"You'll shoot your eye out, kid."

December 12, 2022 1:23 PM

Top US holiday toys for each year from 1920 to 2021. "The list was curated using national toy archives and data curated by The Strong National Museum of Play. Some items remain curious relics of the past, while others are essentially as iconic now as they were upon their debut. Each one also functions as a window into American culture."

(Via @[e-mail], and yes, the Red Ryder BB Gun is there. ❄️)

posted by taz (62 comments total)

I bet you could monitor a person's heart rate or something and know exactly how old they are based on when this list becomes weirdly exciting. I am Transformers years old.
posted by Phobos the Space Potato at 1:38 PM on December 12, 2022 [12 favorites]

1979 Simon, no I'd say the hand held electronic football games. Perhaps more Simon units were sold as fun for the family.
posted by clavdivs at 1:45 PM on December 12, 2022 [3 favorites]

It’s interesting that my children - who are in elementary and high school - have had the vast majority of the toys from the twenties to the early eighties, but relatively few of the toys made during my lifespan. So much of the last forty years of toys has been either game consoles, different ideas on the stuffed animal or action figure, or weird tech-enabled bs like the talkboy instead of fundamentally new concepts.

SuperSoakers are still awesome though.
posted by q*ben at 1:46 PM on December 12, 2022 [7 favorites]

I got my 1983 Cabbage Patch doll because my parent’s landlord… knew a guy. A real good fella.

I had a wonderful childhood, but, the older I get, the more I realize how my sense of “normal” is calibrated very differently to most other people, even other Rhode Islanders who also “know a guy.”
posted by Ruki at 1:46 PM on December 12, 2022 [7 favorites]

Ruki, my mom got my sister a Cabbage Patch Doll through some kind of black market connection, and it so infuriated another kid’s mom that she threw it into a lake in a fit of rage and jealousy.
posted by q*ben at 1:51 PM on December 12, 2022 [14 favorites]

Ooof! My mom was annoyed because she had gone into the trenches to try to get me one with no success, but she refrained from throwing it into our pond. Luckily for me, Kid Ruki was always never quite the right age for the fanatical fad toys of her childhood.
posted by Ruki at 1:56 PM on December 12, 2022

What I noticed was the year I aged out of toys - born in 1971, I owned almost everything on the list (no Atari, no BB gun, no skateboard) from 1920 up until 1980 - then nothing at all from the list until the Wii I bought for my son (born in 2002).
posted by Daily Alice at 1:59 PM on December 12, 2022 [4 favorites]

I bet you could monitor a person's heart rate or something and know exactly how old they are based on when this list becomes weirdly exciting.

Especially if you hit a toy you'd once loved but forgotten existed--Weebles, for me! I can't remember the last time I thought about the Weeble tree house, but now I want to rush out and buy one.
posted by mittens at 2:03 PM on December 12, 2022 [4 favorites]

I had a Cabbage Patch doll, or so I thought. I got one for Christmas, along with many other girls in my class. So many in fact, that our teacher invited us to bring our Cabbage Patch dolls to school so that they could sit up on the ledge behind her desk as a cute display. So I got Martha all prettied up and brought her to school. I set her proudly on the ledge with all of the others. It was only then that I realized that Sweet Martha's face was different than all of the rest. A dozen identical staring Cabbage Patch faces and one Sweet Martha.

I felt a little let down (some of the other girls gave me a hard time for having a fake Cabbage Patch doll) but I felt very protective of Martha. I still have her. I no longer have the "real" Cabbage Patch doll I got for my birthday, after the carnage of the Christmas Madness had been mopped up and the shelves had been restocked. Martha won.
posted by Gray Duck at 2:21 PM on December 12, 2022 [11 favorites]

I'm fairly certain they've got a photo of the more recent My Little Pony than the ones I recall from the 80s. Same for Ninja turtles. And the Power Rangers from the early 90s were based on the Kyōryū Sentai Zyuranger. Different costume from what's depicted on that list.
posted by Mister Cheese at 2:21 PM on December 12, 2022 [2 favorites]

Oh yeah. The My Little Ponies in the picture are WAY sassier than the ones I had as a kid. Mine were way more chill looking.
posted by Gray Duck at 2:24 PM on December 12, 2022

The My Little Ponies in the picture are WAY sassier than the ones I had as a kid.

Those are Generation 4 ponies, ie: Friendship is Magic ones. My young daughter still loves that generation, and doesn't like the newest ones. Yay for Craigslist.


