At least twice a week, every week I pass those shops in the airport that sell everything at jacked up prices. Prominently displayed in the front windows one can find the same assortment of crap; subpar travel pillows and blankets, colorful yet flimsy travel cases, t-shirts/mugs/glasses/magnets of the host city complete with cheesy logos (Ski Whistler! Wisconsin: Nothing Tips Like A Cow), crappy ass electronics, etc. And one other item is always to be found, the ubiquitous Webkinz.
Now, I actually never bothered to learn what exactly a Webkinz was seeing as how they just look like damn Beanie Babies to me, but recently Myrtlebeachbum informed me that she had spent a small fortune on these stuffed thingys for her bebes. Turns out when you buy one it comes with a code that you plug in to the Webkinz site which then gives you access to the virtual Webkinz world. Okay, so they’re virtual Beanie Babies then? Alrightwhatever. Well, just in time for Christmas the Webkinz have some competition. Behold the variety of crap you will be able to spend your coin on!
BuildABearVille
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Disney Cars Online (2009)
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The Littlest Pet Shop - where you buy things with 'Kibble'
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Barbie Girls - where the princesses wear tiaras and you don't
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Pixie Hollow - Tinkerbells' eJewelry unlocks stuff
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Damn, y’all. Whatever happened to Silly Putty and a LiteBright? A Speak-n-Spell and some Legos? Skip-It? Big Wheel? Tetherball? Guess Who?
I feel old.
What are your favorite toys from your younger days?
ButtercupPunch - "La clique, c’est chic!" 
October 28, 2008 at 8:31 pm
Chrissy and Velvet dolls! One day a short hairstyle, the next day long!
October 28, 2008 at 8:39 pm
girl, you KNOW I was a barbie girl.
October 28, 2008 at 8:56 pm
@sparkle: girl yes, I had the Barbie house, the corvette, the pool, even a Barbie McDonalds! unfortunately my favorite Barbie was horribly maimed by a german girl in my class named Claire who ate her toes off *sniff* she was never the same in heels again.
October 28, 2008 at 9:08 pm
Favorite play memories center around my heavy metal large scale Tonka Trucks (dump truck, cement mixer, and front-end loader), the Spin Art, an Etch-A-Sketch, Mason canning jars filled with every imaginable thing I collected while tromping through the woods behind my house, and my record player. Woe be unto the poor soul that touched my beloved Tonkas, cause the WAR was on!!
October 28, 2008 at 9:38 pm
I enjoyed playing Legos with my brothers, but my favorite toy was probably the Playmobile Victorian Mansion. I had almost everything for it – extra floor for the house, car, horse and carriage, piano. It’s packed up in my parents’ house somewhere. If I ever have kids, they can play with it. Or maybe I’ll just set it up and play with it myself.
October 28, 2008 at 9:41 pm
Barbie townhouse, complete with elevator, FTW.
Also, the aforementioned LiteBrite and Silly Putty, and that wondrous invention called Atari.
October 28, 2008 at 10:23 pm
I was a child Barbie-aholic. We started off withthe Barbie camper, then worked to the airplane,Barbie pool, bedroom, spa, corvette,and finally the mecca of all Barbie-dom-the Barbie town house WITH the elevator that I played with for hours on end. And yes, Ken and Barbie had sex. Naked.
October 28, 2008 at 10:33 pm
The number of incriminating photos feat. me in my rainbow room with Rainbow Brite EVERYTHING are numerous, indeed.
Jem. Books. Puzzles. PUZZLES!
My Fischer-Price record player and Little Orphan Annie records.
And? I would take all the fancy TV trays and dining room chairs to stage a classroom in my bedroom during the summer. With exactly the same “exercises” on exactly the same sheets of paper perfectly placed upon each one, and all the neighborhood kids would come to “class” and take my tests. I was always the teacher.
This is not a dirty story, I swan.
October 28, 2008 at 10:34 pm
legos, army men and guns. except in mexico the toy guns are made of gun metal! Then it was all video games, and it still is. Someone buy me a playstation 3!
