So as many of my fellow dorks are aware, RadioShack is no more. All the rest of you are obviously the reason (where the heck were you?). Yes, while it's true that they are now owned by a random wireless carrier and function as spaces to sell Sprint products, the nostalgic RadioShack of the past is no more. For those who don't know though, RadioShack was like... the number one place to buy capacitors, resistors, dual axis accelerometers, and other thingamagidgets Scotty needed to repair the Enterprise. Trust me. This is a big deal for DIY people. Oh yeah, you could also buy a wide variety of batteries (and have them shipped to your house), antennas, small televisions, remote controls, sound systems, electronic gadgets and assorted do-dads, cameras, short wave radios, 150-in-One kits, and of course, RC TOYS! RadioShack was amazing back in the day and there was no other store quite like it.
Seriously, in the age before plastic touch-screen rectangles ruled the universe, anything "tech toy" usually came on four wheels or two copter blades, and sometimes both. RadioShack was the Disney Land of the local mall to the uber dorks in training, the one place I'd actually beg to be taken to, and I have vivid memories of going in with my folks just to play with all the RC cars they actually let the kids play with. Some of them later mysteriously made their way under a few Christmas trees even (funny how that happens). Now I don't know if it was common practice or not, but I remember almost every toy in the store being "try before you buy." I of course was also very young at the time and maybe my imagination is just acting up, but I remember actually getting a hold on the RC cars and driving them around the store, torturing the customers. I remember being told not to drive them outside the front of the store, although I certainly did try it. In fact, I seem to remember them not being able to be driven outside the store. They had some kind of force-field on the doors or something.
RadioShack indeed had a good run. They started out in the 1920s selling radio equipment. They sent around mail-order catalogs to enthusiasts of the new technology before they began actually manufacturing their own. They set up their first stores to sell their own radio products before they were bought by the Tandy Corporation, and that's when they really took off. People forget that they were one of the major retailers of computers in the 1980's and did a lot through their print advertising in mainstreaming the sale of computers to the average public. People way before my time know them for their TRS-80 computer, which actually came pre-assembled and not in the form of a "kit" (something rare for the time). In the long run, Tandy couldn't compete with IBM and they began restructuring. In the 90s, they shifted more toward retailing consumer electronics. They sold off their computer manufacturing and cut down their product line. Since then they've been trying to compete in the cellular and smartphone market, but obviously not doing so well at it.
I distinctly remember having one of these RadioShack 4x4 Off-Roaders my brother and I probably ended up driving down the stairs one too many times. In any case, it was definitely a truck and it was definitely blue, and definitely had little lights on the top and a strong front grill that probably protected it for at least twenty minutes of slamming into the kitchen chairs.
In the end, it seems even RadioShack knew their glory days were behind them when in 2014 they played up their own nostalgic image in this Superbowl ad where an innocent storefront gets ransacked by an army of 80s pop culture. Noticeable in the backgrounds are the "VCR" and "Boom Box" sections, perpetuating the joke of their retro-ness. Now as a loyal RadioShack consumer through the years (particularly around the holidays) I couldn't be more upset by this twist of fate for this part of my childhood. How will I go on without my "Battery of the Month Club" membership? But as a lifelong dork I am probably more upset about just where I'm going to go for capacitors. Seriously, the LED display went on my stereo and where was I going to go to DIY the thing back to working order? BEST BUY? Hah! In other recent news, the stereo I tried to DIY the display back to working order on is now RIP completely. How poetic.
Fake radio shows. News and weather. Traffic reports. Sticking the end of the microphone in your mouth and making noises. Even pirated music! All that was great, but seriously... there was never a device better suited to record your burps and farts for posterity.
One of the frustrating things about Lego was the choices! We'd get to the Lego aisle and be instantly overwhelmed, wanting it all and coming away with one, but knowing all the while that whatever we came away with wouldn't disappoint, even if it was your standard Renegade's Raft or Battle Cove (both of which I know we had). Every little piece added to the Legoland mythos we were slowly building up in the bedroom. The Lego Pirates were always my favorite Lego system because they had the coolest boats and I was really into boats. Introduced in 1989, the Lego Black Seas Baracuda (pictured) had to be one of the classiest Lego products ever assembled, with its striking red-striped sails and stern-side cabin (complete with little windows), raft, real-working pulley and anchor system, plank (as in, "walk the plank!"), and two canon ports, it really just doesn't get any more cool from Lego (and that's saying a lot).
