If you’re a millennial like me, you’ll relate to these ten things!
1. Butt scooters
You would pray to the gym gods for the opportunity to push your friends across the gymnasium on these butt scooters in your elementary school gym class. Besides the occasional fall or the excruciating pain of rolling over your fingers, scooter time was the BEST time.
2. The handmade future predictor
What better way to distract yourself from class than to play with one of these? They were quiet, easy to make and fun. If your crush made one and played with you then girl, your heart was racing! If you received the fortune you weren’t hoping for your life would fall apart…until three minutes later after playing another round.
3. Skip-It
If you’re like me, this was the most fun but painful toy you’d get to play with at home. I’d love coming home from school to Skip-It around my driveway. You would keep track of your highest skips on the skip counter, and constantly try to beat your high score. It was the best workout as a young kid and you didn’t even know how many calories you were burning! However, I wouldn’t love it so much the next day with my bruised ankles…but it was still totally worth it.
4. AOL Instant Messenger (AIM)
Oh, the dreaded AIM. This was the iMessage of elementary school, the thing you hid from your parents and the thing you NEVER forgot to sign out of. The first thing you’d do after getting home from school was run to your family computer, login to your account and chat with your friends about the latest gossip…or chat with your crush and tell him ALL of your feelings for him. Parents were never big fans of us using AIM, which may be a reason why it doesn’t exist anymore…or because of iPhones.
5. Webkinz
Webkinz were the biggest source of competition amongst girls in elementary school. We’d compete and see who had the most and best collection. We would compare our online rooms, homes and gardens. We spoiled our Webkinz more than anything just for them to die a couple years later once we got over it just like every other fad. Webkinz attempted to teach us responsibility, but after a while we just gave up on our virtual, furry little friends and gave our stuffed animals to Goodwill. RIP.
6. Portable CD player
Your portable CD player and your CD case was your best friend on long car rides. What would you do without your Kidz Bop, Backstreet Boys and Kelly Clarkson CDs? If you forgot it on one of those three hour car rides to your aunt’s house, you and your sibling would inevitably get into fist fights in the backseat. Your CD player was also a life saver on the bus rides home from school, but you couldn’t get caught in class with them or you’d get detention for sure!
7. Easy-Bake Oven
OMG was this not the best Christmas or birthday gift you ever received as a kid?! You felt like the next star baker when you pulled this out of your closet and whipped up two cakes, five brownies, and three different types of cookies. The Easy-Bake Oven was the bomb for quick and easy desserts…if only they made something like this for us college kids!
8. Multi-colored pens
I’ve never had my own because my mom said they were a waste of money, but I used one of my friends’ every time I could! I could spot these pens five rows away because of how cool they were…but also because they were sort of noisy. Keep your eyes open because I’ve recently seen a couple of people at URI with them!
9. Those weird rubbery water things
I’m definitely not the only one who doesn’t know what these things are called, so don’t judge me! These were the most oddly amusing toys we had as kids. Shaking them up so the floating shapes danced around made them that much more intriguing.
10. The Stussy ‘S’
No one knew what they were called, but it was the coolest thing to have these scribbled all over your notebook. It took me forever to learn how to draw them, but after having burned it into my memory I can still draw it ten years later! Apparently the ‘S’ design came from “Stussy”, a California surf company. Sounds legit, but who knows or cares…it was hip and still is!