Top 10 Toy Lines of the 1990s

Launched in 1993, Beanie Babies remain one of the cutest, cuddliest, most collectible toy crazes to ever occur! Filled with plastic pellets rather than traditional stuffing, these things were easy to pose, easy to squeeze, and very difficult not to like! Because of Ty’s strategy to regularly retire designs on a routine basis, barely a weekend passed without kids nagging their parents to buy the latest addition for their family. The best thing about them? They were a guilty pleasure for moms and dads as well! And once Teenie Beanies hit the market, things got littler and even more lovable!

The technological toy revolution began in the ‘90s, and ‘Furby’ was the flag-bearer! Toward the end of the decade, simple soft and squishiness was no longer satisfying - kids needed walking, talking self-sufficient super-toys! Furby worked on the basis that the more you played with it, the cleverer it got - and we played with it a lot! With a wide range of colors, eye-lids that actually moved(!), and an annoyingly awesome voice, they did absolutely nothing for our grammar, but absolutely everything for our playground reputation! And that helped the toy sell 14 million in 1999 alone.

It’s a battle of the sexes at 8, with boys and girls bound to their light bulb-powered ovens - reinforcing gender stereotypes for the next generation! Little girls like to bake pretty things, right? And little guys like to be gross, right? Both originally introduced in the early-‘60s, the ‘Easy-Bake Oven’ was the first step toward becoming a ‘domestic goddess’, ‘Creepy Crawlers’ was the first step toward... Erm... Working in the reptile house? The cakes were just passable and the bugs definitely weren’t believable... But we all know that wasn’t the point! It’s all about the process!

Even if you didn’t consciously collect these little guys, there appeared to be a constant stream of them passing through your bedroom. ‘Troll Dolls’ seemed to be taking over toy world for much of the ‘90s, inspiring inside every one of us at least a little bit of talent as a hair stylist! They may have been created in 1959, they may have been popular in the ‘60s and ‘70s, they weren’t cuddly, and they weren’t conventionally ‘cute’... But they were seriously, seriously cool! Nowadays, ‘trolls’ are mean people on the internet, but once upon a time; they were our funky-haired friends!

Collecting things in general was the hobby of the ‘90s kid - we all remember ‘Magic Cards’. Collecting Pokémon Cards, though, that wasn’t your hobby... That was your life! Created in 1996, the multi-colored, multi-talented, quirky creatures formed the basis of a trading card game so addictive, so intense, so overwhelmingly important that many schools actively prohibited it! Our homework lay scrunched in the bottoms of our bags, our Pokémon Cards pristine in presentation binders! Should you score a shiny Charizard or a holographic Hitmonlee, then who cares about that F in Geography?! You were king!

The tense relationship between virtual reality and actual reality was something that defined the ‘90s toy trade. ‘Tamagotchi’ was a hand-held, often key-chained, always entertaining computer-generated pet that every kid just had to have! Where once the ears of ‘Fluffy’ the family rabbit might have been played with, now the buttons of Bandai’s greatest export were all any child needed! It taught us how to care for something on a daily basis - but it also showed us what would happen if we forgot to feed it... That wasn’t so fun!

There was a time when a water pistol was a humble, simple contraption... But the ‘Super Soaker’ changed the waterfighting world forever! First sold in 1989, this thing revolutionized every last aspect of the summertime weapon! The triggers were more ergonomic, the canisters more aesthetically pleasing, the pump-action made us all feel like action-heroes... But most importantly, the shot was seriously powerful! When you got hit by one of these, you didn’t expect dry clothes for a week! Never had a product name more perfectly described the product itself!

From a summertime gun, to an every-time gun! Since 1970, ‘Nerf’ made many a foamy fun thing – from footballs, to basketballs to baseballs – but this “Non-Expanding Recreational Foam” was most famous as high-performance playground weaponry. The child-friendly firearms became known as ‘blasters’, and they trumped anything else that your friends could throw at you! As the old adage went, ‘It’s Nerf, or nothin’’! The only equipment necessary for many a recess war, ‘Nerf’ was so cool, they even had a young Seth Green on their TV commercials! Way before “Austin Powers”, Green was all about the firepower!

Collectively, collectable toys make up over half of our ‘90s countdown - ‘Crazy Bones’ is another to just miss the cut. But was there ever, has there ever, and will there ever be a craze that catches on quite as effectively as ‘Pogs’?? It was first played in the 1920s in Hawaii. And when it came back in the ‘90s, many kids didn’t even know that these small discs with simple designs splashed across them were part of a game! They just liked to look at them! But there was method to the madness - a mixture of luck, and skill with ‘the slammer’. ‘Playing for keeps’ was like putting your life on the line!

Before we pull our top pick out of the toy box, here are a few honorable mentions:
- Bop It
- Gak
- Skip-It
- Koosh Balls
- Polly Pocket / Mighty Max

For parents, there was nothing more annoying! For kids, there was nothing more amazing! A bizarre combination of the Beanie Baby, the Furby, and the Tamagotchi, ‘Tickle Me Elmo’ was the joke that never, ever got old! The it-toy of Christmas 1996, the Sesame Street favorite had us in fits of laughter, because he was in fits of laughter! Even the ‘older kids’ couldn’t resist! ‘Tickle Me Elmo’ is now ‘LOL Elmo’, which tickles us in itself! A toy that’s stood the test of time, like all good things it found fame in the ‘90s!

Do you agree with our list? Which toys did we leave behind? For more nostalgic top 10s published daily, be sure to subscribe to WatchMojo.com.