Original subtitles

ROB: Welcome to the '80s Greatest Hits.

Now we're entering a strange world of make believe,

cuteness and charm and some creatures that quite frankly

I find terrifying.

We're talking about the top ten toys.

JACKIE: All the best toys came out in the '80s.

ROB (off-screen): They were way more than child's play.

NINJA TURTLES: Cowabunga!

LONI: It was just a craze, we just loved it.

WOMAN: I got my doll! I got my doll!

ROB (off-screen): They were hot toys created during a Cold War.

SETH: It was a torture device thinly disguised

as a children's toy.

ROB (off-screen): When old barriers began to break down

DMC: My Little Pony is the flyest thing ever.

ROB (off-screen): And toys first found their voice.

TEDDY: Hi, my name is Teddy Ruxpin.

ROB (off-screen): Capturing the minds...

ADAM: I have the power!

CRISTELA: Could you imagine if you could do that in real life?

BOY: Wow!

ROB (off-screen): And hearts...

TIFFANI: I'm sorry I need to hug her.

ROB (off-screen): Of a new generation.

But what was the toy that conquered them all?

Now we're gonna find out.

ROB: Without further ado, here would be our unnerving number ten.

NARRATOR: The '80s, where individual dreamers harness

technology to their imagination,

creating toys that would inspire millions and

make untold millions for their inspired creators.

TEDDY: Hi, my name is Teddy Ruxpin.

PHIL: Hi there, how are you?

I'm Teddy Ruxpin.

Can you and I be friends?

ADAM: You know this was like the good version of Chucky,

you know, that spoke to you and it wasn't gonna kill you.

TEDDY: Say hello to our new friend.

MIKE: It's kind of a frightening looking bear.

TEDDY: Can you and I be friends?

MIKE: You really gonna give this to a child?

NARRATOR: Well actually, yes.

1.7 million of them in two years to be precise.

CHRIS: It was just an amazing thing and created a phenomenon

and people had never seen anything like it and

we forget that today.

NARRATOR: Teddy Ruxpin is the brainchild of a dreamer named Ken Forsse,

an American designer of robotic Disneyland attractions.

Ken had been developing the bear since the late '60s,

but it was not until the decade's advances in

technology when his dream took furry form.

CHRIS: The technology was by today's standards fairly simple.

PHIL: He had a cassette player in the back and one track of

the cassette player was the story told by Teddy,

plus some songs and the other track was a code track that

would make Teddy's mouth move and his eyes blink.

JACKIE: Kids today are totally spoiled.

All their toys talk to them, they do whatever they want.

But there was no toy like that before.

It was just pure magic.

TEDDY: You know, I can't sleep either.

NARRATOR: The babbling bear launches in time for Christmas, 1985.

Teddy is an instant hit despite his hefty price tag.

SHOPPER: Oh my goodness.

REPORTER: Jaws drop when people first meet Teddy Ruxpin,

the mechanical bear who runs on a microchip that

runs a tiny motor, all of which runs for about 70 bucks.

PHIL: It was just an outrageous price point.

I shouldn't really say that.

KEVIN: My mom bought one which was spellbinding.

Clearly we could afford the finest things in life.

NARRATOR: Teddy Ruxpin may be an expensive luxury,

but parents didn't care.

They're desperate to get their hands on him.

PHIL: I think maybe in some ways Teddy was a surrogate for

parents who were very busy.

NARRATOR: In the early '80s more parents than ever are

working outside the home, which means moms and dads

have less free time to entertain their kids.

Enter Teddy Ruxpin, friend and virtual nanny.

TEDDY: I can't sleep either, but I've learned a little

trick to help me.

I sing myself to sleep.

PHIL: Actually every story that we told had some sort of moral.

TEDDY: I really enjoy talking to people.

PHIL: And so I think parents were very,

very comfortable with what we were projecting.

GIRL: I like it because it'll keep me company.

♪ If we will dream tonight ♪

JACKIE: I was obsessed. Loved Teddy Ruxpin.

NARRATOR: But poor Teddy Ruxpin is soon destined to

meet his maker.

Sales plummet when knockoff copies and cheaper rival

products flood the market.

PHIL: Everyone tried to be the next Teddy Ruxpin.

MAN: This is a bear that listens to my voice and then

talks back in bear talk.

NARRATOR: Manufacturer Worlds of Wonder fail to

come up with another hit and in 1988,

just three years after Teddy's release,

they go bust.

PHIL: Can you and I be friends?