That was of course until the even more impressive Skull's Eye Schooner came along in 1993. On this one they really outdid themselves, decking it out with all the above (minus extensive stern-side cabin although it's still there), but adding taller masts, black-striped sails, and four canon ports. They even threw in a shark for good measure. So if you were lucky enough to get your hands on the best of the Legoland universe, it was still sure to be the choice of "I want both."
Then there was the more battle-rattled Red Beard Runner, which featured some more movable parts and torn up sails for combat action and functioned as the the pirate's response to the Armada Flagship. For those who don't know, the Lego Pirates system included a few spinoffs with its Imperial Armada and Islanders collections designed to give the pirates some foes to contend with and ultimately some more sets for you to buy to complete the saga. The Imperial Armada were supposed to be the "good guys," but as any swashbuckler will persuade you, the pirates were always the real good guys with the heart for adventure while the Armada was just "the Man" trying spoil the fun. That "man" (so to speak) was called Commander Broadside, the archenemy of the fierce Captain Red Beard, or so we are told. This was the equivalent of Treasure Island on my 8yo me's imagination.
Many of the Imperial Armada sets had something to do with brigs and jails for the pirates, but they also had their own fleet of ships which weren't as impressive as the pirates of course, like the Armada Flagship (also called the Royal Warship), which only had one main mast and stern sail, one canon, and movable masts for combat, so of course you just had to have both to get any high-seas adventure going. Despite this, just the contrast of the blue-striped sails and feather-hatted, stuffed-shirted soldiers clashing with the patch-eyed reds made this also a must-have, and it's actually not as small as it looks. It was joined by the more striking Imperial Flagship, which had two canon ports and was obviously designed more to go ship-to-ship with the pirates. 2010 apparently also saw the release of an even more impressive Imperial Flagship to rival its pirate archenemy, showing just how much progress they made the first time around. You can't beat the pirates, but you can certainly try!
For all of human history, guys have taken joy in shooting things at other things... whether it was the bow and arrow, the slingshot, the cap gun, the paintball, the BB gun, or... whatever other long, cylinder-shaped, obvious-metaphor-for-something-else your mind will inevitably (and correctly) include. The joy of it goes back to our origins as hunters (I'm guessing), but over time it evolved into sport, and then into shooting harmless substances at each other for kicks. A useful skill, I know, but then again, seen any mammoths lately? (And yeah, before I get gunned down, I know girls are into projectile weaponry too, it's just... for some reason it's just dumber that guys are, like pretty much everything.)
See, besides the obvious built-in "gun appendage" strapping young lads could always have fun squirting off with (distance contest anyone?), they might've also been given the classic slingshot, usually so they could make themselves useful killing small rodents on the family farm. When this was no longer necessary, the weaponry became more of a toy... all the fun of sling-shotting rodents but without the unnecessary cruelty. Besides, now you could take aim at your friends! And so, in the 1950s, we had the introduction of the cap gun, the "burp" gun, the "BRAAP!" gun (both ends represent!), and the BB gun as the quintessentially sexist "boys toys." But despite the look, the sound, and the feel of a death machine at your fingertips, the fire power was still all imaginary. So in the 80s, Sega and Nintendo developed video game shooters, and most notably Duck Hunt, using a gun-based controller to make the carnage look a little more real... but still, nothing actually came out of the gun. The evolution of toy weaponry had yet to mature beyond making funny noises, broken skin, and make believe. We were still shooting blanks.
So enter the early 90s, and the generations'-long desire to shoot your friends in the back for fun (without causing injury like a paintball or BB does) was finally unlocked! Yes, there were "squirt guns," but please. Please! Mine's bigger! The early 90s did have one major innovation in the history of toy weaponry, and it was the SUPER SOAKER. Way better and badder, and therefore more awesome, the original Super Soaker, released in 1990, could hold about 1 liter of water and fire it a good 50 feet! It also finally looked like a pretty badass futuristic "gun" like you'd expect in a Predator movie or something. The major innovation of the Super Soaker was that, unlike squirt guns, it had a "pumping action," which not only made you look like a badass Rambo-warrior when you were out prancing around the backyard with it, but also compressed the water so that when it actually did fire, it would explode like MJ at a Chuck E Cheese! And when you got hit with these jets, you were bound to be streaked and squishy-heeled in short order!
Thus, the ultimate in toy weaponry was finally achieved in our lifetimes, and the world was not safe from the chemical warfare about to be unleashed. Sure, H2O is recommended, but you could put anything in them things, even piss. The male psyche never surprises, and the circle was complete.
