Every Year’s Most Popular Toy Since 1969 Explained — Each and Every — WIRED

[00:00:00] Chris Bench: - Hi, I'm Chris Bench, chief curator at the Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, New York. And this is every top toy for the last 50 years. So how did we come up with this list of 50? It's based on toys that had the biggest cultural impact, the toys that changed the face of play, and the toys that all of us remember most. 1969's Snoopy Astronaut. It's the year that first person walked on the moon. It was something that so many Americans remember where they were, an iconic event in popular culture. And who else really got into the astronaut business? Everybody's favorite comic strip beagle, Snoopy. Snoopy Astronaut was perfect for the American mood of the time. 1970, the Nerf Ball. The Nerf Ball is credited to Wren Geyer, a freelance toy designer. The Nerf Ball wasn't gonna be a play thing. It was going to be a game. Originally, it was going to be a Flintstones, War of Foam Rocks game by one of the creators of Twister. Well, the folks at Milton Bradley hated the idea. They passed on it. Parker Brothers took up the concept, and they tossed out the game, but they kept the foam. They thought it could be the first indoor ball that kids could toss around without making mom and dad irate that they were gonna break something. The Nerf Ball sold four million copies in its first year, a really blistering pace. Nerf is huge, right down to the present. This is how we play. 1971, Weeble. [00:01:38] Speaker 2: Hey, hey, look at me and Weeble. Weebles wobble, but they don't fall down. Ron Faroo makes Weeble toys. [00:01:45] Chris Bench: Weebles wobble, but they won't fall down. The advertising tagline that made these little egg-shaped playing pieces, characters, so popular that year from Romper Room. They have a counterweight in the bottom, so you can bop them around, and they will not fall over. They're perfectly sized for toddler's hands. They are ideal for play sets like this Wild West version, and they came in so many variants ever since and have been popular toys for kids across the decades. 1972, Uno. It all started with the Robbins family in Cincinnati, Ohio. Merle Robbins was a barber. His extended family loved playing the card game Crazy Eights, but family members kept forgetting the rules of the game, so he marked the instructions right on the cards. Eventually, his family concluded that wouldn't it be great to have a customized set that included the rules on the cards? The result was the game Uno. It became a grassroots craze, and by the time that 1972 came around, Uno was a hit. 1973, skateboards. Skateboards had been around in years before, especially homemade versions. They were credited to surfers who used them as an alternative for days when there wasn't any good surf. Although they had a surge of popularity in the 1960s, it wasn't until 1973 that skateboards really took off, thanks to two big technological developments. One was what were called Cadillac wheels. They were composite wheels that were smoother, faster rolling than any wheels that had come before, and there was new specialized axles or trucks, as they were called, that were made especially for skateboards. With both of those features, skateboards could become more controllable, suitable for tricks. Skateboards didn't receive TV advertising, and what really sold skateboards was people seeing folks use them. Demonstrations, competitions, and watching the kinds of tricks, watching the agility that they allowed you. Skateboards are part of our competitive culture, right down to the present with iconic figures like Tony Hawk. 1974, Dungeons and Dragons. Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson created Dungeons and Dragons. They were big fans of war games and other simulation games, and they took it in a new fantastic dimension, inspired by things like the Lord of the Rings book series. Dungeons and Dragons not only changed tabletop gaming, and lured new adults into the world of games, it gave you a framework, it gave you characters, it gave you a mode of play with those polyhedral dice, and it allowed you to spin imaginative yarns with friends, with family, and to really take yourself to places that you've never gone before. Certainly not with a traditional board game. It also influenced computer games because those multi-sided dice and the way that those controlled play were perfect for the kinds of randomization, for all kinds of imaginative and role-playing and strategy games, in online and on discs. 1975, The Pet Rock. One of the most brilliant fad toys ever. If you want to talk about making a million off of something that's essentially worthless, this is what Gary Dahl did with the Pet Rock. He was a marketing genius in taking rocks and packaging them in what were essentially miniature pet carriers. A million were sold in the first year. The tongue-in-cheek manual that came with the Pet Rock gave you instructions for how to housebreak it. You could set it on newspaper and tell it to stay. Pet Rocks were also wonderful at learning how to play dead, and the manual gave you the necessary steps to do it. It was hilarious. 