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It’s not really the holiday season until you’ve waited in an interminable line in adverse weather conditions to spend money on a toy that has been hyped within an inch of its life. To get your festive fix of fisticuffs, we present to you the Top Five Most Dangerously Popular Holiday Toys of the last two decades.
1. The Toy: Cabbage Patch Kids
The Year: 1983
The Chaos: My very own parents can attest to the fact that these (admit it) sorta-ugly dolls were THE must have Christmas item for much of the early 80s, thanks, in part, to a few big celebrities who were apparent fans of the little dimpled tykes, including Burt Reynolds (His wife, Loni Anderson, was a toy collector. We assume he bought them for her. That has to be it, right?) I had two. My first adopted daughter’s name was Jemima. I don’t remember the name of the second, but I do recall that her new special feature was that you could “curl” her hair by winding it around your finger. Basically this meant that instead of normal yarn-like hair, she had strands that felt like oily, waxy Twizzlers and were probably made from something we’d rather not think about. As for the frenzy surrounding these dolls, we’ll let the You Tube footage speak for itself:
2. The Toy: Tickle Me Elmo
The Year: 1996
The Chaos: Nearly 300 people had amassed outside a Wal-Mart in Frederickton, New Brunswick in the five hours before it opened. The moment the doors were unlocked, the Muppet-seeking mob pushed their way through the entrance, evidently not caring who they had to step over on their way to the shelves of creepy, giggling, red rascals. One defenseless employee had to be hospitalized. (This was eerily similar to the tragic death of a Long Island Wal-Mart employee last month.) Down in Texas, two Wal-Mart employees were lucky enough to escape the Elmo rush unharmed, but they weren’t able to escape The Man: they got fired for hiding Elmo dolls from customers so they could claim them for themselves.
The new Elmo on the block, “Elmo Live,” doesn’t just giggle; he sits, stands, dances, sings, tells jokes and crosses one leg over the other. It’s terrifying and just a little bit awesome. See for yourself:
3. The Toy: Furby
The Year: 1998
The Chaos: Despite the fact that nobody was really sure what a “Furby” really was, the floppy-eared, big-eyed gremlin-esque toy with a capacity to remember a vocabulary of over 100 English words (along with some words spoken in “furbish”) was so coveted in 1998 that people waited in line for hours just to buy Furbies that they could scalp to shoppers who were still waiting in line. The eternal law of supply and demand was put to the test as the media featured stories about this innovative “intuitive” tech-y toy months before it was actually scheduled to hit the shelves. By the time it did, the demand was already out of control stores were forced to turn away customers away with vague projections about when they’d get a few more Furbies in stock. Several customers at a Wal-Mart in Tewksbury, MA, wouldn’t take “No Furbies” for an answer and threatened violence against the store management if their desire for Furby wasn’t quenched. They still left empty handed, but at least they weren’t in handcuffs. The Furbster is still around today, and there is actually a Bejeweled Furby that has been appraised at a worth of $100k. There are only five in existence, but somehow we suspect (or hope) the supply might be more than the demand this time around. Ready to lose several nights of sleep? Here’s a You Tube video highlighting Furby’s more… uh… demonic characteristics:
4. The Toy: Beanie Babies
The Year: 1997
The Chaos: The words “Beanie Baby Black Market” might conjure more than a few chuckles, but such markets were a reality in 1997 when Beanie mania was at the height of its frenzy. Oak Brook, IL-based toy maker Ty, Inc. introduced the original Beanie Babies in 1993. Four years later, they were still introducing new beanie designs that became instant must-haves for the kiddie set, while serious collectors paid thousands to get their hands on the “vintage classic” beanies with ’93 and ’94 birthdays. One Nebraskan toy storeowner reported that grown men were fighting in line waiting to get into her store to buy these $5 trinkets. Stores had to vastly limit the number of Beanies that customers could buy because while they only cost a fiver at the retailer, the underground trading market was being flooded with beanies costing ten times their intended value. In 1999, a St. Louis couple was sentenced to one and half years in prison and a $150,000 fine for smuggling in counterfeit Beanie Babies from Europe with the intent to sell them in the United States. Creator Ty Warner intended to get out of the beanie business altogether after he saw how his simple creation was getting blowing vastly out of proportion with asking amounts in the thousands, but he’s back at it with Beanie Babies 2.0, an updated version of the same old stuffed animal with the added feature of being able to log on to the internet with a special code that allows you to play games and interact with your beanie virtually. (Much like the now hugely popular Webkinz, the first collectible plush to take up the original beanie baby mantle). For more beanie news, we will now direct you to this You Tube clip that actually features Beanie Babies delivering fake news. It’s too precious to be believed.