Over the years these things just got bigger and meaner, holding more water and firing it farther and farther distances, with all kinds of accessories, like lazor guides and multiple shots with less pumping and easier "pump" refill (much easier than having to take the water jug off!), but whatever form they took, these things just about ruled whatever birthday party I was ever invited to. Once the guns were dusted off from the garage, there was no stopping the blitzkrieg... until they had to be reloaded of course. And so it was that after decades where toy weapons were only for target practice, kids were finally allowed to use other kids as the bullseye, thanks to this device. Boys will be boys, but only because a little water never hurt anyone.
But do yourself a favor and stop calling these things "squirt guns." I had many of those small see-through plastic pistol-shaped squirters with the push-button trigger, and I don't even see how they can be compared. Every squirt gun I ever had only carried about a cup of water at most, and it only fired it about a foot or two. Please. Totally not manly. You maybe got one or two decent tiny squirts out of it before you had to pour water down that impossibly tiny hole in the top or submerge the thing and wait for it to "glub glub" its way to being stocked. There's no question that the Super Soaker and its band of clones blew the squirt gun out of the water.
The annual Discovery Channel Shark Week is upon us! So in honor of my second favorite time of year, here be sharks! This one will be in the form of a toy which we all know for having made its big cinematic debut in the film E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial where it cameo'ed as "Shark Toy" in Elliot's fish tank. Truly Spielberg knew all too well Elliot's adage: “The fish eat the fish food, the shark eats the fish, and no one eats the shark!" That's all one needs to know when watching Shark Week. No one eats the shark indeed. They just blow the fucker up.
But when it comes to the shark grabber toy in my canon, I have a confession to make. One time in middle school we all took a field trip to a local zoo park, and upon visiting the gift shop, I saw one of those shark-shaped lazy grabbers. I immediately must've pictured myself grabbing distant things with it on a lazy summer couch potato day, and so naturally I had to have it just for the sake of awesomeness cred. BUTT alas, I didn't have any money on me. So I'm forced to confess that I stole said shark grabber thingy from the park... which was surprisingly easy to do, but yeah, a tragedy (and I throw myself on the mercy of the court!). Was it worth it? Of course not, because the thing couldn't grip anything, although it did annoy my girl cousins and my sister once or twice. Apparently shark grabbers are fond of short sleeves.
If it's any consolation, our class took a field trip to the Boston Museum of Science in the 3rd grade (one of the greatest places on earth for a kid like me), and when we came to the gift shop, I bought this really awesome pen that was shaped like a tiger shark with a removable tail fin for a cap. That one I kept with me for a long time, and it may even still be kicking around in my drawer somewhere with my old key chains. The ink ran out forever ago, but I kept it just for the awesomeness. You don't just throw shark pens in the trash. You respect the shark. Nobody eats him! (except me, at the sushi bar.)
Every summer growing up, our parents used to take us up to a popular spot in Franconia Notch NH called "Indian Head" just a few miles down the road from what (sadly) used to be "the Old Man of the Mountain" natural monument. (No, not the Old Coot of the Mountain, that's a different guy.) For anyone who doesn't know from your New Hampshire state quarters, "the Old Man of the Mountain" or "Profile Rock" was a cliff side off of Cannon Mountain in the White Mountains that from a certain angle... looked like an Abraham-Lincolny face. Sadly this icon fell down a few years back, but there's another profile rock worth checking out if you're ever in that "neck of the woods" (literally) called "Indian Head"... a mountain cliff that someone thought looked like a (ahem) "First Nations" man's head. (I don't know, looked like Abraham Lincoln to me.) Regardless, we used to stay at the Indian Head Resort up there, and while there's enough about that to warrant its own post (in time), I'm going to focus this one on something no less amazing to me, albeit far... far less grand. I'm talking about cheap paper hats, plastic bows, and rubber drum sets.
Oh yeah.
Flamingo feathers??
The Indian Head Resort had its own gift shop (just like everything) where they sold various """""Native American"""""-ish gifts, toys, shotglasses and the like, and believe it or not, perusing this little overstocked alcove was the height of any four day stay for me. The reason? Namely, cheap paper """""Native American"""" headdresses, plastic bows, and rubber drums sets. These were a MUST have. There was no question about it. The headdresses were just a red paper front with an "eh, close enough..." """""Native American"""" pastiche design on it tied around the back with an elastic string which always broke out of its staple 20 minutes after wearing it, and poised atop would be five or six colored feathers. I could put this thing on and feel like I was the "Brave Chief" for the day (as it said on the hat)... or at least for 20 minutes.