1976, The Bionic Woman and Cher. Why am I showing two dimensions of American womanhood for 1976? It's because they're such a great matchup. The Bionic Woman was a TV spinoff of the series The Six Million Dollar Man, in which Jamie Summers was essentially a female superhero. And if you loved The Bionic Woman, you could get the action figure, essentially indistinguishable from a doll, with beautiful clothes and stylable hair. She was sort of an interesting midpoint between Donna Reed Housewives of the 1950s and someone who was kick-ass like Linda Hamilton in the Terminator movies. At that same time, Sunny and Cher were big in variety shows at that moment. Cher with her Bob Mackie gowns was the essence of elegance. They represent steps forward in feminism. And The Bionic Woman, she was the heroine of her own TV series. 1977, Star Wars action figures. The toy that revolutionized not only the toy industry, but the world of entertainment. Kenner took a contract to make toys for a little science fiction movie that no one thought was going to do any business. And they were so wrong. They were glad to be wrong, but they were in trouble. Because the summer movie release that became the blockbuster to bust them all, it really cried out for action figures. What was Kenner to do? They did the cleverest marketing technique of selling gift certificates. So many kids that holiday season found wrapped gift certificates for their Star Wars action figures because Kenner couldn't get the figures made fast enough. These little action figures and all the collateral vehicles and accessories proved that movies could make more money by licensing their toy products than they could actually selling tickets at the box office. 1978, Simon. Simon was a breakthrough idea from Ralph Baer, creator of the video game concept. Ralph was out to create a really simple to learn toy. He was constrained by what microchips were available on the market. And he was limited to cheap microchips, sort of the last previous generation, that were affordable for use in toys. And all it could handle were four different notes. Simon has set up intersection of tabletop gaming and electronic play. And it's something that we're doing right up to the present. 1979, the Atari 2600. It wasn't the first home video game system. That was the Magnavox Odyssey. It may not have even been the best in lots of people's opinions. But it was the Atari 2600 that broke through into so many Americans' homes. And taught them that playing games on your TV was a thing. A thing that people hadn't really considered before. The Atari 2600 had a price point that was appealing to people. It also was the game system that allowed them to play the games they'd become familiar with at arcades. Games like Pac-Man and Space Invaders. Tired of spending all those quarters? Now you could play it at home. 1980, Rubik's Cube. The fastest selling puzzle ever. It was a creation of a Hungarian architecture and design professor named Erno Rubik. He was trapped behind the Iron Curtain in Hungary in a communist environment, where he came up with this great idea, but he really couldn't make money off of. It wasn't until his idea was brought to the West by Ideal Toy Company to the U.S., rebranded from being the Magic Cube to Rubik's Cube. And suddenly everybody had to have one. At one point, three of the top ten paperback bestsellers on the New York Times list were all about how to solve the Rubik's Cube. Because everyone wanted to know the secret. And if you couldn't figure out the secret, people sold you sets of stickers. You could paste over the scrambled sides and make it look like you had figured out your Rubik's Cube. 1981, He-Man and Masters of the Universe. Mattel was looking for a way to duplicate the success of Star Wars action figures with little plastic characters. And they essentially took a concept of their own, the Big Jim action figure, and bulked him up and made He-Man into an absolutely absurd physical shape. And they accompanied He-Man and the rest of his Masters of the Universe with an entire backstory that they provided in comic book form. So that you knew all the characters. You knew that He-Man and Skeletor were up against each other in eternal combat. He-Man was by no means the first property to make that sort of leap between different forms of media. Those kinds of things have been going on since the 1890s. But he was really one of the ones that crystallized it for our own era in the last 50 years. 1982, Care Bears and My Little Pony. So what was so special about Care Bears? Care Bears were all about emotions. They were about kindness. They were about loving characteristics. They were cultivating the best kinds of behavior and emotions. It was something that parents liked to train their children in. And they made them appealing and heartwarming in a way that other toys weren't. I think what makes Care Bears so appealing is their sweet nature. Like He-Man, My Little Pony was a transmedia sort of property that took a series originally of six pastel horse figures with their anthropomorphized faces and their long silky manes and tails, and turned them into a media juggernaut with TV series, with movies, with ancillary products, and really produced expanding an equine universe with horses that were sort of crossed with dolls. The Barbie variations that sell best are ones that have the most hair. So Rapunzel Barbie is one of the best-selling ones ever. If you love horses, what could be better than a horse that has a stylable mane and tail that you can comb, wash, and have fun with in that kind of stylist/designer way? My Little Pony has gone through numerous resurgences. Perhaps least predictable in 1982 is that there would be guys known as bronies who are fans of My Little Pony in the present. That is something that no one could have ever foreseen. 