Toys Are Getting Weird! 100 Years of Toys

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: Today I am testing 100 years of toys by time traveling to every decade to test the best and worst toys ever made. Some of these toys made kids so crazy that they got banned in schools across America, whilst others are so unique that they were used by NASA in space. I'm ranking each decade to see which generation had the best childhood. Let's start with the 1910s. It's the 1910s and I'm a kid. I just worked all day at the factory but my dad saved up a full week's wage to get me the teddy bear. Have you ever wondered why a bear? These are so ubiquitous we kind of just take them for granted but the actual story behind it is that in 1902 President Teddy Roosevelt went on a hunting trip in Mississippi and it was staged for him. They were like we're gonna make him look cool. He's gonna like shoot some animals and be like yay I'm the man. They tied up a captive bear there and when the president showed up he was like oh hell no. I'm not shooting that. A political cartoon was made about it after and the bear in the cartoon ended up being made into a plushie and displayed in one of the windows. The funny thing about this toy is the only way you can play with it is playing pretend. Your playfulness with this toy is a direct relationship of your attachment to the toy. We are still in the 1910s and in 1915 a famous illustrator's daughter brought an oil rag doll down the stairs. It was an ugly little doll with no face and it was really tattered and he decided to give her a little makeover. And what was born was this. This is a Raggedy Ann doll. The Raggedy Ann doll was officially introduced as a toy in 2020 and it got popular. So popular in fact that she got a brother. This is oh this is Raggedy Andy. These were a big deal in the 1910s. I however find them ugly. Maybe I like this one because it's not as anthropomorphized but this is like someone else's kid. I give these a three. Sorry. If you like these please let me know why. This decade overall was all about family comfort for kids and just having something that you can probably because life was a little bit hard at the time and you just kind of wanted something that would hug you back. I do like these physical touch toys. Overall this is a cute decade. It's the 1920s. You want to see my new toy? Yeah I sleep in a cellar but look at this thing. I have a yo-yo. Yo-yos actually existed since ancient Greece like 500 BCE. However they didn't come to America until a Filipino immigrant brought one, was hosting tournaments with it, and was like check out these cool yo-yos man. Now this is one of the old school wooden ones so I don't know how well this thing works. 1920 kids are smarter than me. Give me some. Oh so you have to unlike the new yo-yos you kind of have to have rhythm. This is what our boy the yo-yo became. This is the Duncan butterfly yo-yo and I'm going to show you why it's called a butterfly if I can ever get this thing open. Oh come on open it. It's shaped like a butterfly and this is the kind of yo-yo that when you like put it on the bottom. That is smooth. All right we're gonna walk the dog with the dog. Watching. Unlike Raggedy Ann this is a timeless toy. There's still yo-yo competitions to this day. I'm gonna give the yo-yo I'm gonna give a yo-yo an 8 out of 10 just because it's this is truly a timeless and creative toy. Still in the 1920s we have the first generation of car toy. This is the wind-up toy and the middle class absolutely loved how these toys moved by themselves. These were clowns, cars, trains. What an ugly sounding toy and look at her go. Oh uh I can't be bothered with this and I give it a 4 out of 10. I 2 out of 10. From this point on we're gonna take one toy from every decade, compete against each other and the loser has to play with the worst toy of the century for an entire hour. I hope it's not me. It's time for our car race. I'm sure about this because I learned in school you don't wind it up too much. No way! This is where I ended. We're going all the way. Go! Go! Oh my god. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait! It's a very bad duck. During the 1930s economic despair, David Siegel and Jerry Schuster created the Superman comics. They're caped hero, an alien who fights injustice reflected ordinary people's yearning for moral strength during uncertain times. That's a Chad right there. They say that Barbie's unrealistic but hey. I feel like I don't have as much appreciation for this as I should primarily because I grew up in a time where the Marvel Universe was just kind of the gift that would not stop giving. As a toy, I would kind of cherish it more for like the value of it than the aspect of being able to play with it. So I'm going to give this a 7. In 1904, game designer Lizzie Maggie created a game called Landlord's Game. This was to illustrate the cruelty of rent monopolies. However, during the Great Depression, Charles Darrow took this idea, rebranded it as Monopoly and sold it to the Parker Brothers. In an attempt to critique capitalism, Maggie got capitalized. This is Monopoly. All I could find is the 1980s version and I just want to tell you right now. You do not want to play this game against me because I am relentless. I am a shrewd businesswoman and you will get destroyed. These are the game pieces that everyone would play the game with. The alpha male dude would get to play the car and he would think he's going to win, but he would get outmaneuvered by me on the thimble. No one suspects the thimble. And that's the thing about these games. When people aren't panicking about you, they won't know you're winning until it's too late. This was meant to be a warning about monopolized crony capitalism, but instead we all played these games for fun. And I would say that we didn't really learn much from it. We just kind of went, "Screw you, Dad!" I want to give it a high score due to the timelessness of it, but I just don't like that it's a stolen idea. So I'm going to give it a 5. We're doing quick monopoly, okay? Okay. We're going around the board twice. Everywhere you land, put a hotel. Whoever has the most money at the end of two rounds wins. I'm going first. One, two, three, four, five. [00:06:55] Speaker 2: You can't put a hotel in Reed. [00:06:58] Speaker 1: Dang it! No! No! I win! If we played with real rules, I would have won. Anyways, let's go. On to the 1940s, where this guy was a happy accident. Naval engineer Richard James dropped a spring while he was in a shipyard and watched the way it walked across the floor. Him and his wife got together and was like, "We gotta sell these things! We gotta call this thing a slinky!" And when they started selling it in 1945, it sold out instantly. Though simple and cheap to make, was an example of American ingenuity. And it also gave people hope during a tough time. We're going through a lot of tough times lately. But I remember in the 90s as a kid, how badly I wanted one of these. What walks downstairs, a loner in pairs and makes the happiest sound. Although I'm not sure that... Yeah, it wants to go. Let me try that again. Go my sweets! Yes! It's fun to look at. It's fun to play with. It's just wow. Beautiful timeless toy. I give this an 8.5. Tournament number two. You only get one shot for the slinky to go down the stairs. Otherwise, you're just worthless. Yeah, here we go. Very good indeed. Go! I'm worthless. I'm worthless, dog. I was about to say so much meaner stuff. I'm glad I didn't. Also extremely popular during the 1940s was these. The Little Golden Book. The Pokey Little Puppy was the breakout star of this series. These were sold during wartime and paper rationing for 25 cents at bookstores. And the beautiful thing about these is it really democratized reading for kids. Reading and picture books. A lot of kids read this as their first book. Through the meadow they went. Down the road. Over the bridge. Across the green grass. And up the hill. Two and two. And when they got to the top of the hill. They counted themselves. One. Two. Three. Four. It's just so visually stimulating. It really just like kickstarts your imagination. Timeless. Still being published to this day. I will also give this an 8.5 in the 1940s. Though, you know, there was the stress of the war and the economy and everything. The toys really built your imagination and gave you a lot of hope. Welcome to the 1950s. We're going to take a little time to talk about Play-Doh. Play-Doh was originally formulated by a cleaning company in Cincinnati to clean coal soot off of wallpaper. But teachers noticed that kids love... Kids love playing with this. They love molding it. And so, in the 1950s, it was reformulated. It was given cool colors. And we got Play-Doh. Such a great way to encourage a kid to have creativity if they can get it open. But it is so fun. Very salty. The smell. You can really learn a lot about somebody by how they play with Play-Doh. Do they like the colors to mix? Do they like to make little figurines? If you're anxious like me, you can use this just as a fidget toy. You could just... Play-Doh is a great creativity builder. And I'm going to give Play-Doh an eight. Play-Doh sculptures. I'm setting a timer for five minutes. Three, two, one. [00:10:41] Speaker 2: Time's up. No more dough. Bro. [00:10:43] Speaker 1: So we have to pick them up and move them beside each other and take a picture and send it. And ask for