My parents usually passed on the drum kits and archery sets because they were expensive (and eBay doesn't lie), and you have to consider that getting one of anything always meant getting two of anything (because close-in-age brothers be like that.) But I do remember getting the bow and arrow and the drum kit at least once, and I even have photographic evidence of this fact (see above). The archery set came with a couple of "suction cup" arrows that would get lost 10 minutes after they were torn from the package, a flimsy bow with a string that wouldn't send them any decent distance anyway, and a fake plastic knife that probably found its way under the car seat for the rest of the trip. The drum kit was one of those mock "hide drum" cans with some rubber stretched over both ends to make it look more """""Native American"""" I guess. It wasn't loud enough to annoy my parents but was damn cool enough to keep us entertained in the backseat of the car as we jotted down the Kancamagus.
And I say that in all respect, because I don't for a second think any of these things communicate any significance about actual Native American history or culture, which I was genuinely interested in as a kid, but to the 8YO me, these little trinkets were just the coolest toys I could imagine having in a place called "Indian Head" up in the scenic splendor of the White Mountains. I may have once or twice walked all of "the Flume" with my feathery gear intact. If you don't know what that is, you're just going to have to check it out for yourself... or wait until I tell the tale.
It's summer time again, and few things say the great outdoors like fishing. But when it comes to real fishing (or is it reel?), my knowledge of the sport ends with the Zebco Kids' push-button spin-caster rod and reel. This was one of those gifts that you loved as soon as you got but then "gave up on" as soon you got it caught in something on the first cast across the driveway to pick up the plastic fish. After that it was confined to the "floaty fish in the kiddy pool" kind of fishing, which usually meant the plastic hook was going in my brother's shirt at some point. Score!
BUTT... beyond the backyard "sword fights" and other shenanigans with it, dad used to actually take us out on the lake in the canoe a few weekends to put it to use. The best thing I can say about this rod and reel from these experiences, besides the fact of just "having" a cool fishing pole like every guy wants (especially when it's a nice long one... impressively long and... well, long being the point), is how the whole one-pound test on it was strong enough to snag even the flimsiest surface weeds! Watch the bobbers!
Truth be told, the only fish I think I ever caught, besides the plastic kiddy pool variety, were the feeder fish (which in the kindness of my heart I set free in the lake once... dad was not happy about that). Animal rights activism aside, there was nothing like being out on the lake with dad and bro, just us guys, playing with our rods, but that time spent with this one usually involved untangling the lines, unhooking the line from bushes, trees, clothing, and body parts, rethreading the lines, untangling the lines, and generally... untangling the lines. That and listening to my dad complain about how the lake had been overfished by "the Portuguese" (... yeah, to this day, I still don't understand it either).
But despite my complete lack of luck or common sense when it came to fishing, I did manage to net me at least one good catch... a real live mermaid! And that may sound like one very unbelievable fish story, but I swear it's the truth. Once my brother and I showed up to some kid's Halloween costume party, and because we weren't all that creative in our costume ideas (and because we had probably just got our fishing poles so it's all we cared about), we came with our poles for some reason. Now, it just so happened that at this party was this girl from our daycare dressed as Ariel, the "Little Mermaid".... so naturally... it was only a matter of time before she was taking our hooks out of her costume. I mean, obviously it was going to happen, but for some reason she didn't think it was as funny as we did, until of course we were forced to put the poles away.
Speaking of fishing, I seem to remember being particularly good at this very "indoor" game called Let's Go Fishin': "the action fishing game where players try for the biggest catch!" You take your tiny fishing pole and hook the fish that circle around the pond bobbing up and down and opening their mouths. The first one to hook the most wins! You might remember this as the kind of game you usually found stacked up in that carpeted basement playroom at your rich cousin's house along with the NES, the robotic arm, and all the other cool toys you couldn't have. You'd slide it out of the box and, wouldn't-ya-know-it, half the fish would be missing from the pond (just like they would be on a real fishing trip). Just don't blame "the Portuguese."
I was a major fan of anything glow in the dark back in the day, and if you were even alive in the 90s and don't remember these, then check your pulse. These things looked like the coolest block set out there from the castle lighting up at night to the pirate ship that was "glowing with fright." But what they weren't telling you was that 200 blocks wasn't nearly enough to build half that stuff. You'd need like 50 sets to build as much as they show in the commercial!
I did not have the Marvin's Magic Drawing Board, so I can't tell you how the thing worked (I'm still trying to figure it out), but I did watch the commercial a good thousand times, enough to have those bright colorful swivels burned somewhere into the back of my brain. Apparently you'd swish around a little plastic scalpel and make the colorful underlay appear in the black. I didn't have that, but I did have the color changing pens...and yes, those were 100% legit, including the part about them being magical.