Yeah, I think we've been friends for a very,

very long time, Teddy, since 1985.

1985? Are you kidding?

Well, how old must you be?

Let's not talk about that right now.

ROB: Our number nine revolves around a woman who had dreams

as a little girl of owning a pet.

She never forgot them and when she grew up she realized that

millions of other little girls might have had the same

dream as well.

And she was right.

♪ My Little Pony, My Little Pony ♪

AMBER: I was obsessed with My Little Pony.

I begged my mom for every single color.

♪ A ribbon to show how much I care ♪

CLAUDIA: All of that beautiful hair,

you could make it fluffy and curly or keep it

nice and tight and perfect.

(laughs)

NARRATOR: My Little Pony is one of the decade's

most popular toys.

But who knew it's unbridled success would owe so much

to Ronald Reagan's deregulation of TV.

CHRIS: My Little Pony was part of this whole movement that

happened in the early '80s.

NARRATOR: Reagan unleashed toy companies to advertise

directly to kids and to also make cartoons starring the

same toys they want to sell.

Now it's open season.

Uh-oh.

JEN: Yeah, it was there to entertain the kids but it was

also there as a springboard to them buying more stuff.

NARRATOR: And toy makers decide the best way to

stand out in a crowded market place is to double down on

gender specific toys.

Now all Hasbro needs to do is come up with the

next big thing for girls.

There's a dreamer in the house of Hasbro.

Her name is Bonnie Zacherle.

BONNIE: The one thing in the world I always wanted was a horse.

My father always promised me, someday when we retire and

we get the dream house in the country,

you'll have your own horse.

PINKIE PIE: I wish, I wish, I wish!

BONNIE: I never got one.

Never did. Sad to say.

But I knew there were girls like myself who would like

horses and if I could make them into a small soft little doll

it would be a good toy.

NARRATOR: Bonnie is adamant her little horse should have

a true to life appearance.

Hasbro disagrees.

BONNIE: I wanted natural colors,

I was a horsewoman.

I wanted palomino, dappled grey,

but the rest as they say is history.

NARRATOR: Hasbro wants there to be no mistake.

This is a girl's toy.

So before Bonnie's horse is ready for market,

Hasbro demands a glamorous makeover.

JACKIE: If you ask anyone in the toy industry

the magic combination for little girls, it's glitter,

bright colors and hair play.

NARRATOR: This type of rigid gender stereotyping might not

fly today, but in the '80s it was just business as usual.

LORRAINE: In the '80s everything for girls

got really pink and really purple.

And My Little Pony just encapsulated that whole

princess thing inside of a pony.

NARRATOR: After the ponies land in toy stores,

a cartoon follows, introducing kids to an entire range of

new characters they can take home.

AMBER: The sensation of like having your own little pony

and grooming it and braiding its hair.

It just, I dunno, kinda made me feel like I had a pet.

NARRATOR: By the end of the decade over 150 million

My Little Ponies are lovingly stabled in young girl's

bedrooms all over the world.

And even today the miniature horses refuse to be put out to pasture.

SUNNY: Show me some magic!

TWILIGHT SPARKLE: I can do this...

Ta-da!

NARRATOR: My Little Pony captured the hearts of a

generation of girls and guess what,

some boys liked them too.

DMC: My Little Pony is the flyest thing ever.

They were beautiful. I wanted one.

That thing was gangster.

ROB: Two down, eight to go.

It's been said that art imitates life,

but in the '80s art imitated 'larger than life' as

muscle men raged across our movie screens.

Our number eight toy was doing exactly the same thing,

only this guy was doing it in plastic.

AD NARRATOR: Luke Skywalker was just a farm boy until he

received a mysterious message from a princess.

LEIA: Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi.

LUKE: She's beautiful.

NARRATOR: In 1976 toy company Mattel turned down the chance

to make action figures for a new film destined for obscurity.

DARTH VADER: I find your lack of faith disturbing.

NARRATOR: They've been licking their wounds ever since.

LARRY: So Mattel needed a reaction really quick.

They needed a line of their own without purchasing the

rights to a film franchise like Star Wars.

NARRATOR: The action figure market is very much targeted

at boys and drawing their attention away from Star Wars

is no easy task.

But, if the start of the decade taught Mattel one thing,

fantasy plus muscles equals millions.

MAN: Conan, what is best in life?

CONAN: To crush your enemies, see then driven before you

and to hear the lamentation of the women.

NARRATOR: To measure up to the decade's new masculine ideal,

Mattel is convinced their new toy has to be one boys

can admire and it can only help if he has a catchy,

well, catchphrase.

