Original subtitles

(upbeat music)

(crowd cheering)

[Narrator] From classics like the Hula Hoop and Yo-Yo

to newer favorites like Beanie Babies and Tickle Me Elmo.

Certain toys have that special something

that makes them overnight sensations.

[Speaker 1] Every generation has had their fads.

It might be tied to some cultural phenomena, a film,

new technology that people are excited about,

but it quickly fades.

[Narrator] And in no decade did these trends spread faster

and farther than the 1990s.

In the '90s, we're really just all starting

to have computers in our house,

and people are looking for what's next and what's cool.

Furby feel like a chunky furball.

[Narrator] Some toys came and went.

So one of the short-lived and hyper bizarre fads

of the '90s were "Street Sharks."

Sharks in pants, folks,

[Narrator] While others are still staples

in bedrooms and backyards today.

There's these kind of enduring, iconic toys,

Big Wheels, the Super Soaker,

"Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles."

[Narrator] But no matter their staying power,

all these toys have made an unforgettable impact.

My mom literally met with a stranger in a back alley

to buy a Tickle me Elmo

- Yeah. - How much?

- 200. - For 10 times

the retail value.

Go ahead Google "Street Sharks,"

they will haunt your dreams, now

(upbeat music)

[Narrator] There are lots of ways to describe a fad,

flash in the pan, one hit wonder,

but the term, fad, has had a long history.

The word fad originally comes from the 1820s word, faddle,

which means to play with, but then it gets shortened to fad,

which refers to trifling with unimportant things.

I think fads can actually be a really interesting lens

to look at what's important

to a culture at a particular time.

[Narrator] But what exactly is a fad toy?

A fad toy come out of nowhere.

They sell really fast for a year,

maybe two if they're lucky,

and then fall off the face of the earth.

[Speaker 3] They're gone!

Sometimes a fad is something that comes and goes,

and sometimes a fad comes and actually lasts long enough

that we start calling it an evergreen toy.

[Narrator] Long lasting or not,

a successful toy fad can come from anywhere.

And one of the biggest in the early-'90s

came from Hawaii.

In Hawaii, there is a kind of juice

that every kid grows up with, Passion, Orange, Guava,

and it is just known by the initials POG.

POGs actually come

from a really ancient Japanese game called Menko.

It kind of gets filtered down through the centuries,

and becomes a game in Hawaii called milk caps.

You would take this milk cap, this heavier metal one,

and you would slam it on the ground,

and try to flip over

as many small cardboard discs as you could.

You would then win the ones you had flipped.

He who has the most caps wins.

[Narrator] Blossom Galbiso, a teacher in Hawaii,

who grew up playing milk caps

introduces the game to her students,

and it starts to catch on across the island.

[Speaker 2] So entrepreneur Alan Rypinske sees this trend,

he trademarks the name,

he starts the first POG Federation,

begins in California, and suddenly POGs is the craze.

A little bit like baseball cards.

These are just printed cardboard.

Every single movie, television show, cartoon,

action figure series, sports team,

saw an opportunity to make branded POGs.

[Narrator] By 1993,

the game reaches the rest of the country,

and spreads across the world.

It's funny you bring up POGs,

'cause I was young enough to care and I never got it.

And today as an adult, I still don't get it.

[Narrator] Plenty do, because in 1994,

millions of POGs are sold nationwide.

Even major brands, like Marvel and McDonald's,

jump on the bandwagon.

Unfortunately, what happens is these are easy

and cheap to make,

and imitators are coming out all over the place.

So in just the span of a few years,

POGs go from a time

where there are over 350 million sold worldwide

(POGs ticking)

to being all but forgotten.

(POG clanking)

[Narrator] POGs were simple, old fashioned fun,

but the introduction of virtual pets

ushers in a new interactive toy technology

that proves irresistible.

Tamagotchi was a completely different play mechanism

than had existed previously.

The whole idea was to try

to keep this artificial creature alive,

to hatch it, to nurture it, and to actually check in on it.

You're not just buying a toy, you bought responsibility.

It kind of needs you in a way that other toys don't.