1983, Cabbage Patch Kids. In the late 1970s, Xavier Roberts was creating art sculptures, essentially dolls, that he called the Little People. And you didn't buy one of his Little People. You adopted one with a unique face, a unique name, and it was a really appealing concept. But it was something that got a groundswell movement behind it. He couldn't keep up with the demand, so eventually he licensed the concept to Coleco, a maker of electronic toys that said that they would be able to take his concept, use their manufacturing prowess to create really customized dolls so that they weren't all the same on the shelf. Different hair color, eye color, skin tone. Each had its own name, each still had adoption papers. Renamed as the Cabbage Patch Kids, they were the sensation of 1983. Adopting was a different concept for a doll. It gave you a different sort of investment that you weren't just paying a price at the checkout counter, you were getting an individual doll for you. And a nursery for the Cabbage Patch Kids, all under lock and key, of course. The media loved the idea of Cabbage Patch Kids. And even more, once the craze took off and parents were crawling in parking lots to get the last examples of Cabbage Patch Kids at the store, that everyone wanted to have that story. And the more the story ran, the more people wanted Cabbage Patch Kids. It was something that really boosted the sales of Cabbage Patch Kids to the stratosphere. 1984, Trivial Pursuit. Board games had been on a decline trend ever since the advent of television in the 1950s. But that all changed with the 1981 introduction of Trivial Pursuit, a trivia game that captivated grown-ups in a way that games hadn't previously. [00:15:05] Speaker 2: It's here. Big Bird! It's there. [00:15:08] Chris Bench: It's everywhere. By 1984, the year we're recognizing there were parties everywhere. Everyone wanted to play. Everyone wanted to win. Trivial Pursuit was a hit. 1985, Teddy Ruxpin. He seemed so incredibly advanced at the time. By inserting a cassette in his back, you could make Teddy appear to read children's stories to your kids. It made him so engaging. It made him a perfect nighttime conclusion to a child's day. Even though he cost a massive $69.99 in 1985, he was the best-selling toy of the year. Teddy combined two things. One was technology of the time. He seemed very up-to-date for his moment, but he also helped promote literacy with reading, something that so many parents want to encourage in their kids. 1986 laser tag. It was such a great competition. For all the sorts of gunplay that have occurred over the years, this finally let you prove that you had actually hit your opponent. Not with a laser, but with infrared beams so that your opponent knew that they'd been hit and that you had succeeded. Now, critics of the time felt that it was encouraging violence and gunplay, but other folks said this was just an ongoing way of competitive action, that it was more tag than killing people. It generated so much success, not only for the laser tag product, but by starting laser tag emporiums and venues across the nation that, in their successors of paintball and other kinds of grown-up and big kid play, are popular right down to today. 1987, Jenga. The classic tower-toppling game. Dexterity to the nth degree that anyone can play with enough strategy and a steady enough hand to actually maneuver the blocks out of the tower and set them on top. Englishwoman Leslie Scott had played a block-toppling towering game when she was growing up in Africa. When she went home as a grown-up to England, she took this concept with her. It was a hit at parties. It took a while for it to lift off, but eventually in Canada, in the US, it became a massive hit and eventually went back to Europe as a sensation. Now, Jenga is all over the world in so many variations. 1988, the Nintendo Entertainment System. In 1983, Nintendo introduced the Famicom, a system that was popular throughout Asia that they rebranded as the Nintendo Entertainment System, or NES, for the North American market. And in 1988, it was the go-to system for people in the US and beyond because it had the best games. It had Donkey Kong, Super Mario Brothers, The Legend of Zelda. It became the standard of its time and for many years to come. 1989, the Nintendo Game Boy. [00:18:29] Speaker 2: All the power and excitement of Nintendo right in the palm of your hand. [00:18:34] Chris Bench: If you loved the NES in 1988, chances are that you wanted to take your gaming portable. And Nintendo was out to do that with the Game Boy. It was a way that you could play your games anywhere you wanted to go. And rather than having specialized games that only allowed you to play football or baseball, the cartridges for the Game Boy allowed you to have a multitude of games. [00:19:00] Speaker 2: All you need is a Game Boy. It's a personal game playing system with over 200 puzzle, action, and sports games to choose from. [00:19:07] Chris Bench: It was simple. It was clear. It was efficiently designed. It allowed you to have head-to-head competition. And the Game Boy became the standard gaming in terms of mobile play. The legacy of the Game Boy shows up in all of our pockets and purses today as we play games on our smartphones, maybe even play Tetris. 