DMC: I have the power!

NARRATOR: At the start of the '80s muscles sell and size matters.

Toy maker Mattel want to take this notion of hyper masculinity

and transform it into an action figure for boys.

And Mattel had just the dreamer for the job and

that man had a "He-Man" up his sleeve.

MARK: So I'd been developing very heroic figures from the

time I was a little boy and He-Man was openly proud of

his body, like Arnold Schwarzenegger.

I mean these guys aren't shy about it.

And I wanted this guy to be powerful with no questions asked.

And I don't mean a Superman, a God-like power,

I mean a hero.

CHRIS: He was this massive guy.

The thing that always amuses me is that all his opposing

muscle groups are flexed at the same time,

which is impossible physiologically.

NARRATOR: The Masters of the Universe toy line,

with He-Man leading the charge,

is released in 1982 and to further boost sales,

Mattel takes the lesson of Star Wars and applies it in reverse.

KEVIN: Unlike the Star Wars figures which seemed to be an

afterthought to the movie, Masters of the Universe was

engineered as a toy first, cartoons came later.

♪ He-Man! ♪

♪ And the Masters of the Universe! ♪

NARRATOR: The He-Man animated series first airs in 1983.

Soon boys all across America have a new favorite macho

role model that gives pre-pubescent lads something they yearn for.

HE-MAN: Were revealed to me the day I held aloft my magic sword.

ADAM: One day I held aloft the magic sword and exclaimed,

"By the power of Grayskull!"

HE-MAN: I have the power!

ADAM: I have the power!

KEVIN: When you're a child you have no power whatsoever.

Everybody is taller than you, everybody's in charge of you.

But, you know, at play you could have the power.

NARRATOR: And with that power there's no better villain to

fight than He-Man's notorious nemesis.

SKELETOR: So He-Man, it's just you and me.

MARK: Skeletor stands for everything that was not He-Man.

He's depressing, he's sneaky, he's a liar.

SKELETOR: Very clever you musclebound moron!

CHRIS: The thing about He-Man that really resonated with kids

was he started as Prince Adam,

sort of a normal person.

HE-MAN: By the power of Grayskull!

CHRIS: But he transformed into He-Man.

JACKIE: He-Man showed boys that you can be kind of a

regular kinda guy but when needed you could be strong and

brave and a hero.

And I think kids really felt that.

NARRATOR: At it's peak, nine million kids tune in to watch

He-Man every day and by 1986 the action figures rack up

$400 million in sales.

Just like My Little Pony, He-Man's legacy lives on with

a new series set to entertain fans young and old.

HE-MAN: I have the power!

ROB: Mr Plastic thought he had the power,

but there was no escaping cuddly characters in the '80s,

and our number seven was biologically engineered

to take no prisoners in that arena.

NARRATOR: At the start of the decade childhood is changing.

CHRIS: It was a time when we began to really validate

children's emotions as part of their developmental process.

NARRATOR: Unlike their own repressed parents,

'80s moms and dads want their kids to voice their feelings.

CHRIS: And it's very reinforcing to kids because

kids don't always feel happy and joyful.

NARRATOR: Toy industry legend, Bernie Loomis,

dreams big and senses the time is right for a

new generation of teddy bear.

One that is ready made to meet the needs of this

new generation of children.

BERNIE: It started with a blank piece of paper and we

said bears have always been popular.

And then somebody said how about doing tummy graphics on bears.

Let's have them represent emotions.

♪ I wanna be a Care Bear, ♪

♪ oh, it will be so great when I'm a Care Bear ♪

CRISTELA: I loved Care Bears.

To me, the Care Bears were everything.

JACKIE: My personal favorite was Funshine and Tenderheart and Grumpy.

I know that's more than one favorite.

(laughs)

NARRATOR: Loomis is so confident the bears will be a success,

he spends two years and millions of dollars

producing an entire product range and he releases it

all at once.

PRESENTER: There's a Friend Bear,

a Cheer Bear, a Grumpy Bear.

One mother says that every morning her kids sit down next to her

and tell her what kind of bear they're gonna be that day.

NARRATOR: Loomis's Care Bear blitz is a gamble,

but it soon pays off.

BERNIE: Care Bears is not only number one in the states,

the number one in England, number one on the continent

and it's really an interesting worldwide phenomenon.

LOVE ALOT BEAR: We did it!

WISH BEAR: I knew we would if I wished hard enough!

