25. McDonald’s Happy Meal Snack Maker Set
This piece of shit was the most disappointing present I ever received in my entire life. You know what doesn’t taste at all like French fries? White bread chopped up into little strips. I’m still heated about this terrible playset.
24. Creepy Crawlers
I remember the commercials well, but I never really had any interest in Creepy Crawlers. I guess I never had that much of a desire to scare or disgust my family members. Oh God, am I a fake 90s kid?
23. Pretty Pretty Princess
Man, the extra “Pretty” in the name is laying it on really thick, don’t you think?
22. Girl Talk
Okay, so it’s another game marketed toward girls that is entirely about whether or not boys like them, but this commercial introduced me to Jewel Staite for the first time. I’m giving it a pass.
21. Dragon Flyz
I never had one of these. I don’t think I ever even saw one in real life. But I remember this commercial like I remember where I was on 9/11. That’s the duality of being a 90s kid.
20. Doctor Dreadful Food Lab
This was the perfect toy for the weird kid who thought Creepy Crawlers looked appetizing. Then again, he was probably already just eating the Creepy Crawlers.
19. Micro Machines Super Van City
My generation had already been brainwashed into thinking Winnebagos were cool after Hot Rod turned into one in Transformers: The Movie. Putting a whole city inside a Winnebago along with a bunch of toy cars? That’s a stroke of genius.
18. Bop It Extreme
The classic Bop It may have already permeated the public consciousness by the time this commercial aired, but the toy reached its most iconic form when Hasbro released the Bop It Extreme. No one played the original anymore. It was officially for babies.
17. Digimon
I took a lot of pride in how I raised my Digimon. I managed to get MetalGreymon on my first try, and thought I was hot shit at recess. I started giving people advice. Finally, I believed I had earned the respect of my peers. I never got another Ultimate Digimon again.
16. Vortex
Okay, but why does the Vortex count as a football? Footballs don’t have finned tails. If the Vortex can be a football, why can’t a Patriot missile? But hey, they got John Elway to chuck this sucker over 90 yards, which is awesome.
15. The Lost World: Jurassic Park Bull T-Rex
I don’t want to go on a rant, but dinosaur toys peaked in the 90s with the Jurassic Park and Lost World lines. Have you seen the stuff they’ve put out since then? It’s all hard plastic junk! They even released velociraptors that didn’t have killing claws! I just can’t — I’m sorry. I’ll contain myself. The bull T-rex toy was just the best.
14. Furby
This commercial made the NSA shit itself.
13. Tyco Rebound
It’s genuinely astonishing to me that it took so long for a toy manufacturer to fix the work part of driving RC cars: having to walk over to them and put them upright when you accidentally flip them.
12. Floam
You might think that Floam is just a worse version of Gak, but millions of ASMR enthusiasts would tell you that you’re wrong. Dead wrong.
11. Talkboy
Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a good YouTube video of the actual Talkboy commercial, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York.
10. Mouse Trap
Mouse Trap is a game you spent half an hour setting up for the first time, played for ten minutes and decided it was boring, then somehow lost half of the pieces as you were putting it away. The commercial is far better than the experience of actually playing it.
9. Duncan Yo-Yo
With the Yomega establishing itself as the cool yo-yo, how could the classic (read: stuffy and lame) Duncan possibly compete? The answer is by making a commercial featuring a Devo track. It’s a pretty obvious solution, once you think about it.
8. Don’t Wake Daddy
What a fucking psy-op this game was. Hey kids, why don’t you go play a game whose premise is being quiet and not bugging your parents? It’s absolutely brilliant.
7. Hot Wheels Car Wash
I could have picked one of the many commercials for more extreme Hot Wheels playsets, featuring daring loops and sharp banks. That would certainly fit the 90s aesthetic. But come on. You know the set you really wanted was the car wash.
6. Sockem Boppers
I love that they made a toy dedicated to punching your friends. Punching truly is more fun than a pillow fight. They apparently changed the toy’s name to Socker Boppers, which is a baffling decision. Sockem Boppers is objectively better!
5. Wonder World
Maybe this one is a “just me” thing, but I always wanted this thing. Part of me knew it was lame, but hey, I really like sharks.
4. Power Wheels
I don’t think I’ve wanted anything in my life more than I wanted Power Wheels. I am now an adult with my own car that I drive often, and a part of me still yearns for a tiny Jeep. Most of my millennial friends who have kids have lavished upon them veritable fleets of Power Wheels in what I believe is an attempt to fill a hole inside them that started when they first saw this commercial.
3. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
I had that pizza-shooting tank. Sorry, I’ve been compelled to say that every time I’ve seen or heard about it since I first got mine in 1993. It was a good flex then, and it’s a good flex now. I am a better person for having owned it.
2. Super Soaker
I’m really depressed over what happened to the Super Soaker line. They used to put all other squirt guns to shame before they lost rights to the design and slapped the name on an inferior product. In 2023, it’s easier to get an AR-15 than a real Super Soaker in America.
1. Crossfire
This is it. The Platonic ideal of a toy commercial. It’s impossible to watch this ad and not get caught up in the crossfire. I can only hope that the post-apocalyptic dystopia which is already descending upon us is half as cool as the one depicted here. I was never any good at the game, so I would get banished into the void almost immediately, but I’d have a good time until then.
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