I'm personally surprised how long some of them have been around, and surprised how terrible some of the newer ones are, like Fingerling monkeys, a Leappad (yeah kids are really happy to get a knock off Ipad), and Hatchimals in particular.
posted by The_Vegetables at 2:31 PM on December 12, 2022 [1 favorite]

According to my daughter, who has a 4 yr old, every kid wants a Squishmallow this year.
posted by OHenryPacey at 2:32 PM on December 12, 2022 [3 favorites]

According to my daughter, who has a 4 yr old, every kid wants a Squishmallow this year.

And, I bought one for my 24-year-old (it has her name, which is kind of an unusual name--when one of the little kids that she now counsels in her internship placement heard her name, he said "LIKE THE SQUISHMALLOW?" so of course she now has to have one).

Secretly (not so secretly, now), I love my own Calico Cat Squishmallow. They're so dang cute.
posted by dlugoczaj at 2:52 PM on December 12, 2022 [1 favorite]

The 70s stuff was all solid, although none of my favorites appeared (other than Lego before my birth in 1970).
1981 was clearly my toy jumping off point. That was the year I got Red Box D&D and never looked back.

I was thoroughly familiar with everything up until 2011, and then it became pretty clear to me. Am I so out of touch? Yes. Yes, I am.
posted by ursus_comiter at 2:56 PM on December 12, 2022 [1 favorite]

Some of those toys were older than I expected, while others were newer. Interesting that Raggedy Ann and Andy were first on the list in 1920, then showed up 51 years later as Weebles. And I’m surprised that Fisher-Price Little People weren’t on the list; they may not have been a blow-out fad like some of the toys on the list, but they were pretty ubiquitous in the 1960s and 70s. It would have been interesting to divide the list into age groups and (perhaps)gender.
posted by TedW at 3:00 PM on December 12, 2022 [3 favorites]

Subtitled: All the Toys My Dad Was Too Cheap to Buy
posted by The Underpants Monster at 3:09 PM on December 12, 2022 [16 favorites]

I'm a little dubious about this list (really—not a single repeat top-seller in 100 years?) but it was certainly fun to scroll through!

Memory is a weird thing. I would've been willing to bet $100 that the Atari 2600 hit the scene a couple years after the introduction of Star Wars figures. In my mind, those two phenomena are from distinctly different eras (Star Wars late 70s, Atari early 80s) but it might be down to the fact that my family were notoriously 1-2 years behind the curve when it came to adopting new technology. (Pretty sure we didn't get a VCR until the late 1980s.)
posted by Atom Eyes at 3:20 PM on December 12, 2022 [4 favorites]

Weebles! I had the treehouse, even. Still have a Weeble on the windowsill in my office.

I also have Raggedy Ann & Andy dolls, but they were handmade by my grandmother.

I don't think I had anything on this list after the Rubik's cube.
posted by thomas j wise at 3:23 PM on December 12, 2022 [2 favorites]

(really—not a single repeat top-seller in 100 years?)

A list like this requires a fuzzy definition of the phrase "top toy." They do mention in the small text that Teddy Ruxpin was the bestselling toy for 1985 and 1986.
posted by doift at 3:37 PM on December 12, 2022 [3 favorites]

The list itself credits pop-up books to "a 14th-century Catalan mystic" , so I say, "wait, did Ramon Llull invent the pop-up book?" because there are only so many 14th century Catalan mystics of the kind of technological bent that would do such a thing. AFAICT, Llull did not invent the pop-up book.. Llull invented the decoder ring, and exactly why that is credited as being the same thing as a pop-up book isn't clear to me.

(On a historical pop-up books in science-and-technology tangent, the 16th century Billingsley edition of Euclid's elements is notable for having pop-up models to illustrate the solid geometry in Book XI. The University of Louisville has a copy, and it's one of the particular prizes of our rare books collection.)
posted by jackbishop at 3:43 PM on December 12, 2022 [8 favorites]

The list really seems phony. As noted above, no repeats. But seriously: 1953 - model cars?

The heavy drumbeat of sh*t everyone knows year after year? Raggedy Anne, Lincoln Logs, Monopoly.

Stinks like a freshman's 20 minute google search.
posted by nothing.especially.clever at 3:44 PM on December 12, 2022 [1 favorite]

Most of these seem plausible but I have serious doubts Wall-E toys ever outsold Cars merchandise even in 2008.

Water balloons as a Christmas gift also seem like a bad idea in most of the US.
posted by Gary at 3:44 PM on December 12, 2022 [2 favorites]

My family gave me a Slip'n'Slide as a 9th or 10th birthday present. Set it up that same day during the party, and on my very first try I managed to bang the back of my head quite hard. It was immediately boxed up again, and back to the store it went the next day.

