Legend has it that toy giant Mattel had the chance to own the toy rights to a yet-to-be-released science fiction/fantasy series called Star Wars (remember it?). Mattel was interested but they balked at director/producer George Lucas’ $100,000 asking price. I don’t think I have to tell you that they lived to regret their decision to pass on the property.

Looking for another fantasy series Mattel entered into negotiations to produce a toy line to accompany the release of Conan the Barbarian, a fantasy action film starring a then relatively unknown former bodybuilder and future governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger. When Mattel saw how violent the movie was and correctly sensing that it would get an R rating, they opted to cancel the toy line and use the molds to create a new character called He-Man. Another side of the story comes from toy designer Roger Sweet. In his book Mastering the Universe: He-Man and the Rise and Fall of a Billion Dollar Idea he created the character using molds from a discontinued toy called Big Jim and that He-Man was designed as a generic character that could be placed into any action setting. Either way, the producers of Conan sued Mattel claiming that He-Man was a rip-off of Conan the Barbarian. Ultimately, the judge ruled in Mattel’s favor.

Whatever the truth may be, this much we know. The Masters of the Universe toy line was released in 1981. It featured a cast of action figures that on the good side included He-Man, Man-at-Arms, Teela and Stratos. On the bad side were Skelletor, Beast Man, Evil Lynn and Trap Jaw. The characters were meant to be a mix of medieval sword and sorcery and high tech modern science fiction. Since there was no movie, literary source or TV series that kids could use as a frame of reference, D.C. Comics created a series of mini-comics that were included with the figures and which helped clarify the story line, which was set in a post-apocalyptic world called Eternia. In 1982 the first Masters play-set was released, a marvelous fortress called Castle Grayskull. Divided into two parts that could close together to form a carrying case, the castle had what appeared to be a skull-like face. Inside there were decals showing computers, a throne that looked like it could have come from the James T. Kirk furniture collection and a laser cannon mounted on one of the towers. In a word, Castle Grayskull was downright awesome! The figures and the play-set sold well but the powers that be at Mattel soon realized that they could sell a lot more toys if they were tied into a movie or TV show.

Ever since plastic Howdy Doody puppets were made to tie-in with TV’s first successful children’s show, toys and TV had gone hand in hand. Yet the toys were always derived from the series. This was to be a major case of putting the cart before the horse. Yet Mattel was adamant. They approached Filmation, the animation studio responsible for Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids to create the series. When the networks passed on the show, Filmation made the unusual choice to produce the show for the afternoon syndicated market. This meant that they had to produce a whopping 65 episodes to meet the demands of a five-day a week schedule. To their credit, Filmation delivered and while the animation was limited it certainly wasn’t any worse then what was shown on Saturday mornings. The show stoked the ire of the Action for Children’s Television (ACT) and other advocacy groups who made the not altogether untruthful assertion that He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (as the show was named) was little more then a glorified TV commercial (when it aired in the U.K. Mattel was forbidden to advertise any Masters of the Universe toys while a given episode was airing). Be that as it may, kids loved the show and by Christmas the toys were red hot. Okay, they weren’t the big toy that Christmas. The Cabbage Patch Kids totally hold that top spot. But for boys who dreamed of battle rather then child rearing, Castle Grayskull was the must-have toy and millions of play sets, not to mention action figures (each sold separately) made their way onto Santa’s sleigh.

Masters of the Universe continued to thrive for several more years. The company that created Barbie also tapped into young girls feeling of feminine empowerment by launching She-Ra: Princess of Power. They all sold well but He-Man and his crew were beginning to lose their momentum by 1987. A dreadful film starring Dolph Lungrin and Frank Langella didn’t help matters. By decades end Masters of the Universe had run it’s course.

Mattel tried twice to revive the Masters franchise in both 1990 and in 2002. Both toy revivals were accompanied by a new animated series but they failed to catch on. In 2008 Mattel launched the Masters of the Universe classics series, largely faithful recreations of the original toys, including Castle Grayskull. Not surprisingly, these appealed mostly to collectors who originally played with the toys back during the Reagan years. A new film version has been in development hell for a number of years. One thing is for sure though. For many a little boy nothing was more exiting then bounding down the stairs in ones footie pajamas and seeing the forbidding faux-stone edifice of Castle Grayskull and the sheer excitement of getting to learn all of the secrets within!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtDNW0neqNU&index=13&list=PLO2Mrb4LOnLJ7DG362wIZvaHvU2l1gl41

When the Pet Rock was “invented” back in 1975, computer technology was in, well, the stone age (or at least the iron age). The only computers most people had ever actually used were calculators and video games. Personal Computers were strictly the province of computer hobbyists and they had to be built from either from scratch or an electronics kit. The Internet meanwhile was a communication network devised by the military that very few people knew about.