October 29, 2008 at 4:33 am
girl, you KNOW I was a barbie girl.thank you
October 29, 2008 at 8:01 am
ATARI!! oh man, I can still feel that controller with the big central knob and two side red buttons in my hand. Joust…Pong…Frogger….Pacman
October 29, 2008 at 9:51 am
Hot wheels man! me and my sis used to speed those things down the hallway and have demolition derby w/ them. Also Voltron and Transformers. Also, me and my neighbor and her bro used to have Barbie meets GI Joe playtime which was…interesting.
I hate all these cyber-toy worlds that are actually just priming little kids to be consumers.Man Lincoln logs and blocks never encouraged me to buy anything with fake money.
October 29, 2008 at 11:29 am
@h_a_l: yeah, but what about monopoly?? did milton-bradley cause the real estate bubble? i am beginning to think so!
October 29, 2008 at 12:18 pm
Spirograph! So awesome.
We also had this thing with three disk and on each disk there was a head, torso and legs (pants and skirts) with different prints, and you could spin the disks and put some paper on top of it and colour over it with pencil and you’d see this elegant lady in slacks and a blouse or some such nonsense. I have no idea what it was called, but it was FUN!
October 29, 2008 at 12:43 pm
My favorite thing was that big Barbie head that had hair you could style. I’d take her in the bathroom and wash and condition her hair in the sink (my mom used to get so pissed at me for wasting shampoo and conditioner for this). And all the while, I’d be talking like I was doing a makeover show, readying her for a big date/dance/party/etc.
My other favorites, which I still have, were my She-Ra dolls. I LOVE She-Ra!
Ooh, and do you guys remember those sticker books that you bought the packs of stickers to fill? They were such a ripoff because you’d never get all the stickers, but they were a lot of fun for me.
October 29, 2008 at 12:52 pm
We had a Sesame Street projector-thing that my parents swear was the highlight of our lives for a few years, though I admit I don’t remember it too well. After that, while we definitely played with toys (Barbies, Matchbox cars on an awesome car mat, Nintendo, etc) our two favorite games were things we made up. One was called Dream and it involved – get ready for it – pretending we were in a dream and doing weird things, and the second thing we spent most of our time doing was cutting out people from catalogues and creating whole stories and story arcs with them – either actually writing the stories (y’all, we had SERIES. I wish I still had them.) or creating soap-opera like television shows.
October 29, 2008 at 1:18 pm
@ M OMG and the game of LIFE!! Didn’t that encourage you to buy houses and cars while trying to send your kids to college? Damn you Milton Bradley you’ve ruined our economy!!!
October 29, 2008 at 1:54 pm
@h_a_l: I played the game of LIFE for the very first time just a few short months ago. I was allowed to go to college, but I HAD to get married and I HAD to accept every baby that was thrown into my life. When my car travelled through the mountains I decided to throw my whole family off the cliffs. My friends didn’t agree, but I bullied them into letting me have my way. Of course I got another kid after than, but at least I could be a single mom.
That was the feminist angle, but yes, I was pissed off at having to spend money as well.
October 29, 2008 at 4:12 pm
My step brother had all of the little original Star Wars figures. I could be rich now if I had stolen those puppies!
October 29, 2008 at 7:43 pm
@badenbaden I wish you still had the books too!
October 29, 2008 at 9:08 pm
kadinsky, I have an Atari and all the games. I got hooked when I was visiting MsScarlet’s house back in 1981. She also introduced me to MTV, but I digress. Come play ANYTIME.
My favorite toys were my Strawberry Shortcake dolls. Their hair smelled so, so good and probably had some happy-kid drugs in it.
October 29, 2008 at 10:30 pm
My best friend was a Speak & Spell.
October 30, 2008 at 12:35 pm
Spirograph! She-Ra! Jem! Etch-A-Sketch! Rainbow Brite! Strawberry Shortcake (PRE-anorexic model makeover)!
aw man, I am unreasonably excited about such toy memories.
@Lipstick: I had a Speak & Spell and a Speak & Read *sniff* oh, how I miss them.
@DottyZ: my favorite stickers were the puffy ones that had little black roly dot things for the eyes.