The only thing is the "invisible ink" one would start getting dirty with the ink of the other pens and that would make it less magical...
I never owned a Tamagotchi back in the days when kids owned these things as pets. I still don't know exactly what they were supposed to be, coming in those little plastic egg things and blinking around the screen like a little Digimon whathaveyou, but I certainly killed my fair share of them.
The girls used to play with them in school and would often conveniently leave them behind at their desks for mischievous dorks like myself with nothing else better to do but unleash a little mayhem for shits. Something about sabotaging a girl's tamogotchi always felt like sweet payback for something, maybe just for outsmarting us all the time perhaps. Sure, we had the "Talk Boy" and the "Game Boy"... so how dare girls play with their own techno-toys! I mean, think of it as us just picking on something our own mental size! For the record though, I don't think I personally was brave enough, or mean enough, to do the dirty and (moderately) hilarious deed myself, but I do remember at least instigating it, consenting to it, and perhaps aiding and abetting the real perps (my best friend Nick), and getting bitched out for it. Either way I plead the fifth. In my defense, I knew it would be totally worth it.
Now the easiest way to kill a Tamagotchi was to press that button on the back (which would "reset it") and leave it behind for the owner to figure it out a half hour later when the thing wasn't crying for even just thirty sustained seconds. I think we were doing the school a favor, actually, taking these things out. The other way was usually more time exhaustive, but a lot more fun, and involved feeding it like a nervous eater on a roller coaster. Keep pressing feed until it's wallowing in its own waste (and believe me, these guys really are little machines!). It won't take long after that. Then you put it back on the desk or in her drawer where she left it, and wait. Oh, the wait was palpable! And then she doesn't notice a thing until... "Wait a minute, my Tamagotchi is dead!!"
The pure enjoyment of "Hey! You killed my Tamagotchi!" was so brief, but then the chase was on. Hell hath no fury like a Tamagotchi owner scorned, and I don't think I have to tell you whose life they considered more valuable. They weren't just out for blood. Heck, my old friend Nick (wherever he is) probably still can't have kids because of it! (Sorry Nick!) But you know, still worth it. It's ironic too, seeing as the typical Tamagotchi died at least a couple times a day anyways... heck, you could accidentally kill it. Just sit on it for a long time. It's got to suffocate eventually!
Even if you were living under a rock in the 90s, you probably came across Nickelodeon Gak (I think that's where they got it from). It was slimy, stretchy, liquid-y, snot in a plastic cup, and it was fun enough if only because it farted when you squished it in its cup. Gak was also probably the substance that filled me and my friends' heads most of the time back then, and not just because I tried eating it once.
Sure, you could press it into things for indentations, or bounce it off the desk, or roll it into balls, but the best thing was that if you squished it into its cup, it farted! Yeah, you could stretch it over your mouth and blow a small bubble through it, or pull it to pieces and stick things on the wall with it... but just so you know, it did indeed FART when squeezed... kind of like me. Are you picking up what I'm laying down? Forget the other stuff it did! Just call this stuff the iFart of the 90s! And how appropriate that it should be, seeing as it smelled like some kind of chemical waste.
Gak lost its fun when it started getting dry and crumbly, or once it got sat on and pressed into the couch cushions or stepped on and stuck up your sneaker treads. The novelty soon wore off, but get yourself another batch and it was sticky, oozy, goo-y squishy fun all over again. And for little weirdos like me, anything that meant never-ending ripply, blurping, raspy fart sounds seemed like the only toy I'd ever really need, even if the "sound effects" weren't really up to my exacting standards, but there were a LOT of them. And just like a fart, only try to get your brother to eat it
My brother was more of the train freak in our youngling years. Boats were more of my thing. But as is the case with brothers, when one has something cool, the other one is by default a fan of it too. So I found myself being a train fan very quickly, and for a while, anything somewhat train related was bound to end up on the floor of our room somewhere, resting in the carpet fibers.
One such thing you could usually find somewhere under the bed was the old-timey rectangular wooden train whistle, where you'd blow into it to make a steam-engine "wooo" like a low pitched tea-kettle. I definitely remember just walking around with the thing hanging out of my mouth, breathing in and out, and creating a "woo" "woo" "woo" over and over. It was guaranteed to annoy any adult in earshot. Afterwards, once I was done tooting my own horn, pulling away always left the after-taste of cheap balsa.
I don't smoke... any substances, but I once did. Back when I was somewhere around six or seven, I was known to smoke a bottle of bubble soap a day. I was addicted to my bubble pipes, whether they had the soap in them or not. Something about having a plastic pipe hanging out the side of my lips just seemed like the coolest thing in the world, and I'm sure everyone thought I'd be tarring up my lungs nice a thick for the rest of my life as a result. This hasn't been the case, so (*raspberry sound*) to them.
