of "Am I cool". Fuck you, 8 ball.

Snap Bracelet

These suck, and if you had one, you were retarded.