1990, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. In the 1980s, Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird were out to create a satirical comic book that was making fun of superheroes. So they created a bunch of mutant turtles who lived in sewers, were named after Renaissance artists, and thought that their tongue-in-sheet comic book would be the end of it all. What they couldn't realize was that it would go on to become its own media juggernaut, in line of all sorts of toys that became a hit with kids who loved the irreverent humor, who loved the pizza-eating teenage characters that they could relate to in a way that Batman, Superman, Spiderman really didn't resonate. 1991, The Super Soaker. Lonnie Johnson was working for NASA, trying to develop a water-cooled device for a spacecraft, and he developed a technique that he was pressurizing water and sprayed it all over his bathroom, thought, you know, this is not going to work for my project, but it would make a great play thing. The Super Soaker took water play to a whole new dimension. Kids and adults loved it. Super Soakers went from basic versions, like the one I'm holding, to ones where the water capacity was so big, you wore it in a backpack. 1992, Super NES. The successor to the Nintendo Entertainment System brought new capacity to gaming, with a 16-bit system that allowed more opportunities for higher-grade graphics, faster play. And one of the things that's different in video game systems than some other play things is that technology keeps advancing, prices keep coming down for computer chips, allowing greater and greater capability. So, if you're a fan of a particular series of games, you want to have the latest version, the slickest gameplay. And that's what systems like the Super NES allowed you to do. 1993, Barney. Barney conveyed so many positive messages on his PBS series. The purple Tyrannosaurus Rex was anything but a Jurassic Park dinosaur. He was the unscary dinosaur, who represented really kindly qualities. He was perfect for toddlers and early preschoolers. He may have driven parents crazy, but he was one that was a hit with the kids. And Barney became a cultural icon in his purple dinosaur-ness and his friends across the PBS time frame. 1994, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. Another transmedia property that became a successful TV series, which generated successful toys, which generated all kinds of other licensed products along the way. The teen heroes of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, with their color-coded gear, were ones that were big hits with American kids. And they were so much the flavor of the month that they were the must-have toy for the holidays in 1994. 1995, Beanie Babies. This was marketing par excellence, to turn soft toys full of little pellets into a collectible juggernaut that dominated gift stores everywhere. The Beanie Babies were predicated on a perception of scarcity, that these were limited edition toys with their in-ear tags that made them extra appealing, allowed people to buy them as investments, they thought, and to create crazes when they thought that their favorite characters were about to be retired and they better grab them now. 1996, Tickle Me Elmo. Who's giving everybody the giggles? It's Tickle Me Elmo. There had been soft electronic toys previously, but Elmo was really more advanced than someone like Teddy Ruxpin. His simulation of laughing and uncontrollable joy from being tickled was tremendously appealing. And when he was demonstrated on TV shows like The Rosie O'Donnell Show, he helped create a marketing craze. And parents everywhere competed to get their Tickle Me Elmo. He was the must-have toy of the holidays for 1996 and he has persisted as the most identifiable character from Sesame Street right down to the present. The legacy of Tickle Me Elmo is that more and more we expect even soft cuddly toys to come with electronic components or online linkage. That means that it's not just a physical thing. It's something that has greater capacity for play and simulation than ever before. 1997, Tamagotchi. If you weren't quite ready to keep a cat or dog or even a hamster, Tamagotchi virtual pet might be just the solution for you. You could have a keychain size pet to look after, to care for, and to identify with. It was a digital virtual pet, something miniaturized in a way that hadn't been seen or popularized before. If you didn't do it right, a skull icon showed up at the bottom of your screen that you were doing it wrong and you could perhaps pull the fat out of the fire and make sure that your Tamagotchi didn't expire. But it was a lesson both in marketing digital play and it was a lesson in pet caregiving that loads of people found popular for years to come. 1998, Furby. Tiger Electronics set out to create a media craze for their interactive talking jabbering pet Furby and they did a brilliant job of it. From its introduction on the Today Show, more than six weeks before they were ever available in stores, the media picked up on this interactive, learning-capable toy. In fact, it was such a phenomenon for its learning capacity that the National Security Administration in Washington banned Furby's video games. It's not a great idea. It's a great idea. It's a great idea. If you love the video games, you're sure to love the trading card game that it spun off, that let you collect your Pokémon, compete with your friends in the three-dimensional world. Pokémon cards were so successful that the generated tournaments where people could watch competitions and compete themselves. It is an entire industry and an entertainment force in its own right. 