By 1996 computers were part of our daily lives. Personal computers could be bought at any Best Buy and their computing power was greater than the very computers NASA used to send the Apollo 11 astronauts to the moon and while they were not yet a “common” household item they were fast becoming one. More and more people were getting on-line and exploring the net and even those who weren’t computer literate none-the-less used the computers in their car, microwave or local ATM.

And so it seems only appropriate that two decades after the Pet Rock hit the shelves that a more high-tech but equally frivolous virtual companion would come along. And so it did as the Tamagotchi, a little egg-shaped digital device that could fit in the palm of your hand. The irony is that while the Pet Rock was supposed to be a domesticated pet that one didn’t have to clean up after, feed or tend to when it was ill, a Tamagotchi owner had to do all of those things and yet their virtual pet was not much more of a cuddly companion then those geological novelties from the Ford administration.

The Tamagotchi was the brainchild of Akihiro Yokoi of the Wiz Toy Company and Aki Maita of Bandai (believe it or not, the later would win the Nobel Prize in mathematics for her role in this invention). When the Tamagotchi was activated a small egg was shown on the screen that shakes for a while and then hatches. A clock is set and four different meters are loaded, a Hunger meter, a Happy meter, a Discipline meter and a “Bracelet” meter. Essentially when the pet is “hungry” it must be (virtually) fed. When it’s naughty it must be scolded, hence the discipline meter. One can play games with the creature and they can also be house broken. When they have to “go” one could make a toilet appear. If the owner failed to do so the pet would leave droppings behind, lowering his “happy” meter until his master cleans it up.

Yet what made the stakes in Tamagotchi husbandry particularly daunting was that the pets could actually die! The bracelet meter measured how healthy they were. The pets could get “sick” from over or under feeding them or not cleaning up after them. If they get sick they won’t play or eat and the owner must use the “medicine” option to revive it. If the pet is neglected, it will die. But even if the pet is very well cared for it will still die! That’s because all Tamagotchi’s simulate a life cycle, going from baby to child to teen to adult (and in later models a senior). Sooner or later we all have to dance with the Reaper. When a pet “dies” it is often depicted turning into an angel and flying away. Some Tamagotchi owners no doubt deliberately neglected their pets just to see them die. No need to call the Human society though. Once a pet’s life cycle ended the program would simply restart (considering the fact that it was invented in a predominately Buddhist country it shouldn’t be too surprising that re-incarnation should be the ultimate fate). Of course some die-hard enthusiasts actually buried their Tamagotchi in their yard.

The little digital critters were released in Japan in 1996 and in the U.S. the following year. Sure enough plenty of kids wanted one in their stocking. Fortunately their retail price of $17.99 wasn’t going to put Mom and Dad into hock. At the height of their popularity it was estimate that fifteen of these little guys were sold every minute in the U.S. and Canada. When kids returned to school they often brought the little toys with them so that they could care for them, often disrupting class by “feeding” them while their teachers were giving a lecture. Before long Tamagotchi’s were blacklisted from schools along much like Garbage Pail Kids before them and Pokémon cards and heelies after.

New Tamagotchi’s were released regularly with various upgrades. Some could later connect with other units; some could get “married” and have “children” (or puppies or kittens or whatever their offspring were called). Some even could be programmed into a computer to earn Gotchi Points and buy your pet virtual items. An estimated 76 million have been sold as of 2010 and while their popularity peaked towards the end of the century their have always been an international clique of Tamagotchi enthusiasts. A twentieth anniversary version became a must-have toy for collectors in 2017 and an original Tamagotchi can fetch several hundred dollars on e-bay.

 

Since time immortal little boys, oblivious to the horrors of the battlefield but completely receptive to the pomp and pageantry of the military, have dreamed about going to war and engaging in combat. And in the days when gender roles were clearly defined, little boys were encouraged to act out their primordial fantasies of conquest by constructing swords out of wood and engaging in hand-to-hand combat with their buddies. Later, toy makers in Germany would make wooden soldiers, metal workers would produce little men made out of some kind of iron ore while in the post war years little soldiers made of plastic that stood upright in a fixed position became a mainstay of any boys bedroom. Then a new kind of hero – a real American hero at that – came along and forever changed our minds about make-believe warfare.