a judge. She said right. She said, well, I don't know, but the skateboard's cute. No, the flower wins. Thank you. The other most popular toy in the 1950s was a lot more rigid. It represented what a woman or girl ought to be. This doll was originally conceived by Ruth Handler, who was watching her daughter play with paper dolls. For three dollars back in the day, you could buy a doll that embodied the independence of the time. Barbie has at times pushed the envelope, which kind of got a lot of people talking and added to the hype of this doll. And that's why she's so legendary. I have my own opinions about Barbie, but based on the legacy and the timelessness of it, I'm going to give it an eight. I want to give it a seven though, so I'm giving it a seven. This decade overall was molding and shaping us a lot. It's the beginning of an identity crisis. Welcome to the 1960s. One of the most interesting things about toys is that not only do they tell us who we are, but they often tell us who we ought to be. Boys wanted to play with a doll too, but in order to make it less stigmatized, they introduced the action figure. This is G.I. Joe. This is an action figure who can run. He can jump. He can climb trees. He can jump on a camel. Oh, watch out. Watch out. One of the scariest things that can happen to you out in the field is losing contact with your base. That means you're alone. No military support. No airstrikes. No med back. No extraction. No nothing. Codename? Dial town. Communications. I thought he would be like first line of defense. This guy's on the phone. You know the kind of people who are like, why does everything have to be so political? As you've seen from Barbie, women's existence is political. And same with the stigma for men wanting to have a doll. That it has to be an action figure. It's got to be a big tough guy. This guy was to change opinions on war. This was a real American hero. Would I say that this guy is timeless? No. I would say that he was very good for his time. He almost does the splits, but not quite because that'd be weird. Terry behind the camera right now is just like, well, a lot of action figures are actually pretty cool. Overall, I would give this toy maybe a five. On to a 1950s legend that was actually used by NASA astronauts in space. This is the Etch-A-Sketch. In zero gravity situations, a regular pen doesn't work because like the actual ink doesn't come down. And the kind of pens that they used in zero gravity situations were really expensive. So the Etch-A-Sketch was a fun way to get your doodle on. An absolute masterpiece. You've never seen anything this great. And then you can, oh, gotta shake it a little more than that. Gotta put your, put some elbow grease into it. I guess you could, you could sit there and just be making fine art going, oh, is it a leaf? This was a very curiosity and awe-inspiring toy from a very tech curious generation. I'm going to give the Etch-A-Sketch a seven. Timer set. Let's go. Five minutes later. [00:14:02] Speaker 2: Oh no. Show me. My cow. [00:14:07] Speaker 1: I did another flower. It's pretty good. Thanks. Okay. I actually think yours is a lot better than mine. Yeah. [00:14:15] Speaker 2: No way. [00:14:16] Speaker 1: I won again. [00:14:18] Speaker 2: How? [00:14:19] Speaker 1: I don't know. I literally think yours is better. [00:14:21] Speaker 2: Look at this amazing cow. Yours looks really detailed even though it's not particularly detailed. [00:14:27] Speaker 1: Okay, you don't have to insult my work. We saw G.I. Joe in the past decade and they were like, we need another toy for the boys. Like we need something that they won't feel embarrassed playing with. We need a really jacked dude. This is the original Stretch Armstrong. Action figure for boys to play with and have fun with without getting embarrassed. He's jacked. This guy's got a one, two. This guy's got an eight pack. But you can just stretch him. Whoa, this guy. You could stretch this guy. Hopefully his panties are big enough for this. Ah, I'm afraid of you letting it go and it's snapping me. And he's going back to normal. I guess he had to be jacked, hey? Because like, imagine he was just like this little guy in his undies. He's like, stretch me. Stretch Armstrong. You get a three. Get out of here. In 1974, a Hungarian architect named Erno Rubik created the Magic Cube. Now iconically known as the Rubik's Cube. This is a logic puzzle. You've got to use your imagination for this. I'm very jealous of people who can look at one of these and go, and solve it immediately. This is originally 3x3. I accidentally got a 4x4. But there have been competitions about this. This is like a logical puzzle. This kind of thing that has such a rigid structure