2000, the Razor Scooter. Scooters had been around certainly since the early part of the 20th century, but the Razor Scooter was slicker-looking, it was more compact, it was foldable so you could carry it with you when you didn't want to ride it. The Razor Scooter allowed with its smooth rolling composite wheels for you to have a great ride for you to have a great ride, and it became one of the must-have toys of the holidays. The Razor Scooter allowed, with its smooth-rolling composite wheels, for you to have a great ride, and it became one of the must-have toys of the holidays. The Razor Scooter proves that even in an era of digital play, there's still a great amount of appeal for speeding along in the real world on a wheeled vehicle. 2001, Bratz dolls. Barbie had dominated the fashion doll segment for decades before the advent of Bratz, who offered an entirely new look. They had big heads, twig-like limbs, oversized kind of anime eyes, and what also made them different was they were really multi-ethnic, with names, skin tones, hair colors that represented more of the American population than ever before. They had an appeal to a tween market who considered Barbies for babies, and they really took fashion doll sense to a different level, and really gave Barbie a run for her money. People have said, "The Bratz are representative of the slutification of American dolls." I'm a little more generous on Bratz. I think they really help give options for doll play. 2002, Beyblade. Beyblades are essentially a rebrand of an earlier toy from Ideal Battling Tops that had been a success in the '60s or '70s. They promoted all kinds of tournament play, and they were supported by an animated cartoon series that allowed you to see what was even more possible. It's sort of cool to think that something that's been around for centuries, if not thousands of years tops, that are a persistent plaything can be updated and made appealing to a contemporary audience and people who want to play in a digital age. 2003, Robo Sapien. If Furby is a little too benign for you and you don't want a story from Teddy Ruxpin, why not this massive robotic plaything that was a big hit of the year? He had learning capacity. He could dance. He could fight. He was something that really made you feel up to date by having this super-sized and super-capacity robotic toy. 2004, Puppy Surprise. When you get one of these, you aren't buying a puppy. You're buying a mother dog who comes with unborn puppies inside and a Velcro slit across her belly that allows you to reveal the surprise number of puppies. Creepy or not, I'll let you be the judge. 2005, Webkinz. Like Cabbage Patch Kids, Webkinz inspired you to not just get a pet, but to adopt it. And Webkinz came with internet connectivity. This is part of a whole vanguard of playthings that weren't just a three-dimensional toy, but they had an online component and a unique code that let you go on there and play with your friends, interact with environments, add to your virtual pet as well as your physical one. Going up against different ecosystems like Club Penguin, also of the time, Webkinz were one of the most successful, and they were a huge deal for kids everywhere in 2005. 2006, the Nintendo Wii. Nintendo's fifth generation of consoles came with what was called the Wiimote that was a gyroscopically controlled handheld controller that let you use it as you would a baseball bat or a tennis racket or as your bowling ball that you were sending down the lane. It was so intuitive, especially for adults who might not be familiar with other more complex controllers. It made a huge inroad into the senior citizen market, as well as the kid-friendly market. And it really changed how people reacted to games, that they could do it in a very natural way rather than just pressing buttons. 2007, the iPod Touch. This Apple device wasn't just a music player. It was a platform for gaming as well with its touch screen. It allowed really intuitive play. It let parents have confidence that they didn't have to buy a smartphone for their kids to play games or listen to music. And it was the latest iteration and a successor to something like the Game Boy. And with the kinds of capacity for touch screen control that we assume is everywhere today. 2008, the Littlest Pet Shop. People have always loved miniatures and tiny things, whether that's dollhouse furniture or charms on a bracelet. And little playthings have a special appeal. The Littlest Pet Shop with its huge cast of toy pets was an immediate sensation. It was built on a 1990s toy with a similar concept. And it has proven to be a successful franchise with great capacity for collectability and also for play sets. Like this immense one. 2009, Zuzu Pets. Meet Mr. Squiggles, your electronic toy hamster. One of the downfalls of hamsters and gerbils is that they tend to be nocturnal animals so that they're asleep when kids are awake and vice versa. Zuzu Pets have none of that problem. They also don't need to be cleaned up after. And their electronic capabilities from their cuddling version to their exploring version, they've got those two modes, allowed them to be a hit of 2009 with all kinds of accessories so that you could have your entire crew of animatronic hamsters rolling around in balls and exploring their habit trails. 2010, Monster High dolls. 