I mean, if you look at Pet Rock, right,

Pet Rock doesn't really do very much.

Whereas this is kind of Pet Rock

that needs a certain amount of feeding each day,

a certain amount of attention.

Convinced they have a winning idea.

Tamagotchi inventors, Akihiro Yokoi and Aki Maita,

partner with Bandai to put their high-tech toys

in the hands of children everywhere.

(Tamagotchis beeping)

Tamagotchi, Japanese for egg watch, I believe.

And if you didn't pay attention

to your little Tamagotchi creature, it would die on you.

It is almost like pre-social media

kind of hint of things to come,

'cause it just beeps at you, demanding attention constantly.

Tamagotchi is so popular in the United States.

The first day that the San Francisco FAO Schwarz stocks it,

they sell out all 300 by three o'clock.

Global sales hit over 70 million in only four months.

People felt connected to it.

People did not want them to die.

I would tease people, I'd be like,

"It's gonna die, just get ready for it."

And they would get mad.

The Tamagotchi flame burns fast and then dies out.

It is the hottest toy of the 1997 holiday season

and then basically never again.

[Narrator] But it does inspire what will go on

to be the most popular toy of the next holiday season,

and this one can actually be cuddled sort of.

(slow relaxing music)

(uptempo dramatic music)

(Furby giggling)

Soon after Tamagotchi, the Furby comes along.

I'm sleepy.

And it's sort of the perfect coda to the Tamagotchi era,

because it's similar in that it's electronic and it talks.

(Furby giggling)

(Furby speaking Spanish)

[Narrator] Lifelong inventor, David Hampton,

sees the appeal of Tamagotchi,

but feels something is missing from the toy.

So he evolves it.

Furby took the electronics of a Tamagotchi,

and raised it to the Nth degree

to a little critter who could react to you.

He gives it these great eyes, these great ears,

and he also gives it a cute little voice

and it can speak 200 words in Furbish.

(Furby speaking in a foreign language)

Is it a bird, it's very strange kind of a thing.

I have friends that look like Furbies.

Furby is the perfect marriage of creepy meets cute,

except I think more creepy than cute.

And it's cuddly.

(Furby laughing)

In November, 1997, Hampton sells his concept

to Tiger Electronics,

whose goal is to get Furby on shelves by Christmas '98.

- Hey Furby. - (crowd applauding)

Who's there?

- Ida? - Ida who?

- I'd like to be your friend. - Aw.

They created this and they were thinking,

250,000, that would be success.

Everybody wants a Furby.

It's just ridiculous.

In 1998, it sells 1.8 million units,

and the next year, like 14 million.

Tiger was really happy with how Furby went.

Merry Christmas, I love you.

[Speaker 4] Furby speaks English and Furbish.

[Narrator] Not long after Y2K,

Furby sales begin to decline,

and the fad fizzles out.

(lights whooshing)

(uptempo dramatic music)

Furby is a good example in the 1990s

in terms of a lot of the toys that came out in that moment.

They're exciting, you get a high price point for them,

because there's a lot of tech involved,

but ultimately the public loses interest pretty quickly.

Furbies will always be creepy.

They are always watching,

and I contend they are watching us right now.

[Narrator] The '90s aren't all fuzzy robots that love us.

There's one slap happy toy sensation

that leaves a real mark.

- Ow. - On our wrists.

♪ OW

I would describe Slap Wraps as less of a fad

and more as medieval torture reborn.

The rumor is this high school shop teacher

named Stuart Anders actually discovered

that if you take a tape measure and cover it with fabric,

you could slap it against your wrist,

and it would like wrap around and boom, a fad was created.

[Narrator] Slap Wraps are a smash hit

with close to $15 million in retail sales in 1990 alone.

(uptempo electronic music)

Everybody wore them, and everyone loved it.

I think they just loved the interaction

of just hearing the slap, and just watching it work,

'cause they did work, and it's kind of cool,

because it actually is a tape measure inside.

You could easily weaponize the Slap Wrap.

You could have unsuccessful slaps

that get right around here on the wrist.