5. The Toy: Nintendo Wii/Sony PS3
The Year: 2006
The Chaos: It’s unlikely that you’ve forgotten the intensity surrounding Sony and Nintendo’s holiday console system debuts in 2006. The lines. The websites devoted to tracking the latest shipments to your local stores. The urge to rationalize paying three times the retail price just so you would know what it felt like to be one of the proud few who would hold one on Christmas morning. This writer still doesn’t own either, as she somehow believes that it is beyond her reach, like if I was to go right now to the store and try to get a Wii, two years later, they would still tell me to get in line. Nevertheless, some people did manage to score these two state of the art systems in ’06, but in one reported instance, getting one was actually the easy part. One CNN staffer posted a personal account of her brush with violence as she struggled to escape with her newly purchased Wii, stating that as she made her way for the exit, disgruntled line-waiters who just been told there were no more Wii’s to be had started grabbing for her bag and shouting at her. A lone female in a sea of angry gamers, she was escorted to a police car by the store’s security guard and was given safe exit by her armed escort. For a 19-year old in West Bend, WI, just getting in line for a PS3 was a struggle: he injured himself running into a pole as he sprinted to claim one of 10 coveted spots in line outside a Wal-Mart to lay claim to the small shipment of PS3’s that was available. Believe it or not, that was just the tip of the extremely violent iceberg surrounding these super-hyped systems:
We don’t know yet which toy will claim the top spot under the tree this year, but here’s a gallery of the contenders. Our money is on Kota, the dinosaur who munches leaves and whom that small children can sit on and ride. What we wouldn’t give to be six again.
What’s your best (or worst) must-have toy memory?
Jenn Thompson is a freelance writer for publications including Charlotte Magazine, Variety, and Time Out.
See Also…
The Secrets Behind Your Favorite Toys
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4 Toys That Have Gone to War for America
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11 Notable Presidential Pardons
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Is It True That No Two Snowflakes Are Alike?
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12 Things You Might Not Know About A Christmas Story
Comments (25)
Comment
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We have a family friend who works at Nintendo, and he was able to help us locate a dealer with a several Wiis for sale back in ‘06. It couldn’t have been easier — I paid with a credit card over the phone and they shipped it right out. UPS delivered it….and one of our neighbors stole it from my front porch. Because it was so hard to find in stores around here, when I heard a lady down the road talking about how her son had “gotten one at school,” I knew it was ours, confronted her, threatened to call the police, and got him to confess. I am not a confrontational person but I guess must-have toys bring out the aggression!
posted by Kendra on 12-15-2008 at 9:17 am
Back in 1989, all I wanted was a 1989 Upper Deck Ken Griffey, Jr., rookie card. My mom is a piano teacher and she traded six free lessons (plus $50) to get the last Griffey from the baseball card store in our town. The lessons were for his daughter. I wonder what that card is worth today — probably not that much. (I still have it.) Do they even have baseball card stores anymore?
posted by Ted on 12-15-2008 at 9:27 am
I bought a Tickle Me Elmo for my niece when they were the hot hot toy. No fisticuffs, but a woman did scream at me in Toys R Us that I shouldn’t be allowed to buy one because I obviously didn’t have kids (I was about 17 at the time).
posted by sarah on 12-15-2008 at 10:18 am
Children can sit on Kota, but it doesn’t move. Making it walk was determined to be a safety hazard.
posted by Alareth on 12-15-2008 at 10:24 am
Hannah Montanna used to be wildly popular. I guess her star is burning out.
posted by Sara on 12-15-2008 at 10:46 am
I also had the Cabbage Patch that you could style the hair. I’ll agree it was a really weird sort of indescrible material.
Kota is just a Pleo rip off. I so want a Pleo badly. It’s just hard to justify paying the cost of an iPhone for a robotic dinosaur no matter how cool it is.
posted by nihil on 12-15-2008 at 11:13 am
What about Princess Unicorn?
I hear Dwight Shrute has a lot of them…
posted by Scott Conrad on 12-15-2008 at 11:47 am
OK, so I had a Cabbage Patch Kid of my own… I LOVED THAT TOY! However, I´m sure my parents did not resort to violence for it! What in the world are these people thinking?!?
posted by GTT on 12-15-2008 at 11:53 am
We’re so bereft of creativity now, we’ll never have another new Christmas fad toy again. We’ll have derivations of Elmo from here to Doomsday.
posted by Amanda H. on 12-15-2008 at 12:08 pm
Oh man!!! My hometown is mentioned in MentalFloss, woohoo!
haha :)
posted by Ab on 12-15-2008 at 12:49 pm
Under the Tickle Me Elmo story, the city is spelled “Fredericton” (without the k).