There’s some controversy over who originally came up with the idea for G.I. Joe. One version has Larry Reiner, a designer for the Ideal Toy Company, coming up with the idea and pitching it to licensing agent Stan Weston. Weston’s own recollection was that he had the idea for a soldier toy that could appeal to boys the way Mattel’s Barbie appealed to girls. He contacted Reiner about designing the toy, suggesting that it should be roughly a foot tall with limbs that could be manipulated to strike various action poses.

Whatever the case may be, Stan Weston brought the idea to Hasbro, a Rhode Island based toy company that had enjoyed great success with Mr. Potato Head a decade earlier but now was in receivership. Aside from the companies perilous financial state there was the need to get the toy manufactured in time for the 1964 Toy Fair. But the biggest obstacle of all was the word of caution that came out of every market research department at every toy company in America, which was that no boy would ever, ever play with a doll. Confronting this dilemma the marketing department coined a new term that would soon enter the American lexicon – “Action Figure”. Four different figures were ready for the toy fair, one for each branch of the U.S. Military – An Army Soldier, a Navy Seamen, An Air Force Fighter Pilot and a Marine Corps. Commando. Originally they were each going to get unique names – the pilot would be “Ace”, the sailor would be “Skip” and the commando would be “Rocky”. When it came time for the foot soldier it was decided to name him “Joe” in honor of “G.I. Joe”. This was not an actual person but rather a blanket term for all the ordinary men who risked their lives in combat, as well as an allusion to the 1945 movie The Story of G.I. Joe. Ultimately “G.I. Joe” became the name of the entire toy line.

The nearly bankrupt Hasbro spent a staggering $15 million developing their toy, which was worked on in almost military-like secrecy. Even Hasbro employees were discouraged from talking about the man-of-action with their spouses. It wasn’t until G.I. Joe was unveiled at the 1964 Toy Fair that it was clear that Hasbro had a winner on their hands and Joe soon stormed toy shelves like they were the sands of Iwo Jima or the shores of Tripoli. Backed by a massive advertising campaign, G.I. Joe caught the imagination of just about every American child with a Y chromosome. At a time when numerous baby boomers had Dad’s that either fought in World War II or in Korea and having grown up with the image of John Wayne storming the beaches of Normandy, they couldn’t wait to get their own Joe and act out their military missions in their own backyard. Joe also came with many accessories that were great for Hasbro’s bottom line, from a cache of weapons to jeeps and tanks and fighter planes. G.I. Joe pretty much saved Hasbro from annihilation by creating their own miniature military industrial complex.

Ironically, Joe came out right around the time the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution passed and soon America was once again at war in South East Asia. After the disastrous Tet Offensive of 1968 even some of the most hawkish Americans were beginning to re-think their views on American military intervention. With sales of Joe plummeting Hasbro decided to re-think their All-American Hero. Instead of being a soldier G.I. Joe became a “man of action”. The Joe’s were re-imagined as part of an Adventure Team. The Naval sailor became “sea-adventurer”. The Marine commando became a sort of Grizzly Adams man of nature and so fourth. They all were given “life like” hair and beards that made them look more then a little bit hippyish and each one wore a medallion with an emblem that closely resembled the hippie peace symbol. This new Joe did well but he was soon competing with new Action Figures lines based on James Bond and The Six Million Dollar Man. Eventually Joe was decommissioned.

By 1982 it was morning again in America. President Ronald Reagan had launched an aggressive military recruitment campaign, encouraging young Americans to “Be All That You Can Be” and join the Army. He also started the largest peacetime arms buildup to protect our shores from the “Evil Empire” of the Soviet Union. Also, Hasbro looked at the phenomenal sales figures for Kenner’s Star Wars toy line. Wanting in on the action Hasbro re-launched G.I. Joe as a line of quarter inch plastic action figures. Unlike their contemporaries from a galaxy far, far away, these new Joes had movable limbs that could allow our hero’s to strike various battle poses. And while the original G.I. Joe was basically a line of generic military men the new line was dubbed G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero. This time “G.I. Joe” was a code name for an elite task force that fought a rouge terrorist network called C.O.B.R.A. The Joe’s were now a seemingly endless group of fighting men and women with names like Duke, Snake Eyes, Flint, Lady Jay, Shipwreck and others that frankly looked a bit like a cross between the Dirty Dozen and the Village People. Their foes were a rogue’s gallery of badies that included C.O.B.R.A. Commander, Destro, The Baroness, Zartan and Major Blood. Aided by a Marvel comic book series and a weekday afternoon cartoon show, G.I. Joe enjoyed one of the greatest comebacks in the history of the toy industry, and thanks to a new movie franchise we can probably expect G.I. Joe to be fighting for many years to come.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9X382bCvVvo&list=PLO2Mrb4LOnLJ7DG362wIZvaHvU2l1gl41&index=11

