Think back to your prime (yes, that picture is me in my prime) or the part of your life that was spent on swing-sets and having playdates. Forget texting, remember when you had to call your friend’s house phone and awkwardly talk to their parent or sibling or babysitter just to reach your friend. How about IM away messages or even better Password Journals. Yes, these are definitely some of the highlights of my childhood but I want to highlight some of the best and my favorites. Some of them I wish I still had to help cope with college stress. Some of these things are so ancient that I don’t think many of the kids under the age of 10 would know about them…
1. Polly Pocket
Let me just say this, she was the tiniest gal with the tiniest rubber clothes. So small that she could fit in your pocket…get it?! Polly was definitely no Barbie, her shoes were even harder to find the match to than Barbie’s. But she was undoubtedly a great bath toy.
2. Easy Bake Oven
I used to think I was a chef at a 5-star restaurant when I baked things in my Easy Bake Oven. Little did anyone know I made it from a mix and some water. Well, maybe they did know. Maybe the fact that it was baked in a light bulb powered oven was a dead giveaway. Let’s just rewind to the fact that the Easy Bake oven allowed you to cook “cakes” with a lightbulb. Hmmm. Quite innovative.
3. Skip-It
AKA the best driveway game. Definitely a grade-A workout. I would still Skip-It in my driveway if I could.
4. Shrinky Dinks
Shrinky Dinks might be one of my favorite arts and crafts from my childhood. The whole concept still confuses me to this day. How it worked, I have no idea. For those of you who aren’t so familiar with the Shrinky Dink phenomenon, here’s what went down. There were images, like maybe The Wild Thornberry’s characters, on this special paper that were to be colored in with colored pencils and colored pencils only. You then cut them out with scissors. Here’s where it gets confusing. You then put these colored, cut out, pieces of paper onto tin foil and put them into the toaster oven. And guess what they do…they shrink! And when I say they shrink, I mean they go from a decent size to the size of something we would attach to our charm bracelets (back then that is…). I just didn’t understand how they shrunk. I’m pretty sure I would just stand in front of the toaster and watch them shrink.
5. GameBoy Color
The only thing I have to say about this was there was no touch screens or Nintendogs. Strictly Mario.
6. Dance Dance Revolution
If you didn’t have Dance Dance Revolution at your house, we probably never had a playdate. Getting the newest DDR game introduced me to cool teenager music. It was definitely no “Just Dance” game, you actually had to plug cords in and step on the pads at the right time. There was no sensor or camera that just knew where your hand was because the Wii remote was in your hand. I think we all just wanted to be as good as Lindsay Lohan doing DDR in Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen.
7. iPod Nano
No apps, no shows, just straight jams.
8. HitClips
Even more ancient, before there were iPods, everyone had a carabiner full of HitClips. I think if I tried to explain HitClips to a kid now, they wouldn’t even understand. It was maybe 20 seconds of the best part of a song. But you would just listen to that same part over and over again. How did it not get old?
I know most of you wish you still had many of these things. I don’t know how kids these days are living without them. Oh wait, they just have iPhones and Facebook instead.