Oddly, the inherent risk of the Jarts set my sister and I had for years never came up.
posted by Greg_Ace at 3:48 PM on December 12, 2022

Memory is a weird thing. I would've been willing to bet $100 that the Atari 2600 hit the scene a couple years after the introduction of Star Wars figures. In my mind, those two phenomena are from distinctly different eras (Star Wars late 70s, Atari early 80s) but it might be down to the fact that my family were notoriously 1-2 years behind the curve when it came to adopting new technology. (Pretty sure we didn't get a VCR until the late 1980s.)

While it did come out in '77 it didn't really start to become popular for a year or two when Space Invaders was released and a new (and probably cheaper) model was rolled out in 1980. So it may have been introduced before Star Wars but didn't really become a hit until afterwards.
posted by dances with hamsters at 4:06 PM on December 12, 2022 [1 favorite]

I got my 1983 Cabbage Patch doll because my parent’s landlord… knew a guy. A real good fella.

I feel like Cabbage Patch Kids were big for at least a few years. My mom had a friend from Germany who happened to be visiting her relatives before Christmas and got them for the two of us. There must be a lot of stories like ours. I don’t think I really wanted one but you can’t get something like that for only one kid.

My grandma also handmade me one that would not be mistaken for a real Cabbage Patch Kid. I have a distinct memory of talking to my grandma on the phone and describing to her in detail what a gremlin looked like (another of her homemade doll projects). There was no internet back then to easily send or lookup a photo. She did a fantastic job considering her reference material was what a little kid remembered from a movie.
posted by Bunglegirl at 4:09 PM on December 12, 2022 [5 favorites]

We were too poor for most of this stuff but my parents managed get a nice set of general purpose Lego and I spent a lot of time drawing. For the most part, we were strongly encouraged to go play outside. What I remember of my pre-teen years, is mostly outside, riding bikes, making forts and occasional games like kick ball. We were surrounded by hills that we were not allowed to explore but did anyway.
posted by doctor_negative at 4:10 PM on December 12, 2022 [2 favorites]

Someone just needs to mashup 'Twister' and 'Don't Step In It'.
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 4:28 PM on December 12, 2022

> Someone just needs to mashup 'Twister' and 'Don't Step In It'.

Twitter?
posted by smelendez at 4:31 PM on December 12, 2022 [5 favorites]

What, I had both the Gilbert Chemistry Lab AND the erector set, passed down from my Dad. I thought they had been new for him, but they could have been hand-me-downs even for him!
posted by agentofselection at 4:40 PM on December 12, 2022 [1 favorite]

1933: Marx wind-up toys

... Bolstered by the belief that behind every successful toy were six core qualities—familiarity, surprise, skill, play, value comprehensibility, and sturdiness—Marx stayed ahead of the curve by anticipating trends and keeping manufacturing costs down. ...

I really like that: Familiarity, surprise, skill, play, value comprehensibility, and sturdiness. I feel like I could use that set of qualities with lots of my own endeavors - songwriting, building websites. (Okay, I'm not actually sure what "value comprehensibility" is.)

This is a GREAT list. I'm all the way up to 1933 and I'm thoroughly enjoying it. Thanks for posting it, taz! (And thanks to the completely awesome xxx!)
posted by kristi at 4:43 PM on December 12, 2022 [3 favorites]

Oh! Looking around the internet, it looks like it's:

Familiarity, surprise, skill, play value, comprehensibility, and sturdiness

which has greater comprehensibility. Heh.
posted by kristi at 4:44 PM on December 12, 2022 [4 favorites]

Mostly this list reminds me of the things I coveted desperately yet never had: the Easy Bake Oven, Lite Brite, and to a lesser extent, the Cabbage Patch Doll. And my elementary school best friend Kate had all 3. My dad thought the Easy Bake Oven was stupid—just learn to cook for real he said (which in fairness was a better life skill). Weirdly looking back now I can’t remember why I was so obsessed with the Lite Brite, probably just brainwashing from the endless commercials on the hours of TV I consumed.