Sometimes those don't feel so good,

and that's the kind of thing that picks up

in a middle school or in a high school.

[Narrator] Ultimately, the Slap Wrap's bad rap gets worse

after an unfortunate accident.

[Reporter 1] Six-year-old Patrick Corcoran

says he had a frightening accident.

The bracelet snapped back and hit Patrick right in the eye.

Unfortunately, there was also a four-year-old girl

in Connecticut who cut her hand on a knockoff slap bracelet

and Connecticut issues a recall.

So they obviously felt the effects of that,

and that marks the decline of the Slap Wrap fad.

Once the parents say that something's not safe anymore,

you can't have it anymore, you get a couple of cuts,

and then there goes the Slap Wrap.

But not all fads fade.

(tense dramatic music)

There's one '90s toy that's such a game changer,

the moment it's released,

it has the world scrambling to get one.

It takes fights from being close up encounters

to "Game of Thrones" level battles.

(people murmuring)

(siren wailing)

I think everyone in my house had one,

including my grandparents.

(slow relaxing music)

(slow dramatic music)

(satellite whooshing)

[Narrator] In 1983, Dr. Lonnie Johnson,

a mechanical and nuclear engineer,

is working on NASA's Galileo mission to Jupiter.

Johnson's tinkering around at home

with a project on a water powered heat pump.

When he sees water get blasted across the room

as part of one of the experiments.

He thinks to himself,

"Hey, this'll make a hell of a squirt gun."

So he takes a soda bottle and PVC pipe,

and he comes up with what he calls The Power Drencher.

[Narrator] It takes another seven years,

but in 1990, Johnson makes a deal

with the Larami Corporation to release the Super Soaker.

The technology jump between the traditional squirt gun,

(water pattering)

and the Super Soaker is as impressive

as any technology jump that I can think about.

(upbeat music)

Super Soaker is a game changer.

You have power behind it, air pressure,

that moves the water 20, 30 feet.

It is brilliant.

In three years,

27 million people own a Super Soaker at $10 a pop.

I would say that is pretty spectacular.

[Narrator] Take that cheap little translucent pistols

Here we are talking about fads, right?

But the Super Soaker never went away.

It actually continued to evolve, 16 different versions,

something that kids still love today.

It is truly part of the American fabric

(water pattering)

[Narrator] Dr. Lonnie Johnson's engineering genius

gave us the Super Soaker,

but it's another man's marketing genius

that will launch the biggest fad of the decade.

The Beanie Baby fad was an especially brilliant toy,

a stuffed animal at a very low price that was posable

because it was under stuffed,

it didn't have its stuffing full so that it was rigid.

[Narrator] The adorable pet's first debuted in 1993,

thanks to the entrepreneurial

and opportunistic vision of Ty Warner,

and we haven't been the same since.

(kids lauhing)

Ah man, you know Beanie Babies,

I just remember people just went crazy collecting them.

[Speaker 5] Wait one, two, three, four, five, six.

[Speaker 6] These are for Daddy.

Ty Warner had a huge insight

in stocking them only at specialty shops,

never at mass retailers.

It meant that they were in limited quantities.

Now, here's what's different about Ty's Beanie Babies.

Not only do you have this cute little animal,

but he did something different.

He put a tag on it, and on the tag,

every single character has a name,

you know what its birthdate is, it's got a little poem.

So kids are getting really involved

in collecting the characters,

[Narrator] But it's really thanks to eBay

that they took off so quickly.

The internet was mature enough

that these Beanie Baby collectors

were connecting with one another,

and they were creating this secondary market

where they were assigning value to these plush toys

and trading amongst themselves

in a way that really amplified the trend,

and also drove up prices.

So with the Princess Bear at the time,

you know they were selling for like $20,000

for a first edition,

and now if you go on eBay,

you'll see people asking $500,000 for them.

To make it even more stressful.

Ty would announce when they were retiring a Beanie Baby,

(tense dramatic music)

which made people flock to stores.

Frightening, isn't it?

There were fights,

there were physical fist fights.

I hope that the craze will start to die off

so our sanity can return to us again.