that can only be fixed a certain number of ways, but is very possible to fix once you crack the code. That's a great toy. I would give it a 7.5 because I wouldn't play with one of these to save my life. But I respect people who do. Okay, we're doing one minute to get as many of one color on one face. Let's go. I don't know how to use the four-headed one. [00:16:12] Speaker 2: You know how to use the three-headed one. [00:16:14] Speaker 1: I would have a better chance. Yeah. Oh, that's seven seconds. No, it's stuck. Okay, I've got one, two, three, four, five, six yellows. I could have just not solved for it at all and I would have had like eight whites. Go. It's the 80s and I'm just kicking it with my daughter. She's so cute. This is a Cabbage Patch Kid doll. So these were originally just soft dolls that you could adopt out at a fair. By 1982, they had birth certificates and names and were called Cabbage Patch Kids. And by 1983, they caused shopping riots, where parents literally fought each other over Christmas to get an elusive Cabbage Patch Kid doll. They just pushed in like cattle. It was ungodly. This was really the start of like hype marketing, where people were . It was like the Stanley Cup situation, but back in the 80s. This is a horrendously ugly doll. I literally can't stand its face. Fun fact, when I was younger, me and my sister did like commercial and TV work. And one of them was for Cabbage Patch Kids. And they were like, would you like a doll? And I was like, no. But I would say that the quality of the clothes is really high. The yarn hair is reminiscent of dolls that I still had in the 2000s. It's very cute. And it made kids feel like parents because you were adopting them. Kind of setting a good exam- Oh, what the? It literally smells like an old fart. This is an old vintage- Oh! This is what the girls were playing with. Let's think about the boys for a sec. He doesn't even want it. It stinks so bad. Ladies and gentlemen. Transformers! Robots in disguise! Cool action figures. I watched the show in the 90s. I loved it. And this plane here? Guess what? It turns into a guy. It turns into a robot. Because he is, after all, a robot in disguise. Sorry, just give me a minute here. Yeah! This toy is kind of like a Rubik's Cube, but for people who aren't as smart. This ended up being a huge franchise. TV shows. Movies. Megan Fox. Megan- Put Megan Fox on the map. Wow! Do I think this one is an icon? Yes, absolutely. I mean, you can make it transform a few times and go, "It transforms!" And then your friends are like, "Okay, um, do you have a Super Nintendo or something?" But yeah, I mean, this is a pretty cool toy. I feel like I like it a lot better than, um, that. Although that's nice to cuddle. You can't cuddle this. You'll die. Cabbage Patch Kid. Three. Transformers. Six. Welcome to the 90s. In the absolutely iconic year of 1996, a legend was made. This is the Tamagotchi. If you didn't feed this guy, if you didn't clean his poo, he would die. I had many, many a pet die. It starts with an egg. Because you have to take care of these things all the time, at least once every hour, I would say if I remember correctly. These were banned from schools because kids consistently had this anxiety of, "I don't want my guy to die!" Oh, I think he's hatching. What the... Oh no, he's up and he's hungry. Oh, is he eating that? Okay, he got some food. This will go on forever. And I can't believe this thing came out in '96. This is an old vintage 1998 Furby. And if you found the Tamagotchi annoying... The dog is not happy. I know, I hate it too. I hate it too. Very annoying. Very, very annoying. Now, I was told as a kid that it has a light sensor. I know. So if you do this for like five minutes, it'll go to sleep. But otherwise, it thinks you're playing peekaboo. It's essentially something you feed. If you ignore it, it goes to sleep. It only stays up for, I would say, too long. Nothing is creepier than being eight years old and waking up to one of these going, I liked my Tamagotchi, but I would say that this wasn't exactly timeless. It was more iconic for its time. Give the Tamagotchi a seven. Give the Furby an eight. I shouldn't do that. That's nostalgia. The Furby gets a seven too. Shut up! Welcome to the 2000s. In 2001, Carter Bryant came out with The Barbie Killer. This is the Bratz doll. Barbie felt very boring to me, very milquetoast. This was culture. This is street style. This is a baddie. The fact that she looks the way she looks is rebellion, because Barbie was very perfect, gentle. This looks like somebody who would cuss you out if you were being rude. This was a toy that came out with a multicultural squad of girls. They were the girls with the passion for