I do have fond memories of my Weebles. I, too had the Treehouse.
posted by DiscourseMarker at 5:00 PM on December 12, 2022 [2 favorites]

I never had Weebles (although I did have the Fisher-Price people), but the theme song stays on my mind.
posted by mollweide at 5:04 PM on December 12, 2022

I can’t remember why I was so obsessed with the Lite Brite, probably just brainwashing from the endless commercials

Oh god that caused my mind to conjure up the 70's ad jingle in its full "glory"! So yeah, I'm guessing it was the advertising.
posted by Greg_Ace at 5:29 PM on December 12, 2022 [2 favorites]

I too find this list highly suspect- it is hard to believe a telephone for pre-schoolers was the most popular toy for all ages in 1962.

We had nearly all of these toys up until 1980- the vast majority were hand-me-downs from older cousins (Legos, Hot Wheels, Barbie, army men), and some had even been my parents' (Lincoln Logs, Tinker Toys, Raggedy Ann and Andy). My mom refused to get me an Easy-Bake Oven "you can use the real oven!" or a Lite Brite (for reasons unknown). I disagree that a Pet Rock is a toy- my feeling at the time was that adults gave them to each other to put on their desks at work.
posted by oneirodynia at 5:32 PM on December 12, 2022

I'm surprised at how many of my childhood toys were introduced decades before I was born - more, in fact, than from after.
posted by Greg_Ace at 5:39 PM on December 12, 2022 [1 favorite]

I'm surprised that walkie-talkies didn't end up on here somewhere.
posted by phooky at 5:42 PM on December 12, 2022 [5 favorites]

The 1953 "Model Car" conflates English Dinky and Matchbox brand small metal car toys. The later Hot Wheels brand had spinning pins in their wheels, and plastic tracks to zoom on (and a later version with a small electric motor).

Not to be confused with plastic assembly models of cars and various military aircraft (like Revell brand), a big deal when I was young.
posted by ovvl at 5:49 PM on December 12, 2022 [2 favorites]

This entire list is, as suggested above, hugely suspect.

Having said that...

What, I had both the Gilbert Chemistry Lab AND the erector set

Same! In my case it was because my parents frequented garage sales and used-goods stores, but I still remember poisoning the lawn by accident because holy shit they had some dangerous chemicals in there (one of the items was a plastic tube of explosives you were supposed to build into a rocket body and then set the lower end alight). I guess this is part of the reason I ended up hanging out with the "mad bomber" of Edmonton, who was a pretty good guy aside from blowing up telephone booths, mailboxes, and the like. Pretty into the SHARPs, carried a lead-weighted stick with him pretty much everywhere.

Also we set off a pyrotechnic device on the grounds of the Legislature, back when that did not immediately result in being shot or arrested (or both). As though Lougheed was really such a bad guy compared to recent/current occupants. Thanks Gilbert Chemistry Set!
posted by aramaic at 6:14 PM on December 12, 2022 [3 favorites]

The article suggests these are 'top toys', rather than 'the top toys'. My sense is that it's a curated list from a museum, rather than an analysis of sales.
posted by jjderooy at 6:18 PM on December 12, 2022 [2 favorites]

It's extraordinary how many of the toys from 1920-1970 are still around, while very few of the toys post 1975 are. Seems like the reason is either because the toy is digital and was superseded or the toy was a craze and was superseded.
posted by gwint at 6:29 PM on December 12, 2022 [2 favorites]

God how I lusted after the 64-crayon box with the built-in sharpener!
posted by evilmomlady at 6:52 PM on December 12, 2022 [6 favorites]

I was shocked the ViewMaster came out that early. I loved it as a kid in the 80s/90s. Here's scenes from the Disney jungle cruise. Here's some random pictures of ALF. Didn't matter what it was. I was enthralled.
posted by downtohisturtles at 6:54 PM on December 12, 2022 [2 favorites]

The one time I thought I knew what I was getting for Christmas was the time I could juuust make out the words "Chemistry Set" through my mother's Woolworth's bag. It turned out to be for my sister. I liked the doll I got that year, but the experience cured me of ever even speculating.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 6:55 PM on December 12, 2022 [2 favorites]

Mittens, thank you for reminding me of the Weeble Treehouse and the hours I spent with it.

Nice to see other members of the Weeble Nation on this thread, too.
posted by B3taCatScan at 7:52 PM on December 12, 2022 [1 favorite]

Stinks like a freshman's 20 minute google search.

The images do, anyway. I'm pretty sure the 1936 balsa wood models weren't actually laser cut.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 8:06 PM on December 12, 2022 [1 favorite]

About Ramon Llull, the Catalan mystic, there seem to be dozens of references online about him creating the first "pop-up" or moveable / mechanical book. I'll link to this one because it has an image of a facsimile.