CRISTELA: It had their emotion,

like on their little stomach.

Like, can you imagine if you could do that in real life?

If you're having a bad day, hey,

just don't mess with me, man, look at the rain cloud.

Brilliant! Brilliant!

NARRATOR: In five years, 40 million Care Bears march off

the shelves generating over a billion dollars in sales and

it goes without saying, the bears that care star in

their own movie.

FRIEND BEAR: Care Bears stay!

AD NARRATOR: Will all their love and caring stop a shadowy

spirit from stealing away every feeling in the world?

JACKIE: I think the reason Care Bears appealed to girls

so much is because they could defeat evil just by caring and

by being friends.

NARRATOR: The Care Bears conquer the '80s and not only

that, they live to tell the tale.

After all these years their mission to spread sharing and

caring is still going strong.

LARRY: Even today, we stock Care Bears in the store and

Care Bears are currently sold out.

It's still a really hot property.

NARRATOR: Care Bears are sitting cute and pretty

at number seven, but with six more to go,

our playtime is far from over.

Next up, it's a fact filled phenomena that 40 years ago,

no dinner party could be complete without.

KATIE: The people who'd ruined it for everybody else were the loud mouths.

ROB: All right, trivia time.

What 1983 movie featured the debut of the '80s hottest actor?

The Outsiders.

Wait a minute, that wasn't Matt Dillon's first movie.

They're talking about me.

(laughs)

Next question. Why was this only number six?

PRESENTER: At a time when we are inundated with the

important, a threat of nuclear war,

a fact of unemployment, the trivial can be a relief.

JASON: In the early '80s you had to have a Trivial Pursuit game.

JON: It was a huge game, huge.

Everybody was playing it.

MEAT LOAF: You don't wanna play me in Trivial Pursuit.

Trust me. I have never lost.

PRESENTER: What was it that inspired you to design a new game?

Were you bored with everything on the market or?

SCOTT: It was about a case of beer.

PRESENTER: Case of beer?

NARRATOR: On December 15th, 1979,

Journalist pals, Chris Haney and Scott Abbott settle in

for a quiet game of Scrabble.

Only they can't play when they discover some letters are missing

and the two men have the same dream at the same moment.

SCOTT: And Chris said, "why don't we invent a game?

What could it be about?"

And I said "trivia?"

We sat down and did a little doodling and half an hour

later it was all done.

PRESENTER: This is it.

No electronic joysticks, no hungry Pac-Men,

just an old fashioned board game with 6,000 questions,

all of them trivial, ranging from sports to science.

NARRATOR: Timing as they say is everything and when

Trivial Pursuit is released in 1982, it is the right game

at just the right moment.

JASON: It was the time of the 24 hour news cycle.

You had the rise of CNN in the 1980's,

so people were being inundated with all kinds of knowledge and information

and Trivial Pursuit played into that.

PRESENTER: Sure, they have all the popular games here,

like Boggle and Pente and Scrabble over here,

but the one they can't keep on the shelves is one that cost $40.

It's called Trivial Pursuit.

CHRIS: That was a lot of money.

We certainly were coming out of a recession at that time,

but it was actually a fairly affordable way to have an evening.

KARL: You know, the '80s was so much about being bright and

bold and over the top.

You know, look how smart I am?

Look at how much useless information I know?

WOMAN: What's the name of the piece flipped into the cup in Tiddly Winks?

WOMAN: Oh, give (bleep) break.

KATIE: It came along before the internet,

before Google.

This game really depended on you having the trivia in your brain box.

It was a game that attracted really insufferable people.

MEAT LOAF: I had a manager by the name of Bob Ellis who used

to be married to Diana Ross.

And we went to Bob Ellis's house every Saturday night for

five years to play Trivial Pursuit.

I won every time.

NARRATOR: By the end of 1984, Trivial Pursuit generates

almost $800 million and turns its makers

into multi-millionaires.

But, this success is no trivial matter and the author

of a trivia encyclopedia, Fred Worth,

believes he has been ripped off.

FRED: About 32% of the material that is in a genus edition,

the original edition, could be found in my book.

NARRATOR: In a move worthy of Lieutenant Frank Columbo himself,

Worth plants a fake fact in his trivia book,

giving that fictional detective the wrong first name.

Philip.

And when that wrong name appears in the game,

Fred, not Frank, pounces.

FRED: It's a falsehood, doesn't exist and you won't

find it anywhere except in my book and it's one of their questions.