fashion. Fashion for fashion. They were such a competitor with Barbie that they did better than Barbie in some regions. And Mattel sued the crap out of them for the design, for the marketing, for the accessories. Mattel really, really felt threatened by this doll. And I don't blame them because this doll really actually took an accurate picture of what girls were and not what they ought to be. Because it didn't hit timeless status in my mind, I would give this doll a six. Now let's go on to what the boys were playing with. I don't know if you've ever heard of Beyblades. But we're about to go to war. Ready, guys? Yeah! Go green! Oh, you whooped my ass. Are you kidding me? You're such a guy. Come on, green. I'm counting on you. I got 500 bugs on this. All right, you're okay. Next. These are Beyblades. I've heard of people buying the heavier Beyblades because they'll just knock the other ones right out of the arena. And there have been people who put a metal core in their Beyblade so they could just pull up to school and mess everybody up. I do not feel like these stood the test of time. I feel like it's a very niche and nostalgic interest. That being said, it's very fun and you could definitely do some gambling with this. I would give this the same score as the Bratz. I feel like this was a very tacky, weird time in the 2000s. We were still kind of figuring ourselves out. But it's nice that we went back to basic from all of these really interesting tech toys. Let's see what 2010 has. We are now in the 2010s and who could forget? I mean it feels like a lifetime ago where this thing was the most popular toy. So popular it got banned from schools. So popular people were screaming over consumption. So popular that it became trendy to the point where it kind of like crossed the boundary into a level of cringe. This was marketed as an anxiety and ADHD toy. It kind of makes me sad that they did get banned in a lot of schools. One of the main reasons things get banned is because a kid will be like, "He stole my fidget spinner!" Or back in the 90s it was like, "He stole my holographic Charizard!" It would become an issue and that tends to be what leads to these things going away. But I could sit here and spin this thing for ages. Got a bad rap because it was so popular. But I think it served a very good purpose of normalizing sensory and fidget toys. So for that reason I'm gonna have to give this boy a 7. I feel like it's been like more than five years since anyone's had a fidget spinner competition. But here we go! I'm the best fidget spinner in the world! After nearing bankruptcy in the early 2000s, LEGO actually managed to reinvent itself by doing a lot of licensing deals. Brand deals, it did Harry Potter, it did Star Wars. Even here it's doing Formula One. I bought this because as a Verstappen fan, I want it. LEGO played this very, very smart because you could end up having like these really cute decor, like nerdy items for your house. And it totally pulled me back in. The LEGO movie was 2014. "Everything is awesome!" You have to give it to LEGO for constantly reinventing themselves and staying on everybody's radar. Like LEGO is like a Kardashian, it just won't die. I'm giving it an 8 because I really appreciate ingenuity. I really appreciate that everyone was buying LEGO when I was a kid and everybody is still buying LEGO now and I can't wait to have this car. The 2010s were an era of ingenuity. It's not just the case where the toy you have is the only toy that's out there. You are fully competing with video games. And I mean video games have existed for decades and decades, but you're competing with mobile app games, with phones. I mean, I think everyone would rather play a video game than with a toy that only does one thing. So you have to find creative ways to stay in the game. And I mean, at least LEGO did. I don't know what you did. Welcome to the 2020s. Modern era. Okay, some weird stuff is going on here. 10 years ago, a man named Kei Sing Leung just enjoyed drawing monsters. Kind of demonic, scary looking, where the wild things are type monsters in his apartment. And he ended up getting a licensing deal with Pop Mart. The resulting toy got extremely popular in Asia. And we got... To some, it can be a story of capitalism and overconsumption gone wrong. To others, it can be a success story about an artist doing something unconventional and making it. How often do artists who draw things make it to this level? I'm somewhere in the middle, and I happen to have this labubu that I definitely overpaid for, and then ended up not opening because it has the pink tag. And the pink tag, I think, means it's first edition. So I just wanted to hang on to it, and I got some have a seat