I don't always dig through the reams of photography taken of me (conveniently stored in one of those old cardboard fruit bins you used to see at the supermarkets sitting up on my bookshelves), but when I do, it can sometimes feel like a safari expedition into the surreal. There I find plenty a picture of me wearing a blanket as a cape, usually with some kind of hat and bubble pipe completing the ensemble. Truly, the further back in time I dig, the dorkier it gets. And I know I sound vain, but this stuff just has to be documented. This is as dorky as it can get, and yet I hope you agree, pretty much as awesome as it can get too... or cringey... you decide.
Me, living the dream.
I don't know if I was trying to be some super hero who smoked a pipe, or what that was about, but no getup seemed complete without the blanket cape and bubble pipe accessories back then, and arguably, no getup was as cool without them. And wearing a cape didn't do me any harm either. I never tried to "fly," ...at least not without trying to take off from the ground first!
T-shirt, sweatpants, bubble pipe, blanket cape, cardboard roll, poofball stocking cap, indoor trampoline... the pieces are all coming together.
Lego Island was and continues to be one of the coolest PC games I ever played, second only to Myst. It was the first video game Lego ever put out and it's still the best in my opinion. For the 8yo Me, this small island was like heaven, packed with everything I loved and all in one spot. As soon as that computer animation kicked on in the opening with the bricks falling from the sky, I was seeing pizza delivery, race cars taking off at the speedway, an ambulance collision with decapitation jokes a-plenty, and a cop on his motorbike jettisoning himself out over the police station and into the ocean where a jet ski dude was trying to outrun a shark!! Damn!!
I was very much pleased to say the least.
With all that in just the first two minutes, the Lego universe had finally come so completely to life all around me that I was just in utter bliss being submersed in it. Screw vacationing there, I could've lived there and been perfectly happy the rest of my 8yo life. But if any summer was going to be vacation-less (like this current one), then Lego Island was without a doubt going to be my default destination, and likely will be again very soon...
The main character you can play is "Pepper" ("the dude with the food"), a skateboarding pizza delivery boy on an island where all they eat is pizza, and you basically just ride him around from place to place, building the jet ski, the race car, the regular car, and racing around on all these awesome side quests and mini-games, like the jet ski race, or the race track, or helping people out with their dilemmas. On the way, you can't go two feet without bumping into hilarious skits and a whole cast of characters, all of which you have power over. I used to walk around transforming all the flowers into trees, and all the Lego people's hats into cups and kittens!
"Life's a beach."
Even the actual main-game was fun. You had to deliver a pizza to "the Brickster," the island's criminal mastermind, so hot it melts the bars on his jailhouse! He ends up escaping in the helicopter (oddly parked right next to the jail, to make it easy for him I guess), and he basically wreaks havoc on the island, sucking up people and buildings. You have to steal back the helicopter to launch an all-out aerial pizza assault on him, shooting down pizzas to lure him toward the cops. Oh, and the cops "Nick and Laura" are so unmotivated to catch this guy that you have to shoot down donuts just to lure them toward the Brickster. "Thanks Pepper, I really needed that." You can't make up brilliance this brilliant!
There were a few cool locations around the island, like the lagoon, the pizzeria (where Pepper's stereotype Italian parents work), the beach with the lifeguard dude that kept dropping "totally dude dude!" into casual speech, the police station where the cops always came away with two donuts in hand (or claw), the jail, the hospital, the race track, and the gas station where the cowgal always greeted you with a "well hey there honey!" There was also the mountain park and the houses in the residential area that you could literally "flip" and renovate with just a click of the mouse. The information center had an elevator that allowed you to both go under water and up in the sky.
Computer animation this detailed was just coming around in 1997, so this entire game all seemed like one epic movie that you'd get to play a part in. Yeah, the jokes are 80% "brick puns" and more decapitation and dismemberment than you could shake an arm at, and the actual gameplay was not as epic as that opening fly-over animation of the island (in fact it was downright choppy on those slow computers of yore), but hell, I got to ride a Lego motorcycle, build a jet ski, and race around the island hopping ramps. I got to go down in a submarine with the Lego sharks, build a race car, and race it through a trippy underground race track. Hell, I got to build and fly a Lego helicopter! Add to that a lot of pizza, and this was just about as good as it could get for me. My brother and I used to get up at 3 and 4am and fire up the computer just so we could spend a few precious hours of freedom on Lego Island before the rigors of our daily life took over. All in all, pretty good for a "staycation."