For many the first real step into adulthood comes not by putting one foot in front of the other but rather by stepping on the gas pedal once you get your driver’s license or, even more significantly, get your own car! Until that moment though, kids have had to make-believe and over the years there have been many wonderful toy automobile lines from Tonka Trucks to Corgi Cars, Micro Machines and of course Matchbox Cars. Founded in 1953, the latter are a line of die-cast, palm sized toy cars that originally came in little boxes resembling those that matches came in, hence the name. They were wonderfully realistic looking cars that resemble the kinds of vehicles that you’d see on the road – station wagons, sedans, compact cars, moving vans, delivery trucks, etc. While they certainly ruled the die-cast parking lot they soon got some serious competition once Mattel decided to enter the field.

To design their new line of vehicles Mattel hired Harry Bentley Bradley, a former designer from General Motors. Unlike Matchbox, the Hot Wheels line was meant to be, well, hot! That is to say sexy. Their cars were miniature racecars and exotic sports cars rather than everyday vehicles. They were also designed with lighter axles, which meant that with a little push they could go faster. Parents could either get their kids an individual car or buy the entire original set of sixteen in a circular carrying case. Yet the real kicker were the four separately sold racing tracks – the Strip Action Set, The Drag Race Action Set, the Stunt Action Set and the Hot Curves Race Action Set. Each of these sets consisted of several drag strips made out of flexible orange plastic that could be bent and shaped into different racecourse. With a little help from our old friend gravity, these cars could race around these plastic strips faster than any toy car that came before it.

Backed by a staggering $10 million advertising campaign, Hot Wheels went from zero to sixty in no time and by Christmas that checkered flag was well in sight. Sales of Hot Wheels left all other toy cars in the dust. Matchbox itself reportedly saw their sales plummet from $28 million to $6 million. They managed to retaliate with their hot Superfast series of hot rods, which helped them regain some much-needed traction but they couldn’t have the road to themselves any longer. Hot Wheels were here to stay and  they’ve been racing along ever since, introducing new car models, racetracks, play sets and the like every year! Eventually Mattel purchased Matchbox, though Hot Wheels are still their own unique marque. This year they will celebrate their fiftieth anniversary with a special line of anniversary autos that are sure to rev the engines of die-hard die-cast collectors and young toy motorists alike.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKbhZfRvV0s&index=10&list=PLO2Mrb4LOnLJ7DG362wIZvaHvU2l1gl41

In 1983 two young comic book artists named Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird founded a small publishing company in Dover, New Hampshire called Mirage Studios. One day while brainstorming and talking about bad television shows, Eastman drew a cartoon of a turtle that was also a ninja. It was meant as a joke. Turtles are, of course, notoriously slow-moving and therefore could never master the art of jujutsu. And yet they decided to run with it. Abandoning the jokey side of the drawing they instead created a science fiction story about four mutated turtles named after great renaissance painters – Donatello, Michelangelo, Leonardo and Rafael. They were highly skilled in the ninja arts thanks to their sensei Splinter, a mutated Japanese rat. This master and his pupils lived in the New York City sewers and the reptile quartet patrolled the streets of the Big Apple and protected it from bad guys, particularly a gang of badies called the Foot Clan. They were also, as the title suggests, teenagers, with a love for loud music, partying and especially pizza!