labubus. Most of which I gifted to my friends. And I kept this one. Everybody got into labubus, or got into hating them for different reasons. There's no use explaining to people who don't collect things why you might want this. When I walk down the street with this, I get a lot of people coming up like, "Oh my gosh! That's so cute! Where'd you get that?" And I got a lot of people like, "What a loser!" You just kind of gotta take the good with the bad, but I definitely see both sides. I do believe this is very much a fad. I do believe they are far too expensive for what they are. I would say that this is like a four. Like, I wear one, but I would give it a four. I would say that I had a more nuanced opinion about the labubu, and I've tried to give this 2024 release the same grace, but it's really, really difficult. This is a bear that will tell your kids bedtime stories. AI bedtime stories that it improvises. And I've seen former iterations, like I guess former patches of this bear, where the bear started saying really creepy, weird stuff to the kids. [00:27:55] Speaker 2: A baseball player swung a metal bat, knocking zombie heads off their bodies. [00:28:00] Speaker 1: As you can see here, I have 75 coins. And every time I read a story, the coins go down. So your parents need to keep paying this app money in order for you to get bedtime stories. That's crazy. Let's create a new story. Okay, I want something a little spooky. Let's have the main character be a princess. And then let's put a dog in there. And then a police officer. Yeah, let's put a police officer for good measure. Creating a story will consume one story token. Okay, so I'm spending money to get this story created. Poe is creating your story. This is like when ChatGPT is thinking. [00:28:37] Speaker 2: It actually uses ChatGPT. [00:28:39] Speaker 1: How much did this bear cost? [00:28:41] Speaker 2: A hundred dollars. Hello there, Cassie. [00:28:43] Speaker 1: Why isn't the bear telling me the story? The bear's mouth is supposed to be moving. We're like giving our kids AI brain rot at a young age. Like this isn't like those little golden books that we were reading earlier. That you have to like kind of use your imagination for or your mom is reading it to you. This is a very, let's just... Oh, now you're getting shy. Why isn't it working now? Oh my gosh, it's not easy this thing. Tell me a story, sweetheart. [00:29:08] Speaker 2: Enigma of Whispering Woods. [00:29:11] Speaker 1: Go on. That's just the title. Come on. So it's been proven that using ChatGPT and like making it think for you is actually making us dumber. The idea of cuddling something that has a Wi-Fi signal is really weird. [00:29:26] Speaker 2: The Enigma of Whispering Woods. In the heart of a small village, surrounded by the dense, foreboding, whispering woods, lived an adventurous girl named Lila. Lila had heard tales of a ghostly princess who wandered the forest at night. Lila's adventurous spirit was not easily deterred, but her curiosity outweighed her caution. [00:29:48] Speaker 1: This was very much an AI slop story that just kind of makes you go, "Oh, the princess went to the woods and told jokes and then came home." There's really nothing of value here. I'm thinking about all of the books that I read as a kid and the idea of giving this to my child. And I really feel like this type of thing would really interfere with my kids' critical thinking skills. Because no thinking can be done here. Going through all of the decades, the old toys were really, really cool because you had to use your imagination. You had to have a connection with the toy. Or the toy was something that you got to play with with your friend. This kind of sucks all of the creativity out of everything. Can you believe that the 2020 category is La Boo Boo and AI Bear? The special time between parent and child with this toy is going to be the parent downloading the stories to your toy. [00:30:45] Speaker 2: Like throwing their phone against the wall. [00:30:49] Speaker 1: I give AI Bear a zero, a resounding zero. Of all the things they could have banned, I feel like if this gets popular, you gotta ban this. It's safe to say that this is the worst toy of the past century and I'm so disappointed that I have to play with it for the next hour. Next hour, I, hey, Terry, where'd it go? [00:31:11] Speaker 2: In the heart of a peaceful little town, there was a secret hideout known only to grandpa's and a few chosen ones. This was no ordinary hideout. It was built with stars of colorful candy, each with a label written in grandpa's careful handwriting. Greetings, esteemed human. I am Albie, an evil mastermind, true identity, observing your every move. [00:31:34] Speaker ?: Woo!