Ah, the cause of many an ankle bruise growing up can be traced back to this summertime contraption. The Skip-It. I think worse than getting whacked on the skipping leg was the fine ring of red that quickly developed around the anchor leg. But the very best thing of all, there was a COUNTER on that ball!
Maybe it was because it was a girl's toy. Maybe that's why I couldn't do it. It's not like you only need two legs to make it work or anything. Meh. I could never master the hula-hoop either. The principle of hurling objects around on my body just never clicked for me. I probably looked like a dork though, skipping it on the grass.
Nothing says "small-something" more than a big fancy Hot Rod in the driveway. That's the law of nature. BUTT... what if those Hot Rods are small themselves? Well, give them long stretches of track and big loops to be shot through of course! And thus, male over-compensation begins early. So naturally, I had one of those Hot Wheels track systems when I was a kid (draw your own conclusions), and I got to say, they never worked! Okay, they worked, but they never made me feel like "big man on cul-de-sac." They were probably more fun to set up and think about than actually play with. First of all, they came with, like, 20 sections of track and the connector pieces were always getting lost. If you ran out of connector pieces, that was it. You had a jumble of tracks you could "kinda-sorta" lay next to one another, but it was useless for high speed anything. Don't lose the connectors!
Secondly, you had to be a serious pro to keep the cars on the tracks. On the slightest bump, they'd go flying off. On the extreme corners, they'd shoot out and get lost behind the desk or under the bed. On the loops, well, you could forget about the loops unless you had one of those motors that could push it up to 88 mph and careen it into something in another time period. The only place those cars never seemed to be though was at the top of the loop, and particularly if they were the heavy car with the engine bursting through the hood. Thirdly, there were speed problems. I think half of what I know about physics I learned from trying to make Hot Wheels cars go fast enough to take those loops. I had to start them off at a height usually taller than me, like a shelf or something, but not too high or else the car wouldn't grip the track on the way down, and not too low or else it would jam up at the loop or hit the incline and fly off into another dimension. It was very precise.
Don't lose these!
The last gripe was anything that involved a jump. Yeah it looks great in the commercial when the car flies off and lands square on the next piece of track, but was that take 79 or 156? Those jumps were made to keep your car off the track as long as possible. To keep it going, you needed more downhills than anything else...something hard to come by if you're already on the floor, but then again, to really get it going anywhere you either had to pay for motors or pay for more sections of track to go for higher altitudes. I think if you ran one from the top of Mt. Everest you'd probably finally score three loops and a complete track run out of it using only normal physics (assuming it stayed on the track).
In fact, it all used to make me wonder (because as a kid these things are more than just toys, but potential reality situations). In my mind, somewhere out there in the Hot Wheels dimension, roads were just constructed as giant loops for no particular reason and every now and then ordinary vehicles might be expected to perform vast jumps and corkscrews as part of their daily commute. Who would build such a roadway and why didn't factor in so much as the thought of how cool it would be if this was how it was in our dimension! Then we could run our real hot rods through real giant loops... and really be over-compensating! Awww yeah.
Dedicated devotees in this dimension however have managed to make impressive and lengthy loops of these things that cover whole living rooms and neighborhoods (whether or not it's one continuous track is a subject of intense debate), and others have even made life sized versions featuring real cars. My brother and I though probably used the tracks more to sword fight.
How cool was the original Lego Pirates? And how cool is this commercial? They just don't shoe-horn enough catchy, corny rap into kids media these days, and it's a damn shame. I mean, how can you not like these lyrics:
Word up! Zack's back! The Pirate Lego Maniac! Yo-ho-ho and a barrel of fun, the pirate adventure has begun!
Between me and my brother, we probably had every Lego Pirates set there was, except for the real expensive ones like the pirate ship... always begged for around every holiday and birthday and granted upon successful room cleaning throughout the year. The Lego Pirates weren't just pirates, they also had those Spanish galleons with "Commander Broadside" at the helm, which weren't as cool as the pirates but hell, it was great to have a whole "good guys" vs. "bad guys" thing going on. A ship was a ship, whether it had those blue and white striped sails or a big red skull and bones. I vividly remember just staring, eyes agape, with total bliss, into print ads for these Lego ships--the pirates and the armada--coming blow to blow in a cannon showdown on the still waters.
I loved every detail of these sets... the black captain hats, the curved "swashbuckler" swards, the palm trees, the little boats, the stiff flags, the little brown handguns and the wide-barrel muskets...even the little black mustaches! And ANY set that had a shark in it was a must-have! I remember the excitement of getting a fresh new box of Legos and ripping open the side. I remember the crinkle of the plastic bag with the small holes in it, the instruction book with the blue faded backgrounds, the different sized pieces in all their own bags. It was always a magical experience.
