10 Toys I Had In the '90s

In order of awesomeness:

10. Gak [commercial]
Gak was probably the most pointless "toy" ever made - like Silly Putty, but grosser. You couldn't really do anything with it except, like, poke it. I had the pickle-scented version (I don't know whose great idea that was), and it was so gross that I threw it away after a few days.

9. Flash Screen
Nickelodeon made some pretty lame toys that somehow seemed pretty awesome in the commercials. Flash Screen was another pointless one - you could only play with it for about five minutes until you ran out of shadow puppets to capture. And it totally didn't work as well as it does in the commercial.

8. Brain Bash [commercial]
I think this game involved too much math to actually be fun.

7. 13 Dead End Drive [commercial]
Kind of like Clue, but with more elaborate deaths. This game was fun, but involved a lot of setup. It probably took longer to set up than actually play.

6. Talkboy and Talkgirl [commercial]
Nick had Talkboy and I had Talkgirl, which was exactly the same, but pink and purple. This toy became really cool after it was in Home Alone 2. Instead of using it to thwart criminals, we pretty much just made chipmunk voices by recording at slow speed and playing it back at normal speed.

5. Talking Battleship [commercial]
This game was awesome. More awesome, in fact, than regular Battleship, because you didn't have to make your own explosion sound effects. I would totally still play this game if I knew where it was (probably somewhere in my parents' attic).

4. 2XL [commercial]
This was technically Nick's, but 2XL provided hours of entertainment for both of us. We didn't have the Batman tape as shown in the commercial, but we had a whole collection of other 2XL cassettes. Oh, how I miss his little robotic New York accent.

3. Hungry Hungry Hippos [commercial]
I could never beat my brother at games involving actual strategy, so I had to settle for beating him at ones that solely required cat-like reflexes. Which pretty much included only this and Mr. Mouth.

2. Kitchen Littles
The coolest thing about Kitchen Littles was that the miniature food packages were from real brands, like Tropicana, Birds Eye and Dreyer's. I think these were probably for use with Barbies, but I didn't really like dolls because their nasty plastic skin and hair grossed me out, so I just played with the kitchen by itself. I sold all my Kitchen Littles on eBay a few years ago, and made over $100. Apparently people love their miniature food.

1. Polly Pocket [commercial]
Polly Pocket was pretty much the best toy ever. I had an entire Polly Pocket village, as seen in the commercial. Once, Nick flushed one of my Pollys down the toilet, and my mom made him buy me a new one with his allowance. They stopped making tiny Pollys in 1999 because idiot kids were probably eating them. Now she's like 3" tall and she sucks.