Top 10 Weirdest Toys from Your Childhood

In 1996, Tickle Me Elmo became one of the biggest hits of the year, with reports of people actually getting into fist fights at stores over the plush toy. Well, when something is that popular, we all know what happens right? The company will run the idea into the ground in order to get as much money as they can from it. This brings us to 2009 and Elmo’s Tickle Hands; because why tickle an Elmo doll when you can put on big furry hands and tickle other people? Kids would wear these big red Elmo “hands” (or gloves) that vibrated whenever they made contact with a surface. Vibrating hands… Besides being weird, can anyone think of how this could be completely inappropriate?

There was no shortage of attempts to cash in on Harry Potter mania in the 2000s. While some of the tie-ins and toys were very cool, there was also the Nimbus 2000 Broomstick. First off, the thing was just a plastic broomstick. Sure, it had a little curve in it, but basically it was a plastic version of something everyone had in their hall closet with the words “Nimbus 2000” on it. And then... there was the vibrating. To simulate “flying,” you would put the broom between your legs and press a button for the special effects: sounds and vibration. Quidditch never felt so good.

The Squeeze Popper Huggables were plush animal dolls with wide open mouths in which you would insert a ball and squeeze the toy to propel the ball across the room. We just have to ask… Do people even play with these toys before they put them on store shelves? Or at least look at the final packaged product? Which, in this case, made it look like the animal had been rescued from Christian Grey’s Playroom instead of being appropriate for a child. And that doesn’t even take into account the after effects of the ball being popped out, which left kids with a cute animal doll with a wide open mouth! Yeah, we’ll just leave that there and let you finish the line of thought...

0

#7: Baby Born Dolls

Also in:

Top 10 Defining Events Baby Boomers Lived Through

Remember in high school when your teacher gave you an egg and you had to take care of it for a week to simulate being a parent? Well, those eggs have nothing on the Baby Born Dolls. It’s true that little kids love playing “parent” to their dolls and taking care of them, but do they really need something this, shall we say, precise? For those that don’t remember, the Baby Born Dolls were cute little interactive dolls that had multiple “lifelike features” of a real baby, including eating, drinking, crying and sleeping. What’s so weird about that, you ask? Oh, sorry, did we forget to mention that the doll could also pee its diaper and/or pee and poo in the potty?

On the surface, there’s nothing weird about action figure toys. It’s just in this case, the action figures are based on a movie that few people remember and even fewer people saw. “Battlefield Earth” was the passion project of famous Scientologist John Travolta, based on the 1982 novel by L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology. The film was released in 2000 and was a box office and critical flop. The sci-fi flick landed on many “worst film” lists and only grossed a little over $29 million. Given that the budget was $44 million, maybe they were hoping to make up the difference by selling action figures of characters from a movie people either didn’t like or didn’t see. Doesn’t sound like they were thinking “Clear”-ly - yes, that’s a Scientology reference.

We could start off by telling you about the toy and explaining what it does and how it works, but really all you need to do is look at it to figure out why it made our list. Once you’ve laid your eyes on it, ask yourself how this made it through all of the layers of quality control without one person, just one person, raising their hand and saying, “ummm, excuse me boss, but the Dora The Explorer Aquapet looks like a penis”? We can’t imagine no one noticed. Maybe they were too scared of what others would think of them if they brought up their reservations. And then to top things off, the button on the front of the toy has a capital “D” on it. The jokes just write themselves with this one.

0

#4: Tech Deck Fingerboards

Also in:

Top 10 Coolest Tech of 2023

For the tiny percentage of people with the time to practice, the proper hand-eye coordination and the top-notch finger mobility, these fingerboards were probably really cool. For the rest of us, they were tiny, frustrating skateboards that we could push around with our fingers and not much else. If you wanted to put your John Travolta “Battlefield Earth” action figure on the boards and push them around, we guess that could be cool, but otherwise we don’t really get the point of these things. But there are plenty of online video tutorials if you want to break yours out and try mastering them one more time!

To the kids who were collecting them and playing with them, there was nothing weird about Crazy Bones. To the parents who were buying them, they were these tiny, weird figurines that kids went crazy for. You could toss them and play some games with them, but collecting and trading seems to have been a major part of the attraction for kids in the late 90s and 2000s. Thankfully, a package of a few of them only cost a couple dollars, so it wasn’t putting a major dent in mom and dad’s wallet at the time. But unfortunately for those who held onto their Crazy Bones, even the rarest ones aren’t selling for much more than $10-$20 these days.

The Oozinator was part of the Super Soaker family of toys but as you are about to see, it was a little different from other water gun toys in that it had two spray modes. In spray mode one, it was the same as any other soaker and would spray water on people - nothing wrong there. However, spray mode two is where things get weird. In this mode, the gun would shoot the titular ooze all over your friends. And the ooze kinda looked like… do we really have to say it? And it’s hard not to ignore the fact that the kids have to pump the gun before oozing their friends.

Before there was the iPod, there was HitClips. Because why do you need a full high-quality song when you could listen to one-minute long, LoFi clips of your favorite tunes? HitClips was a little audio player that played cartridges containing those 60 second song clips. Basically, HitClips were a marketing tool to get kids and teens to beg their parents to buy them the latest pop album from the likes of NSYNC, Britney Spears, Hilary Duff and so on. We aren’t sure how many more CDs were sold because of them, but HitClips creator, Tiger Electronics did make over $80 million from these things between 2000 and 2002.