NARRATOR: Worth sues for $300 million,

but the judge throws out the case,

ruling that trivia can't be copyrighted even if it is wrong

Trivial Pursuit goes on to become the decade's

hottest property even outselling Monopoly,

which has dominated the adult games market since the 1930's.

CHRIS: It jumped that rubicon from sort of cool game to

cultural phenomena.

NARRATOR: But, in the age of the internet,

with relentless amounts of useless information only a

click away, Trivial Pursuit's popularity declines.

Perhaps some games are just a product of their time.

KATIE: It was just another way to be loud and domineering,

which was kind of an '80s quality.

ROB: Alright, five toys down, five toys to go.

And the competition is gonna get vicious.

Now, our number five toy is far from trivial and has led

to some of the biggest and loudest movies ever made.

NARRATOR: In the high-tech '80s,

Japan's electronics lead the way.

JAMES: It was a real consumer technology revolution coming

from the Pacific Rim and American consumers were huge beneficiaries.

NARRATOR: And at the Tokyo toy fair of 1983,

Hasbro spots a toy that will revolutionize action figures.

Here come the bots.

TV PRESENTER: The toy company, Hasbro, is calling

the Transformer the biggest thing from Japan since Godzilla.

CHRIS: Transformers started in Japan as transforming robots.

SETH: They became trucks, they became cars,

they became planes.

CHRIS: And that's really all they did.

NARRATOR: Hasbro love the concept,

but fear kids won't know why they should want them.

To guarantee transformers reach their target audience

the toy maker comes up with an intergalactic solution.

NARRATOR: In 1983, Hasbro spots the potential for a

revolutionary new Japanese toy.

But, to be a hit this side of the Pacific,

the transforming robots need an identity that an '80s

generation of jaded kids can connect with.

MARK: The thing that makes American toys really good is

that little bit of edge or drama.

KARL: When it comes to the action figure you've gotta

establish story and characters and it does take a show to do that.

NARRATOR: Hasbro turns to Marvel and Marvel comes up

with the idea of opposing forces of good and evil robots

locked in an endless civil war.

In 1984, the toys and animated series are released

at the same time.

♪ Transformers, more than meets the eye. ♪

♪ Auto-bots wage their battle to destroy the evil forces ♪

♪ Of the Decepticons ♪

SETH: You see this cartoon and you see Optimus Prime

transform from this robotic alien into a truck and back again.

You buy the toy, it does it.

It actually does it.

OPTIMUS PRIME: Decepticons attacking.

Auto-bots, transform and meet me there.

JACQUES: There was something about Optimus Prime's voice.

OPTIMUS PRIME: Very perceptive.

JACQUES: That I was just instantly drawn to it.

NARRATOR: Off the back of the cartoon,

toy sales surprise surprise, go through the roof,

helped in no small part by a stellar cast of characters.

JOHN: Kids just love the show, I loved doing it.

BLURR: Why didn't you tell us they were Decepticons?

If you had we would have been interested earlier instead of..

JOHN: Decepticons, Decepticons, Decepticons,

Decepticons above me, Decepticons below me,

every place I look I see Decepticons.

BLURR: Hard enough to unbend the strut maybe.

JOHN: I've had people come up to me and say you know,

"what was like in episode 54 when your struts melted?"

I'm like, "well, you know, I'm a human being and I don't have

struts and I don't know what my struts felt like when they melted".

NARRATOR: And the auto-bots eternal battle with the

Decepticons shows no sign of ending with modern reboots

still coming fast and occasionally furious.

OPTIMUS PRIME: My name is Optimus Prime.

We are autonomous robotic organisms from the planet, Cybertron.

CHRIS: Transformers really is one of those lines that's

captured imaginations for multiple generations now.

SETH: Transformers were two toys for the price of one.

I mean, to make that actually work in a plastic toy still

blows my mind.

ROB: Motorized vehicles that transform into law-of-physics-defying robots?

Got it.

And as for our number four toy of the 1980s,

well their creators heard that insane transformer mythology

and said "hold my beer".

TURTLES: Cowabunga!

SETH: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is so funny to me

because it started out as a joke.

CHRIS: Turtles that had been exposed to radioactive ooze

and turned into surf talking characters who liked pizza

and had names of renaissance painters.

KARL: A phenomenon like Turtles you cannot plan for.

NARRATOR: The story of the Turtles bumpy rise

to toy supremacy begins in New Hampshire, 1984.

Down on their luck cartoonists, Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird

are just fooling around when they

accidentally dream up an empire.