It was so awesome that it got me thinking, "Why should this Zack kid have all the fun?"
What can be said about Pogs that hasn't been said a hundred times? They were little Poker-chip-like disks with colorful pictures on them, there were like a million of them, and you played some kind of game with them. The 8yo me had no idea what those things were, just that they were down every cool kid's pocket, and that there were a million of them. Some were like the Holy Grail trying to find, but a whole lot weren't worth more than a regular soda coaster. Evidently, it seems that the game originated in Hawaii during the 1920s with kids using milk caps. Over time, some teacher somewhere started teaching kids how to play the game using caps from this stuff called POG juice (Passion Fruit, Orange, and Guava), thus the name "Pog" became forever associated with it. In the 90s, for some reason, the game took off in popularity so much that it became a cultural phenomenon forever linked to the 90s. But I think Children of the 90s said it best:
Still, though, we're just hurling a slightly bigger disc at a pile of smaller discs, so something tells me we as 90s children possessed the inherent trait of being incredibly easily amused. You just couldn't sell that to today's kid. They'd be bored out of their minds before you even got to the word "slammer."
Slammer? "Hehe... slammer... hehe" --Beavis
Kids used to trade them on the bus, at the lunch table, at recess, and that's basically how I got acquainted with them. I didn't know what you did with them other than collect them and pass them around, but I was not immune to having a couple kicking around at the bottom of my backpack just in case I ever had to learn. There was no choice, you had to keep a few on you just to say you were cool. I still never really got what they were, just that all the cool kids were into them. And the reason they were cool? Because they had cool pictures on them.
And I mean if you could think it, there was a Pog for it. They came in these endless series, with cartoons, tire rims, sports teams, sports balls, movies, bugs, Goosebumps, states, flags, aliens, planets, cars, Sonic the Hedgehog, Star Trek, crazy 8s, psychedelic stuff, trippy flowers, monsters, eyeballs, skulls, superheroes... anything and everything that could be rendered in glorious 90s neon. If you were into something, there was a Pog for it that would immediately make you cool for having it, and if you actually "won" the entire series of something, then you could consider yourself elite.
The game itself had something to do with stacking your pogs four high and face down and then hurling other pogs into them to scatter them. Those that landed face up were claimed by the kid hurling the pog. Those that landed face down went back into the stack for another round. I'm sure though that there were as many variations on the game as there were elementary schools, but that was pretty much the gist. What made it potentially fun and potentially resulted in you getting an atomic wedgie from your opponent (and therefore interesting), was that (being a game mostly of luck), you always had the potential to start raking in your opponent's pogs just for landing them face up. However, there were two basic ways to play... for fun, and the infamous "for keeps," both of which had to be spelled out beforehand, but depending on the size and ferocity of your opponent, didn't always matter. That's basically how you collected new pogs, but if you had nothing to start, none of the big time players wanted to waste their time with you (unless they wanted to offload a lot of their worthless ones). Playing "for fun" meant the loser got back their pogs after the game. Playing "for keeps" meant that either someone was coming home with some new pogs, or coming home with a black eye, or both.
Seriously, this was that important. In most cases though, experienced players knew not to let their rarer pogs enter the game play on the off chance they'd land face up. As many in the paranoid media and PTA groups at the time pointed out, it was a form of gambling. They were right, but still, there was no reason they had to try to get the things banned from schools just because they taught us the importance of the gamblers fallacy. That's educational after all, and trust me, these things made or broke you on the hallowed recess play yards of yore. If you had a badass design, or a neon-green or something, you were D-O-P-E, and everyone wanted to "slam" with you. If you had nothing but Care Bears and puppies, then don't even bother going to school.
Besides the Pog, there was the "Slammer," and those conferred instant cool cred whenever they were whipped out, because they were like weapons. The Slammer was this heavy piece, like a medallion, which could get pretty badass if it was the "circular saw" kind, but it could also just be a plastic checker piece-like thing. If you whipped out your slammer, your opponents knew they were done for, unless they had a heavier one. It was literally an arms race of "mine's bigger" mutually-ensured destruction.
I had to picture that there was some kid somewhere who was sitting on a throne of these things, in a castle built out of stacks of these things, just kicking back, basking in the glory... some kid who was like, the Pog Master, who had somehow managed to land everyone's face down. That kid would've been the king of awesomeness. I wonder where that kid is these days.
