Fad Toys of the 90s

Recently I was chatting to some friends about just some of the toys we all had when we were kids and the 2 that everyone could really remember were Tamagotchis and Furby's. So I just had to write a little post of course! :)





Furby

I don't have my old Furby anymore but just looking back at old photos, thses things looked so weird! Yet they were a huge craze among girls in 1998. I mean they were a 'must-have' toy; you weren't cool if you didn't own one! And all the girls in my primary school called their Furby's Coco, I'm not sure why but that was just the done thing in our school!

To see just how 'must-have' they were; in the year they were launched (1998) over 1.5million Furby's were sold, in the next year this had increased to over 14million and in the 3 years of Furby's original production they sold over 40million toys. That's a lot of weird, furry toys with beaks.

A new Furby started out 'speaking Furbish' and the whole aim was to love your little robot, nurture them and they'll speak English. Little did us kids know that the toys were programmed to eventually say a few words in English, and no matter what country they were sold in that's just what they did. But of course we thought it was because of how great we cared for them!

I remember loving the Furby I had but looking back, wow that was a weird craze!

Tamagotchi

The Tamagotchi was created in Japan in 1996 and it swept the world. The name is split into 2 and in English it means 'egg' and 'watch'. Which is a pretty good description of what it actually is too.
It kind of seems that in the 90s there was a bit of a craze for toys that you had to care for, feed and love and all that jazz.


The idea behind Tamagotchi was simple; a child (much like myself) got hooked on these little things and wanted more and more as a sort of family. Great marketing plan guys :)
Tamagotchis were small, little egg shaped devices with a small, pixelated screen and few button. Your Tamagotchi lived in the screen, so to speak. It was only a small bunch of pixels that formed tiny, weird shaped animals but we loved them so much! You had to press the little buttons to feed them, play with them and clean up after the them or something and these little guys LOVED attention. You had to press these little buttons a few times an hour I seem to remember and so Tamagotchi's went EVERYWHERE with us. I can distinctly remember once leaving my Tamagotchi in the car for a few hours and when I found it again my little guy had died. When your Tamagotchi died it looked so pathetic as it sprouted angel wings and then disappeared from your screen. But yep, you guessed it, I cried. Well for at least 5 minutes until my Dad pressed the Reset button and then everything was good again!

Here's a song by Los Angeles duo Looner called, "I love my Tamagotchee". It's odd, but it sums up the craze perfectly!