2010, Monster High dolls. Inspired by the success of the Twilight series of books and films, Mattel introduced a whole sequence of high school students who were monsters. I'm holding Frankie Stein and there were multitudes of other of her friends and dates out there in the series. They are definitely the un-Barbie from Mattel with their goth look. They were ostensibly to prove that everyone needed to fit in and people could be varied looks and feels. Although critics pointed out that they were still stick thin and wearing short skirts and lots of eyeliner, a little bit like their competing brats. 2011, Skylanders. One of the most successful iterations of the category known as Toys to Life, where three-dimensional playthings interact online via a portal that sends them into an online world. Skylanders generated lots of different stories and characters and it was really proof that people wanted to play with three dimensions and online multiplayer games. 2012, the Nintendo Wii U. Building on the success of the Wii, the Wii U had much more advanced graphics capacity and it also had a new touch screen controller that allowed you to play games in multiple dimensions and to see them on that screen as well. It was a carry-on advance from the Wii and one that was a success in its own right and took things into greater processing speed and speed of gameplay. 2013, Techno the Robotic Puppy. If you want more capacity than a Furby, Techno allows you to have a dog that can sing and dance, can sleep, can do tricks. He also makes rude noises, whether you like him to or not. And he is just the latest in a series of advanced robotic playthings. 2014, Rainbow Loom. After Techno the Robotic Puppy, it's good to know that there's still an appeal to crafting playthings and jewelry for your friends using something as analog as a loom that weaves rubber bands together. And rather than being a corporate product, the Rainbow Loom was a creation of an individual entrepreneur and toy inventor in Detroit who initially made these in his home. He washed the rubber bands in his bathtub with an ore to get the dust off of them. And what he really tapped into was the lure of social play, of creating gifts for your friends and family, for turning something three dimensional into something with added value. That kind of art kit, that kind of craft project, had an enormous amount of appeal. Stores couldn't keep Rainbow Looms on the shelf, they sold so rapidly, and it won four different categories of the Toy of the Year Awards. 2015, the BB-8 robotic droid. The breakout droid in that year's Star Wars movie, The Force Awakens, was undoubtedly BB-8, the adorable snowman-shaped droid, and everybody wanted one for home. This version from Sphero was amazingly advanced, used gyroscopic controls to move BB-8 around your home through various tricks. The best part of BB-8 is he looks so much like the one in the movies. He's not just like an action figure of R2-D2, he looks and functions the way the droid in the movies does. It was what everybody wanted, and it was a perfect match for the continuing demand of Star Wars fans, even 40 years after the initial movie, that they still can't get enough Star Wars, and especially the robotic characters. 2016, Hatchimals, the start of what is now called the blind box kind of toy, where you don't know what you're getting inside. Hatchimals were so alluring because you bought an egg, you didn't know what stuffed toy was living inside of that. You had to warm them up with your hands so that they would hatch and peck their way out. It was a thrill of unboxing, as umpteen videos have shown on YouTube ever since, and Hatchimals was the must-have holiday toy of 2016, and continues in different iterations to show that surprises in eggs are so alluring to kids and grown-ups everywhere. 2017, LOL Surprise. Carrying on from the success of the Hatchimals, LOL Surprise took that same concept, not knowing what was inside the package, and turned it into its own separate product. This one is LOL Surprise under wraps. They're kind of like mummies, and you don't know what's going to be lurking inside of this. They have a reasonable price point so that they're smaller than the Hatchimals, and you could get lots of them in your quest to get all the surprises that are out there. 2018, Fingerlings. Fingerlings cling to your fingers, that's where they get their name, and they're the perfect culmination of all the trends that we've been seeing through so many of these toys. Connectability, learning capacity, microchips that enable them to have so many tricks, as well as still having a three-dimensional item that you can cuddle and care for. Fingerlings really, in some ways, are no surprise. They're really a way of pulling so many threads that we've been seeing develop across the history of toys, and really represent the way that miniature technology and our expectations of digital reality come together in a three-dimensional plaything that sets the stage for what's going to come next. We don't yet know what's going to be the hot toy for 2019, but based on what we've been seeing, you can be pretty confident that it's going to have some cuteness factor. It may have some prize qualities, interactivity, and online connectability all mashed together in a way that is compelling for kids and grown-ups today. That's every top toy from the last 50 years. I hope you learned something along the way, and I can't wait to see what the next 50 years hold.