It’s actually where I am attending university right now, or should I say reading mental_floss while procrastinating on studying for finals…
posted by Reese on 12-15-2008 at 12:59 pm
I got a Cabbage Patch in ‘86. It was a real honest-to-goodness Cabbage Patch, but all the adoption papers were in Swedish. Apparently, Coleco intended the shipment for overseas, but with the hot demand in the US, they decided to keep them here.
posted by Anne on 12-15-2008 at 1:58 pm
I recall working at Wal*Mart in the toy department during Christmas 1981. There was a certain toy SUV called Stompers that flew out of the cases even before I could put price tags on. And anything related to Strawberry shortcake. After that year, I vowed never to work retail again unless I owned the store.
posted by Miss Cellania on 12-15-2008 at 2:10 pm
Scott, mad props for the Office reference, that’s one of the best episodes ever
posted by Emmie on 12-15-2008 at 2:30 pm
My first Cabbage Patch was named Jemima! (A bald baby with a blue dress, right?) I feel deceived. I thought they were all special and unique. My next was a yarn-haired one, then I got the style-able hair Cabbage Patch. She was a saucy red head who I named Aurora. Thanks for bringing me back…
posted by Gretch on 12-15-2008 at 2:38 pm
Before Cabbage Patch dolls were the big deal, I had a friend who hand-made them, face and all. I wonder what happened to all the ones she made? Anyway, our toy store made appointments for customers to come in one at a time to buy Cabbage Patch dolls. The day my appointment came up, I was in bed with fever of 103º. I got out of bed, drove the 15 miles into town, went in the mall, picked two Cabbage Patch dolls, paid with a bad check, and went back home to bed. Never regretted a minute of it. Those were well-loved dolls.
posted by Leslie on 12-15-2008 at 3:00 pm
Cellania,
Oh wow — Stompers. Haven’t thought of them in years. They were awesome.
My sister had strawberry shortcake stuff. Her room smelled awful.
posted by EV on 12-15-2008 at 4:29 pm
I worked for a large toy store chain (not Toys R Us) back when I was a teen. The “must have” toy for one Christmas that I was there was The Real Ghostbusters, whenever we’d get a shipment of them in, we’d just load them all onto a cart and then push the cart out of the stockroom onto the showroom floor and let all the shoppers just go at it. It was like watching a school of piranhas feasting on some unfortunate animal.
My personal must have toy of all time was Snaggletooth from Star Wars, you couldn’t find him anywhere in Canada and I was looking for months. It wasn’t until I went down to see an older sister who was married and living in Longview, WA that I finally found one in a ginormous bin at a Newberry’s department store.
posted by Cardinal_Fang on 12-15-2008 at 7:15 pm
Is no one else horrified by the violence and overall greed around TOYS? So unbelievable the lengths people will go to for the most inane things.
posted by Logan on 12-15-2008 at 8:05 pm
The Cabbage patch dolls are made here in a small town in GA (Cleveland). You can still go to the Cabbage Patch Hospital and when the doll is born (you get to watch in a waiting area to see the new borns) call out a name for them to name it. If you have the money you can then buy the doll you named. Kinda cool for the kids.
posted by Kev in GA on 12-15-2008 at 10:15 pm
My sister just got a Wii about a month ago, online somewhere. She brought it down when her and my nephew came to visit this past weekend, and I’m hooked now. That is the most fun I’ve ever had playing a video game. I’m determined to get one now… but my arms are still sore!!
And I’m 23, but I have no shame in revealing that I hardcore want that Crayola Glow thing. It looks like so much fun!
posted by Cassie on 12-15-2008 at 10:35 pm
my older brother and sister were old enough for cabbage patch kids. me and my twin brother got furby’s ,beanie babies and elmos when we were younger.
posted by Olivia on 12-15-2008 at 10:57 pm
i went nuts for a tamagotchi back in ‘97! i wanted one so badly. my mum ordered it for my birthday but i wasn’t able to get one until about a month after. a month after that i was over it.
posted by liz on 12-16-2008 at 12:15 am
My husband is a huge Star Wars fan and the original movies were being re-released back when we were first dating. He had been collecting the new figures, but he couldn’t manage to find a Leia. I went to a Toys R Us right before Christmas and managed to find one of those “holiday employees.” He was so impressed by my vast Star Wars knowledge that he not only sold me figures that he’d hidden in a box in the back and weren’t supposed to be on the floor for another week, he also sold me the coveted Leia for $10 out of the trunk of his car.
I think that’s when my husband knew I was the one.
posted by Kristin on 12-16-2008 at 12:20 am
I don’t celebrate Christmas so I have never understood the mad lengths people will go to to get a freakin’ TOY for their kid that they’ll get over in about a month anyway. To my knowledge, it’s not about toys, it’s about family and blah blah blah… don’t these idiots realise that their precious little brats don’t give a crap about what they went through? And what is this must-have bullshit, kids should appreciate they get anything at all and stfu. When did getting presents become a *right* and not a privelege?! No, I’m not some bitter old woman, I’m 20 and when I got a present for my birthday, there’s no bloody complaining about it even if it was just a book and not the super amazing Power Rangers DragonZord that I wanted.
posted by Farah on 12-16-2008 at 6:58 am