About the Chatter Phone, Wikipedia says "From its introduction through the 1970s, the Chatter Telephone was Fisher-Price's best selling product." So, upon it's introduction, if it was THE hot toy for preschoolers, and top toys for other ages were split among two or several popular offerings, I could see how it might be the or "a" top toy for that year.

Regarding "Stinks like a freshman's 20 minute google search," the article (and the post) says the info comes from The Strong National Museum of Play, which has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, so it probably has at least some merit in its research. (Wikipedia info). I do think that the list couldn't possibly rely on overall sales figures of all toys for an entire nation per given year, so they probably used various criteria to determine which toys were "top" ones, which I would read as "extremely popular."

And as for photos, my sympathies are with them. I can see that they used photos from the Strong museum where possible, and open source photos otherwise. I don't imagine that any non-academic / non-museum media source has the sort of budget that would allow tracking down and photographing dozens of original items, or buying usage rights from photographers who have such images.
posted by taz at 12:12 AM on December 13, 2022 [2 favorites]

That is unexpectedly fascinating.
posted by zardoz at 4:07 AM on December 13, 2022

The photos for this article are often not correct for the year of the toy. The Transformers photo features figures from only a couple of years ago. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles photo also is a newer toy. Even the toddler telephone with wheels is a newer plastic one.

It shouldn't be that difficult to google search just a little more thoroughly and find photos of the original toys.
posted by Fleebnork at 5:27 AM on December 13, 2022

You can't just use photos you find by googling. You need to acquire the right to use such a photo, or use photos that are explicitly copyright-free. In this case the publication used photos from the Strong Museum, which allowed them to use their photos, and they used copyright-free photos.
posted by taz at 6:13 AM on December 13, 2022 [5 favorites]

I walked through the Barbie section at Target the other day and was filled with enthralled envy. I told my kid, if I knew you were a girl when you were younger I'd have bought you so many Barbies so we could play together. I was just not into Legos and trucks. But Camping Barbie with a cool kayak, sign me up.
posted by emjaybee at 8:35 AM on December 13, 2022 [1 favorite]

After being alive for half a century I still find myself drifting toward the Lego section of the toy store.
posted by gottabefunky at 9:26 AM on December 13, 2022

You can't just use photos you find by googling. You need to acquire the right to use such a photo, or use photos that are explicitly copyright-free. In this case the publication used photos from the Strong Museum, which allowed them to use their photos, and they used copyright-free photos.

Also, The Strong is a not-for-profit organization, and if it is anything like the non-profit children's museum that I work for, getting copyrights and permissions and such tends to cost money and take up staff time.

Thanks for this list - I'm psyched to dive into it!!
posted by sundrop at 9:47 AM on December 13, 2022

Young fifteen schnitzengruben would have had LEGO for most of the years when gift giving was age-appropriate.

Who am I kidding, I asked for and received LEGO for my birthday this year. :)
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 9:47 AM on December 13, 2022

I still regret giving my Castle System LEGO to my young cousin, who sold them in a yard sale.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 10:12 AM on December 13, 2022

*gasp* That ungrateful whelp!
posted by Greg_Ace at 11:31 AM on December 13, 2022 [2 favorites]

Strangely amusing that the number one gift of December 1941 was something you played with at the beach.
posted by interrobang at 11:46 AM on December 13, 2022 [1 favorite]

You can't just use photos you find by googling. You need to acquire the right to use such a photo, or use photos that are explicitly copyright-free. In this case the publication used photos from the Strong Museum, which allowed them to use their photos, and they used copyright-free photos.

I've been a graphic designer for 26 years, I understand photos and copyrights.

I didn't say "rip images from google." I said to "google search a little more thoroughly."

The Transformers photo in particular came from Flickr.

It took me less than 5 minutes to find this photo that is free for commercial use.

Here's an original Ninja Turtle. Free for commercial use

Here's the telephone with wheels. Free for commercial use.

The photos in the article could have been researched better.
posted by Fleebnork at 12:00 PM on December 13, 2022 [2 favorites]

Okay, apologies.
posted by taz at 12:12 PM on December 13, 2022

It's an interesting list, and I enjoyed reading it and thinking about what it says about American (since it's American-based) culture over the last century. I don't really get the urge to grouse about the images they chose to use, or whether each item is definitively the most popular toy in each year (which the article never claims). Neither of those things materially impact the chronological vignettes that each toy represents, which seems to be the point of the article.
posted by biogeo at 2:40 PM on December 13, 2022 [5 favorites]

"You'll shoot your eye out, kid."

You mean like this?
posted by Pouteria at 7:18 PM on December 14, 2022