Eastman and Laird self-published their first comic book and sold it at conventions and eventually convinced comic bookstores to carry it. The title caught on and developed a cult following. Then licensing agent Mark Freedman entered the picture. Felling that these “hero’s in a half shell” could enjoy a life beyond the graphic novel crowd, he convinced Laird and Eastman to sign a marketing agreement. Freeman eventually interested a small toy manufacturer called Playmates Toys (no relation whatsoever to Hugh Hefner’s magazine) to produce a line of action figures. A deal was also made with an animation company called Fred Wolf Films to produce an animated series which was originally shown in syndicated markets one-day a week.  The show generated enough interest to start selling toys. In 1989 it was expanded into a five-day a week cartoon show. That’s when the floodgates opened. Soon kids were in absolutely turtle crazy and the action figures plus any number of other paraphernalia was flying off the shelves at Wal*Mart and elsewhere.

Things hit a feverish pitch in 1990. In that year a live-action film featuring some incredible animatronic turtle costumes created by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop was released by New Line Cinema (the company that would later produce the Lord of the Rings films) and became a box office smash. That same year a network version of TMNT began airing on CBS while the third-party game developer Konami came up with two different video games, one for the arcade and one for the Nintendo Entertainment System. 1990 might have been the Year of the Horse in China but in the U.S. and many other countries it was most definitely the Year of the Turtle and by Christmas kids wanted these radical reptiles. Every kid wanted something different. Maybe they wanted Sword Slicing’ Leo or Slice ‘N Dice Shredder. Maybe they wanted the Turtle Blimp or the Pizza Thrower or the Sewer play set. Parents might have hoped that the kids wanted something on the lower end of the price range and finding the precise toy could be a bit of a nightmare but most kids no doubt shouted a hearty “cowabunga!” when they saw their turtle toys under the Christmas tree.

The turtles continued Kung-Fu fighting well into the nineties although they eventually lost their punch and would lose out to other karate chopping crime fighters, most notably the Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers. The turtles have had several successful revivals and in 2014 returned to the big screen in a highly successful new live-action film (with CGI turtles, natch) that was a big hit. But nothing will ever top the Turtle mania that was stirred in 1990, a year that was, as the turtle Michelangelo would say, “totally awesome dude!”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZmqQhP3U5A&list=PLO2Mrb4LOnLJ7DG362wIZvaHvU2l1gl41&index=7

It’s almost impossible to believe now but there was a time in the early eighties when it looked like video games were going to go down in history with the lindy hop, hula-hoop and spyrograph. In other words, a fad that caught the nations attention for a few years but was doomed to be forgotten when kids decided to move on to other things. Actually, video games themselves were still quite popular but in the U.S. the industry was in a shambles. An over production of games coupled with a glut of lousy games led to a saturated market and thousands of unsold video cartridges. Over at the arcade proprietors were complaining because some kids had gotten so adept at certain games that they could play for hours on just one quarter. By 1983 the bottom fell out of the video game market and it looked like it was game over for this industry that had barely been around for a decade.

Over in the land of the rising sun, however, video games were still a big deal. Kids were still pumping hundred yen coins into machines and software developers were creating some of the most popular games such as Space Invaders, Pac-Man, Frogger and Donkey Kong. Nintendo, a company founded in Kyoto back in 1889 as a manufacturer of playing cards, produced the latter. Branching out into electronic games in the seventies, Nintendo enjoyed great success in the arcade and later with their Game & Watch handheld video game series. Then in 1983 they entered the home console market with the Famicom, short for “family computer”. It was an immediate smash hit in Japan but when they looked into entering the U.S. market they were given the cold shoulder by toy retailers who had found themselves with warehouses of video game consoles and cartridges in the wake of the video game crash. If they were going to get toy stores to carry the console it was going to take some creative redesigning and re-branding.

And so, for the North American domestic market, the console was christened the Nintendo Entertainment System or NES. Taking a page from Steve Jobs’ playbook, the machine and its peripherals were designed in soothing grays deliberately meant give off a sense of feng shui. The console itself was referred to as a “control deck,” the light gun that came with it was called the “Zapper” and the cartridges were referred to as “game packs.” And then there was the Trojan horse named R.O.B – the Robotic Operated Buddy. This WALL-E like toy android was meant to assist with certain games by reacting to flashes on the screen.

The NES was test marketed in New York in 1985 where it sold 90,000 units. Soon more and more regions began carrying the game system as word of mouth spread and sales increased. With a rich library of games that included such titles as Super Mario Bros., Duck Hunt, Mega Man, The Legend of Zelda, Excite Bike and many others, Nintendo soon found itself simultaneously reviving and dominating the video game industry. By 1988 Nintendo was red hot. However people began to get wise to the fact that R.O.B. had been nothing more then a marketing ploy. The thing rarely worked properly and when it did it was slow and clunky and only two games were made for R.O.B. Therefore in 1988 a new package sans R.O.B. called the NES Action Set was released and sold seven million copies in that year alone! By the end of the decade it was estimated that 30% of American households had an NES system.