Ty Warner does something

that causes the whole thing to crash and burn.

[Reporter 2] On their internet site today,

they signaled what they called a major news flash.

They announced they're retiring all Beanie Babies.

The website says The End,

the last bear, and there's no more beanies to be made.

Oh, people are angry, really angry.

(tense dramatic music)

He realizes the mistake.

He tries to bring it back

with a new bear called The Beginning, but it's too late,

the damage is done, the Beanie Baby craze is over.

(uptempo electronic music)

[Narrator] Putting a new spin on a classic stuffed animal

wasn't the only retro fad of the '90s.

Two of the top toy fads of the '60s found new fans

a generation later

(uptempo cheery music)

(projectiles popping)

[Narrator] Fad toys of the '90s weren't always originals,

but throwbacks from previous decades.

A lot of fads come back because they're nostalgic,

and someone sort of digs deep into that old toy box

and says, "This was really successful,

and now these children are the adults buying toys

for their own children."

[Narrator] One such toy is the Thingmaker,

which was literally the hottest fad of the '60s.

Thingmaker was a hot mold

that you poured plastic goop in it,

or as Mattel called it, Plastigoop.

So now let's fast forward to 1990,

ToyMax decides to release Creepy Crawlers.

It's the Thingmaker all over again.

It was like, "Hey, kids come make your own toys,"

it's like a genius form of child labor.

I feel like I'm owed a check.

You know this ability to make your own bugs.

It occupies a different space.

It's not an action figure, it's not a video game,

it's almost a project that results in a toy.

The hot metal and kids

just seemed like a terrible combination, but we loved it.

I think I still have some burn calluses on my hand.

The rebrand in the 1990s for Creepy Crawlers.

It's something else, it doesn't burn you.

Life was a very good for ToyMax

with their Creepy Crawlers reboot in the 1990s.

They sold over 5 million ovens,

and 60 million bottles of Plastigoop,

that has a lot of Plastigoop,

you can fill at least five swimming pools with that.

Creepy Crawlers is a hit, everyone loves it,

and for the next couple years it remains a hit.

But kids were lured by the advancement in new video games.

So Creepy Crawlers just sort of fizzled away.

[Narrator] Creepy Crawlers may not have endured,

but another '60s revival comes back big in the '90s,

Trolls, the fantastic creatures first created in 1959.

There's this guy, Thomas Dam,

and he's actually whittling Trolls out of wood

in his Denmark shop,

and it's like this fairytale.

[Natalia] They're wooden, their hair is made

of sheep's wool,

and they're always like really happy and cute looking.

(uptempo dramatic music)

[Narrator] When Dam notices his trolls are catching on,

he looks for a way to mass produce them.

He discovered how to mold them in great detail

using polyurethane.

[Narrator] By 1962, Americans buy over a million Trolls,

and Dam's Toy becomes a huge hit.

But by the 1970s,

enthusiasm for the peculiar creatures fades.

But in the '90s, Trolls are back.

I think resurging in 1990

is probably about the right 30-year cycle

for there to be nostalgia for them again.

So Hasbro introduces new versions of them.

And it's not just one size troll.

Now they come back and they're all kinds of things.

You can have the figures, video games,

and they're on TV, in movies,

and they're bringing in $2 billion worth of revenue.

(slow relaxing music)

After the 1990s Trolls kind of disappeared,

but then 20 years later, who knew?

A movie with dancing and singing Trolls

starring Justin Timberlake and Anna Kendrick

is a blank check.

So I think Trolls are now officially part of the culture,

and I don't think they're going anywhere anytime soon.

[Narrator] In the 1990s,

there was no shortage of toy fads,

some of which remain relevant today.

I think certain fads have endured

because people have fallen in love with things,

like Teletubbies and Tamagotchis.

(tense dramatic music)

They started as something that captured your imagination.

Americans love their fad toys

until they fade and become a joke,

but then they resurface, and become popular again,

and they take over our children and the world.

And then they go from being a toy that built America

to the toys that built us,

the toys that built moments of our lives,

and in fact built our very identity.