45 Fun Facts About 90s Toys

Which 1995 Nintendo system displayed its games only in red and black?

The Virtual Boy flopped so fast that Nintendo dropped it in Japan within six months of its 1995 launch.

The name Tamagotchi combines the Japanese word for 'egg' with which English word?

Watch is the English half of the name, and Tamagotchi's success soon drew rival virtual pets such as Giga Pets.

Tamagotchi's two creators won a tongue-in-cheek 1997 Ig Nobel Prize in which field?

The Economics prize honoured Tamagotchi's creators "for diverting millions of person-hours of work into the husbandry of virtual pets."

Which 1997 keychain pet was Tamagotchi's battling counterpart for boys?

Digimon soon spread from keychains to video games such as Digimon World, released in 1999.

Which company created the Furby?

Tiger Electronics' Furby was so scarce at Christmas 1998 that resellers got hundreds for one.

What is the name of the language a brand-new Furby speaks?

Furbish came first: each Furby was programmed to swap in more English words over time, so it seemed to be learning to talk.

Which console grew from a failed Super Nintendo CD add-on?

The PlayStation deal collapsed in public: a day after Sony unveiled the add-on at CES 1991, Nintendo announced a rival deal with Philips.

Which US agency banned Furbies from its property in 1999 over recording fears?

The NSA memo lumped Furbies in with recording equipment, warning that the toys might repeat classified conversations they overheard.

In which US city did Beanie Babies first go on sale, in January 1994?

Chicago shops got the first Beanie Babies, and their maker sold only through small toy and gift stores, a limit on supply that fed the craze.

Who created Beanie Babies?

Ty Warner's toys made him a billionaire, but in 2014 he was sentenced to probation for hiding money in a secret Swiss bank account.

What are Beanie Babies stuffed with instead of conventional soft filling?

Plastic pellets were packed loosely, so the understuffed animals could move and be posed like real ones.

Which animal was Pinchers, one of the nine original Beanie Babies?

Pinchers the lobster was one of the first nine Beanie Babies, and once the maker began 'retiring' designs in 1996, collectors paid inflated prices for older ones.

At the height of the craze, Beanie Babies made up about a tenth of all sales on which website?

Collectors flipped Beanies on eBay for far more than retail, and rare retired designs fetched thousands of dollars.

Which toy company produced the original Tickle Me Elmo?

Tyco's giggling toy was nearly Tickle Me Taz, based on the Looney Tunes Tasmanian Devil, before it became Elmo.

What animal was Tickles, the prototype toy that became Tickle Me Elmo?

Inventors Ron Dubren and Greg Hyman pitched the giggling monkey, and the toy company liked the tech but not the animal.

Which 1990 cheat cartridge did Nintendo fight in court, and lose?

Game Genie survived Nintendo's lawsuit because the court held that its changes vanished once it was unplugged, and a derivative work must be permanent.

Which talk show host showed Tickle Me Elmo on air in October 1996, boosting demand?

Peak demand and the stock shortages did not hit until nearly two months after her segment.

The name Pogs comes from a brand of what?

POG juice, a passionfruit-orange-guava blend, came with bottle caps that children were already using to play the game.

In Pogs, what is the heavier piece you throw onto the stack called?

Players hurl a slammer onto the stack and keep the caps that flip, which is why some schools banned the game as a form of gambling.

The 1990s Pogs craze spread across the US from which state?

Hawaii children had played the game since at least the 1930s, long before its 1990s revival.

Which engineer invented the Super Soaker?

Lonnie Johnson, an engineer working on heat-pump designs, got the idea when a homemade nozzle shot a spray of water across his bathroom.

What was the Super Soaker originally called when it went on sale in 1990?

The Power Drencher was renamed the Super Soaker in 1991 after design changes and a remarketing campaign, and it became a huge seller.

Which company originally sold the Super Soaker in 1990?

