The Top 30 Most Awesome Toys You Could Get for Christmas in the '90s

• 1

  Koosh Balls

  
  You can almost still smell the rubbery goodness. Also, if you touch your index finger and your thumb, you can almost feel that you're dangling a Koosh ball by a single rubber strand again. Boing, boing, boing...
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• 2

  Gak

  
  Every neatfreak parent's worst nightmare. With enough determination, you could get it stuck in the carpet, in between the couch cushions, all over the remote control buttons... and chances are each strangely tasty-looking blob got covered in lint and stray hair after playing with it for about 10 minutes. Yum!
• 3

  Creepy Crawlers

  
  Creepy Crawlers were marketed as a toy that could really gross out your parents, which is a lie only a kid would believe. I mean really, is your dad going to open the cupboard, see a bioluminescent caterpillar the size of a bratwurst and think, "wow, I thought these things only lived in Australia!" Good one, JakksPacific.
• 4

  Dear Diary

  
  To all the people out there who decry Kindle ebooks as not being real books: Dear Diary was the beginning of the end, folks.
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• 5

  Super Soakers

  
  The only drawback of getting a Super Soaker as a Christmas present was that you had to wait until summer to use it.
• 6

  Crossfire

  
  I think we can all agree on one thing: Crossfire definitely had the coolest commercial of any game out there.
  
  
• 7

  Micro Machines

  
  Legos get the bad rap for Most Painful Toy to Step On, but Micro Machines were a close second.
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• 8

  Moon Shoes

  
  Ahh, Moon Shoes, the toy you always thought was going to break every time you bounced on it. But mysteriously, it never did. Who knows what those straps were made of...
• 9

  Doodle Bears

  
  Unfortunately for most parents, Doodle Bears came about five years too late. If only they had gotten one when their kid was 2 years old, then maybe he wouldn't have drawn all over the living room walls...
• 10

  Cabbage Patch Kids

  
  Let's not forget that these little bastards were responsible for causing riots in 1983. Parents were literally fighting each other over the dolls, and this was nearly 30 years before the advent of the consumer nightmare of Black Friday in the 2000s.
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• 11

  Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

  
  Lisa Frank may have been LSD in the form of art, but Eastman & Laird must've been on LSD to come up with the concept of TMNT in 1984.
  
  "Hey... hey man... let's make a comic about turtles. Except... except they're mutant turtles! And they're ninjas! And let's name them after famous Renaissance-era artists! And they love pizza!"
  
  Whatever illicit substance was responsible for their creation, TMNT toys became the epitome of radical in the '90s.
• 12

  My Little Pony

  
  Indeed, My Little Pony was around in the '90s, and the main patrons of the fad weren't 20-something dudes! Ponies without the bronies... it's almost too strange to think about.
• 13

  Easy-Bake Oven

  
  Ahh, the Easy-Bake Oven. The one toy you look back on with a nervous smile, thinking to yourself, "wow, those sexist toy companies really hooked us in, didn't they?"
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• 14

  Rollerblades

  
  Let's take a moment to pause and wonder what these people would look like if they weren't rollerblading. They wouldn't be wearing the pads, the gloves, or the helmets either. They'd just be... well... their regular boring selves. Moral of the story: rollerblades make you look about 300% cooler.
• 15

  Furby

  
  If there was any toy to look back on and simply wonder, "why?" Furby was it.
• 16

  Anything Lisa Frank

  
  LOOK AT THIS PICTURE. YOU CAN'T NOT SAY THAT LISA FRANK WAS ON SOME SERIOUS LSD I MEAN COME ON.
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• 17

  Troll Dolls

  
  What were you actually supposed to do with them? Who cares! Colorful hair! Adorableness! Hooray!
• 18

  Brain Quest

  
  An entry for the little brainiacs amongst us. The questions were fun and challenging, and you actually felt like you were being productive while playing a game. Plus the cards all came hooked on that little plastic swivel, so you could fan them out and pretend like you were holding a Japanese fan.
• 19

  Tamagotchi

  
  Let's be real: if you rocked at caring for your Tamagotchi, you're probably an excellent parent today.
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• 20

  The Talkboy

  
  Kevin McAllister had one, so we wanted one too. Plus it could slow down your voice and make you sound like an adult! How cool was that?
• 21

  CD Players

  
  It's hard to top something that could bring you the gift of music, even if that gift skipped a lot. Or, as I like to call it, "surprise DJ'ing."
• 22

  Power Wheels

  
  Outta the way, Dad! Or I'll break your ankles!
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• 23

  Game Boy Color

  
  It was a Nintendo... that you could carry around. That may not sound like much to today's kid, but it was revolutionary stuff back then.
• 24

  The PlayStation 1

  
  Sony may be a major player in the games market of the 21st century, but the '90s were Nintendo's time. Despite North America already being hooked on the likes of Mario, Link and Donkey Kong, Sony's first major foray into the North American gaming market proved to be a fantastic one, and set up Sony to deliver the highest selling game console of all time, the PlayStation 2.
• 25

  Pokémon Cards

  
  "Hey baby, wanna see my Pokémon card binder?"
  
  -- The greatest pickup line of the '90s
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• 26

  The Super Nintendo

  
  Saving the world from Giygas in Earthbound, solving the mindbending puzzles in Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, crying in the corner after dying 50 times in a row in Contra III. Good times, man. Good times.
• 27

  Beanie Babies

  
  The moment you got your first Beanie Baby probably went a little something like this in your mind:
  
  "Ohmahgosh, these things are so cute... and there are 20 million more of them out there! Must. Have. ALL. Beanie Babies."
• 28

  LEGOs

  
  Legos. What couldn't you make with them? The toy that probably had a hand in fielding a good percentage of today's engineers also virtually unlimited variations for what you could build. The only limit was your imagination, which made you feel woefully inadequate when all you could think of to build was a square box with a propeller on top...
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• 29

  Pokémon Red and Blue Versions

  
  The only thing more awesome than the cards? The games. For those of you wondering why Yellow Version isn't pictured here, it's because Yellow Version was released in October 1999 in North America. While amazing in its own right, it wasn't much of a '90s game!
• 30

  The Nintendo 64

  
  The dream. The prize. The holy grail of childhood entertainment. The N64 may have been maligned by parents as being a colossal waste of countless hours of time, but they'll never understand. They'll never comprehend the anxiety of plumbing the depths of the Shadow Temple, or the satisfaction of landing a falcon punch on your friend in Super Smash Bros, or shooting Trevelyan 150 times with the RCP-90. The list of memorable moments brought on by the N64 is endless, and for millions of adults, the sleek black box remains a fond cornerstone of the memories of our lives in the good old 1990s.
  
  
  
  

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