PETER: Kevin drew a turtle standing upright with a mask on

and wearing nun chucks on his forearms.

EASTMAN: It was an effort to make Pete laugh.

I dubbed it a ninja turtle and we got into doodling sketches.

NARRATOR: They name the four sewer dwelling superheroes

after 15th century painters and get busy writing them

their own comic strip.

CHRIS: They were designed to satirize the sort of

traditional action hero.

NARRATOR: The self-published comic surprise success lands

the cartoonist a deal with toy manufacturer Playmates.

He-Man designer, Mark Taylor is hired to turn the 2-D turtles

into 3-D action figures.

MARK: And these two guys, they are so poor.

Their shoes were held together with duct tape and they said

"what do you think of it?" And I said "it's good."

These guys are a group that care about each other and

they're like the musketeers.

One for all and all for one.

NARRATOR: Mark works his modeling magic,

but toy shops aren't prepared to shell out for radioactive reptiles.

KARL: It was a disaster.

Everybody looked at turtles and said

"these can't be heroes, this will never work."

NARRATOR: But, by now, the '80s have a tried and tested

formula to get kids into toy stores.

KARL: And the decision was made that the only way this

would work as a toy product was to create an animated show

based on the original comic books.

♪ Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles ♪

♪ Teenage Ninja Turtles, heroes in a half shell, ♪

♪ Turtle power! ♪

SETH: Everything about the Ninja Turtles was kinda cool, right?

They were party dudes.

They were like, teenagers.

They live in the sewer.

All they ate was pizza.

When you're a kid all you wanna do is eat nothing but pizza.

The turtles did that.

NARRATOR: And kids can't seem to get enough of the

rebellious Teenage Turtle toys for obvious reasons.

They offer something they've not seen before.

KARL: Let's not forget that the '80s really started with

straight laced fantasy filled characters such as

a He-Man or Thundercats.

Everything was played pretty straight.

DMC: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was brilliant in the

'80s because it started to change the perception of what

a superhero really means and who could be a superhero.

KARL: Turtles was one of the first ones to really mix in a

healthy dose of humor.

And it was that humor that ended up being one of

the differentiating elements.

LEONARDO: We turtles don't know the meaning of the word "defeat".

MICHELANGELO: That's right.

We never bothered to look it up in the dictionary.

APRIL: Don't you guys take anything seriously?

KARL: After the show had aired a few times,

I walked in to a Toys "R" Us store: completely empty shelves.

And at that point, I knew we finally had something

good on our hands.

NARRATOR: Turtle mania quickly takes hold,

selling $1.1 billion worth of toys in just four years.

And then, inevitably, the boys in green get their own movie,

cementing their status as one of the biggest brands.

RAPHAEL: Ya! I love being a turtle!

NARRATOR: Surfing teen turtles crest a wave onto our scoreboar

at number four, but coming up in our Top Ten Toys:

the underground game so out there it almost got banned.

ROB: We are now entering the rarified atmosphere of

our top three toys of the '80s.

Our next contender began with a man whose world turned

inside out when he lost his job,

so he created a new world: one inside the human mind.

No batteries or assembly required.

JEN: My entire knowledge of Dungeons and Dragons in the

'80s was based entirely on the movie ET,

because the kids in ET played Dungeons and Dragons.

ELLIOT: I'm ready to play now, you guys.

MAN: We're in the middle, Elliot.

You can't just join any universe in the middle.

KATIE: It was always the smart kid who played it,

so that's probably why I didn't.

MEAT LOAF: I've seen films about people that play

Dungeons and Dragons, and they're serial killers.

(laughs)

NARRATOR: In the late '70s, Gary Gygax loses his job in

insurance, so Gary fills the hours,

yes, you guessed it, dreaming up fantasy war games in,

of course, his basement.

Little did he imagine the game he dreams up will become one

of the decade's most controversial.

CHRIS: Dungeons and Dragons:

it's basically a role-playing fantasy game.

You've got the players who are creating their characters.

You have a dungeon master who is setting up the story.

NARRATOR: You also had weird-shaped dice.

And 40 years ago, the game gets popular amongst

the unpopular kids.

Dungeons and Dragons was nerd heaven.

If you felt like your own life sucked,

if you were getting picked on, if you felt like you were a

puny little kid, you could be some,

like, kick-ass elf with a bow and arrow,

right, and you felt empowered.

GARY: If would feel much better if we knew that we were

a super hero or a mighty wizard of the stamp of Conan

or Merlin or whoever.