Larami took on the Super Soaker after its inventor, unable to afford production, had struggled to find a toy company partner.

Which English company first put Polly Pocket on shelves in 1989?

Bluebird Toys' founder, Torquil Norman, later spent his toy fortune rescuing London's derelict Roundhouse arts venue.

Which miniature toy line, marketed mainly to boys, came from the same British maker as Polly Pocket?

Mighty Max and Polly Pocket came from one British toymaker, whose miniature lines drove its meteoric growth in the early 1990s.

What feature did the 1990s Skip-It add to the ball on the end of its hoop?

Nickelodeon ads drilled the counter into a generation of kids, and the patent was filed by future Marvel boss Avi Arad.

The Talkboy recorder began as a prop in which 1992 film?

Writer John Hughes asked for the prop, and the retail version only took off after the voice changer was added in 1993.

What was the boy-targeted spin-off of Sky Dancers called?

Dragon Flyz got its own cartoon series, made with Gaumont, just as its creators also turned Sky Dancers into a TV show.

What happens on screen when a Giga Pet dies?

The average pet lasted about two weeks; testers found girls named theirs first while boys went straight to discipline.

Which game was bundled with the Game Boy in North America and Europe?

Nintendo planned to bundle Super Mario Land until Henk Rogers argued Tetris would sell the Game Boy far beyond traditional gamers.

Which Nintendo designer led the team behind the Game Boy?

Gunpei Yokoi favoured cheap, mature technology, which is why the Game Boy chose a monochrome screen and long battery life over colour.

Which magazine named the Nintendo 64 its 1996 'Machine of the Year'?

Time's 1996 Machine of the Year story said the Nintendo 64 had done to video gaming what the Boeing 707 did to air travel.

Which company made Micro Machines, the tiny vehicles with the fast-talking TV pitchman?

Galoob's Micro Machines grew into about half its business as the company recovered from losing almost $25 million in 1987.

K'Nex inventor Joel Glickman got the idea while playing with what at a wedding?

The rod-and-connector system reached Toys R Us in October 1992 and is still made in Hatfield, Pennsylvania.

Lego Mindstorms grew out of research at which university?

Lego Mindstorms grew from MIT Media Lab work pairing Lego with programming, and it was named after Seymour Papert's 1980 book Mindstorms.

What was the programmable brick in the first Lego Mindstorms kit called?

Adult hobbyists soon reverse-engineered the RCX brick's firmware and shared their own versions online.

The Koosh ball was named after what?

Scott Stillinger was teaching his kids to catch when he created the Koosh, named after the sound it made landing in his hand.

Which company introduced the original Littlest Pet Shop figures in 1992?

The first animals had magnets or moving parts and were aimed at kids who could not have real pets.

Which company first published the snapping-jaw game Crocodile Dentist in 1990?

Early versions had players pull the sore tooth with plastic pliers; pressing the teeth came later for younger kids.

Which company first published the Pokémon Trading Card Game in the United States?

After Wizards of the Coast brought the cards to North America, Pokémon card tournaments sprang up where players battled it out.

Which toy giant bought the Pokémon cards' US publisher in 1999?

Hasbro's purchase also brought it the role-playing game D&D, whose publisher TSR the card company had bought in 1997.

Who created Magic: The Gathering, released in 1993?

Richard Garfield was a maths PhD student trying to sell a board game when Peter Adkison urged him to design a portable card game instead.

Which company produced the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers toy line?

Bandai made the toys, and the show's success let Haim Saban build the Fox Family channel, which he sold to Disney in 2001.

Which company made the Street Sharks action figures promoted by the cartoon?

The show was retitled Dino Vengers Featuring Street Sharks in 1996 when a dinosaur team was added.

Troll dolls, which boomed again in the 1990s, were created by a woodcutter from which country?

Thomas Dam, a fisherman and woodcutter in Denmark, carved the first troll from wood as a gift for his daughter, inspired by Scandinavian folklore.