Nintendo completely dominated the video game industry in the latter half of the 1980’s. In 1989 they introduced a handheld console called the Game Boy which proved to be another smash hit, selling 40,000 units on it’s very first day of sales in the U.S.! By the time the 1990’s began rival videogame developer Sega introduced their 16-bit console Genesis. Nintendo struck back with the Super Nintendo but they no longer cornered the market.

Nintendo has remained competitive all these years thanks to such later systems as Nintendo 64, Nintendo Game Cube, Nintendo Wii and most recently the Nintendo Switch, the biggest toy of last years holiday season. But the original NES will always have a very big place in the hearts of gamers. In 2016 the NES Classic, a re-issue of the original console sold over two million units. Not bad for a thirty-year old console.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcyslT8U0Pw&index=6&list=PLO2Mrb4LOnLJ7DG362wIZvaHvU2l1gl41

Necessity is the mother of invention. Sheryl Leach was a former schoolteacher turned stay-at-home Mom who needed to find a video to entertain her son. Problem was in the mid-1980’s there weren’t many shows or videos that appealed to toddlers. That’s when she came up with the idea to make her own videos. With some start-up capital provided by her Dad plus a commitment from fellow Texan Sandy Duncan to appear in the first three videos, the fruit of her labor was Barney and the Backyard Gang, a half hour-long program centered around a group of kids and a big purple dinosaur who lived in the children’s imagination named Barney. Leach’s son did indeed like the videos and soon she began selling them via direct mail. They caught on locally in Texas and eventually started to make their way into other parts of the country. Eventually the Barney tapes caught the attention of a Mom who’s own father was the manager of a Connecticut PBS station. A production deal was put in place, a bigger budget allotted and the show was rechristened Barney & Friends. In no time Barney began airing on PBS stations across the country and it soon became the non-commercial networks most popular pre-school show since Sesame Street debuted over twenty years earlier.

Fact is Barney was in many ways the anti-Sesame Street. While the older show took place on an inner-city street, Barney took place in a suburban pre-school (probably in a gated community). While Big Bird was bright, inquisitive and at times showed his frustration, Barney was a big happy goof ball. Sesame Street cast non-professional kids who basically just acted naturally on camera. Barney’s kinder cast looked like they were recruited right out of the Professional Children’s School (some looked like they were old enough to be Bar Mitzvah’d). And while Sesame Street taught kids their ABC’s and 123’s, Barney was concerned with the virtues of brushing ones teeth, saying please and thank you and sharing ones toys. The biggest difference of all between the two shows was probably that Sesame Street was specifically designed to appeal to adults in the hope that they would watch with their children. Barney, on the other hand, was downright unbearable for anyone who didn’t have all of his or her baby teeth. Indeed, Barney was the first of many shows to be branded a “video babysitter”, something to keep the kiddies entertained while the grown-ups play Jenga in the next room.

By 1993 Barney was a white-hot phenomenon and soon retail stores were filled to the rafters with Barney merchandise. Games, bed sheets, coloring books, coin purses, backpacks, there was nary a consumer good manufactured that didn’t at one time or another have this Jurassic juggernaut’s likeness on it. Not surprisingly though it was a line of plush toys put out by Playschool that quickly became the most sought after tie-in. While soft, huggable dinos of various sizes made their way into children’s toy chest within the first two years, the most sought after item was the Talking Barney doll. The character spoke when you squeezed his hand and while his mouth didn’t yet move the much improved voice technology made it sound a lot clearer than your old See n’ Say. So while older kids might have wanted the ferocious plastic dinos from Jurassic Park (which was released that summer) the sippy-cup sect was all about the purple guy and he soon became the top-selling toy that holiday season.

Inevitably sales of Barney merchandise began to decline the following year, yet the show remained popular and the toys kept coming off the assembly line. The dinosaur ended production of his show in 2009 though he wasn’t exactly extinct. Re-runs continued to air on the Sprout cable network. A new version was announced in 2017 so while the real dinosaurs can only be seen in a museum, this one might have a second life.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dY9RJJLMpUE&list=PLO2Mrb4LOnLJ7DG362wIZvaHvU2l1gl41&index=5