JEN: Being a nerd started to become kind of a cool thing

in the '80s a little bit.

And I think Dungeons and Dragons was definitely part of that.

NARRATOR: Soon, D&D clubs spring up in schools

all across America.

But by the mid-'80s, as the game's legend spreads,

parents start to panic.

Why this time?

REPORTER: This morning, we're going to take up the

controversy surrounding the game Dungeons and Dragons,

which some parents fear could lead to violence and suicide.

LORRAINE: There was a big scare about satanism,

about sorcery, and Dungeons and Dragons,

you know, seemed like it was part of this dark netherworld.

SETH: There was a movie that came out in the '80s with Tom Hanks

that was about, like, a Dungeons-and-Dragons-inspired

moral panic.

People were scared of this stuff.

ROBBIE: I am Pardieu, a holy man.

In reaching the ninth level, I have acquired many magic

spells and charms, the greatest of which is the

graven eye of Timor.

LORRAINE: Anything in the '80s that seemed like it was

slightly dabbling in magic, was really terrifying to,

especially, you know, people in the Bible Belt,

to some parents.

NARRATOR: Despite concerns, there is no evidence the game

is involved in any teen deaths.

If anything, the bad press encourages more kids to

buy the game.

By 1986, it attracts around fou million fanatical followers.

Dungeons and Dragons captured the imagination

of a generation, and when those kids grow up,

they're destined to dream up even bigger fantasy worlds.

KARL: The creators of Game of Thrones I know

play D&D, even today.

So it helped, I think, inspire a lot of creative people.

JEN: I know that it inspired Stranger Things.

MIKE: A shadow grows on the wall behind you,

swallowing you in darkness.

It is almost here.

WILL: What is it?

JEN: A lot of the monsters and things in the show are

taken directly from Dungeons and Dragons.

MIKE: The Demogorgon!

NARRATOR: And just be careful who you call a nerd.

VIN: I've been called the witch hunter.

Attack!

(laughs)

LARRY: Dungeons and Dragons, typically,

has been associated with your nerd.

And now all these years later, those geeks and nerds

have grown up to rule the world.

ROB: In the '80s, not only did people want their MTV,

their VHS machines, and their leg warmers,

some parents just had to have something else.

And that trend got a little outta hand.

Our number two.

MAN (over TV): In Memphis, Tennessee: pushing, shoving, scratching.

One store official armed himself with a baseball bat.

In Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, it was a near riot;

one woman broke her leg, four others were hurt.

This is what the fuss is all about: pudgy-faced little

dolls called Cabbage Patch Kids.

NARRATOR: The Cabbage Patch Kids are the decade's ultimate

toy craze that no one saw coming,

except perhaps for their creator: dreamer Xavier Roberts

XAVIER: When we started the company,

we really had big dreams, and most of the people,

the bank, just thought we were crazy and they thought a bunch

of kids couldn't do something like this.

MAN: Roberts started making and selling the dolls

six years ago.

They proved so popular he decided to go into business full-time.

NARRATOR: Roberts then licenses his creation to

toy manufacturer Coleco.

In 1983, mass production begins,

and a computer operated manufacturing process makes

certain no two are the same.

LONI: It was a different doll for everybody,

that's why it was so special.

And I liked the little brown ones,

oh, 'cause I was brown, and I was like,

"OK, it's like a little brown face like mine."

JEN: The idea behind the dolls is that you were adopting

them, and they came with birth certificate.

TIFFANI: It was like your own little kid, I guess.

And it tapped into that nurturing sort of thing

that all of us have.

NARRATOR: In February 1983, the mass-market version of the

doll launches, and demand slowly begins to grow.

Driven by an unstoppable force,

commercial mayhem will soon ensue.

MAN: Hold it! Hold it!

NARRATOR: In 1983, the Cabbage Patch Kids take over America.

CRISTELA: Every Christmas had a hot toy.

This was the toy that year.

NARRATOR: Why?

Because an army of hungry consumers feel like they

have to own one.

Remember that Reagan revolution about TV deregulation?

TIFFANI: There was a commercial for the Cabbage Patch doll.

MAN: Each doll is different, and you can pretend to adopt them.

GIRL: My baby has a real diaper.

TIFFANI: That was the start of me going,

"Oh, wow. This is like a real baby.

It has a birth certificate. I get to take care of it."

JEREMY: I remember wanting one so, so, so badly.

CHRIS: We suddenly saw kids who were a consuming force,

and they were influencing all the purchases in the house.

NARRATOR: And by Christmas 1983,

demand for Cabbage Patch Kids reaches epidemic proportions,

helped in no small degree by the news media reporting

a shortage of dolls.

MAN: What is it that has left at least ten people injured

and two arrested?

Why are parents suddenly acting like children in an

attempt to get their children a doll that will make them

act like parents?

CRISTELA: If your kids wanted a specific one,

if you didn't find it, you were done.

Like, the parents were dead to them.

So that's why the fights broke out.

WOMAN: This ain't what Christmas is about?

MAN: That's right. I agree with you 100%.

WOMAN: A full-grown woman taking a doll out of child's hands!

LONI: You know, we would knock somebody out during

Christmastime to get one, 'cause that's what we did.

WOMAN: I got my doll! I got my doll!

NARRATOR: When the dust settles,

three million Cabbage Patch Kids have new homes.

Sales continue at a steady pace until,

of course, kids freely express their collective thought that

they want the next big thing.

SETH: The Cabbage Patch Kid didn't really make it out of the '80s.

This is a relic.

You gave this to a kid today, they probably wouldn't know

what to do with it.

CRISTELA: I'm in my 40s, and I have to tell you that

just holding this one right now,

it just brings back all those memories.

TIFFANI: I'm sorry, I need to hug her.

ROB: So, we've had cute ponies,

mutant creatures, and Cabbage Patch dolls.

But now something a little more challenging,

simple but complex, cool but dorky,

and I personally have never been able to figure it out myself;

kinda like the '80s.

SETH: It was a torture device, thinly disguised as a children's toy.

JON: Everybody had one.

I remember trying it; I don't think I ever solved it.

MEAT LOAF: I tried to solve it for days and days and days.

NARRATOR: It came from behind the Iron Curtain to conquer the world;

a cube of plastic that soon became an addictive toy.

And as is so often the case, our story begins with

one man with a dream.

CHRISI: It was the late 70's.

Tom Kremer, and myself as his assistant,

were at the Nuremberg Toy Fair.

His eyes lit up because he saw this extraordinary cube in the

hands of this representative.

NARRATOR: Kremer discovers the representative is a Hungarian

architect/professor by the name of Erno,

wait for it, Rubik.

Rubik had invented the cube decades before as a teaching aid.

CHRIS: It was designed to solve engineering problems,

and the idea being that there's a moving piece

while something else stays stationary.

And suddenly somebody said,

"Hey, that's a puzzle."

NARRATOR: Kremer is taken with both Rubik and his cube,

but struggles to convince backers in the West of its

potential as a toy.

CHRISI: Their first reaction was always: we cannot

sell something that you cannot solve.

Tom persuaded the Ideal Toy Company representative to

go to Hungary to see the people in the street solving the cube.

That was how he finally made the Ideal Toy Company say yes.

NARRATOR: In 1980, the Rubik's cube launches globally,

and a phenomenon is born.

REPORTER: Around the world for millions of people,

this Rubik's cube, this year,

has become a maddening addiction.

NARRATOR: In its first year alone,

4.5 million cubes are snapped up.

Kids compete in school yards across America,

trying to solve the brain teaser of the decade.

BRIAN: There was always one kid that could do this thing

in five seconds at every school.

TONY: I was obsessed with solving it,

and I did finally solve it.

I got put into advanced math courses after that.

MAN: Why do young kids do this better?

MAN: I asked Professor Rubik.

He said, "Kids do it better because they're not prejudiced

to believe that they shouldn't be able to do it."

But we all know it's impossible so we give up and

smash it against the fireplace.

JASON: I had absolutely no idea what to do with it.

KEVIN: Easiest way to make the Rubik's cube work was to just

peel off the stickers and put them back.

NARRATOR: But for the cubers who don't need to cheat,

competitions spring up all over the world.

It's been over 40 years since the cube defected from the East

and 450 million cubes have been sold.

Even today, around 20 million cubes sell each year.

SETH: The Rubik's cube became this pop culture puzzle.

You start seeing them in movies,

start seeing them in TV shows.

It was everywhere.

SPIDERMAN NOIR: I'm taking this cube thing with me.

I don't understand it, but I will.

NARRATOR: It's a simple cube that embodies a simple yet

elusive dream: elegance, simplicity,

and complexity, all in something you can hold

in the palm of your hand.

These are the qualities that have earned the cube

its number one rank of all '80s toys.

CHRISI: It's just an icon.

Yes, there are other puzzles, but the one that started it all

was the Rubik's cube.