Big Spending in the '90sA look at the decade-long heyday of brightly-colored, ridiculously loud, direct-to-children marketing and the many toys, foods, and products you begged your parents to buy you.
Updated September 7, 2021 54.6k votes 8.5k voters 372.3k views
Voting Rules
Vote up the toys that you remember being cool, but actually... they were pretty dumb.
There will never again be toys as simultaneously amazing and awful as '90s toys — especially '90s girl toys! The greatest playthings of the decade were true originals, just weird enough to resonate with baby millennials. Wonderfully dumb '90s toys included things like My Size Barbie, Bumble Ball, and Dream Phone (an arguably patriarchal game designed to keep women in their place).
By now, you hopefully realize that most of your prized possessions were total trash. Here are the toys all '90s girls had, loved, and eventually got over.
Why We Loved It: Finally! A journal your baby brother couldn't read.
Why It Was Garbage: You had to speak the password out loud to your Password Journal for it to open — which it rarely did anyway — allowing anyone within earshot to be privy to your deepest, darkest secrets.
Why We Loved It: Notebooks no more! With Dear Diary, you could audio record your innermost secrets and listen to them later. It was the cutting edge of technology.
Why It Was Garbage: According to the Hasbro site, Dear Diary's major features include:
- A file to list your favorite things
- A file to list the things you don't like much
- A place to store your wishes
- Do math problems, quickly and easily
That just doesn't sound as fun as you probably remember.
Why We Loved It: Furby was an ugly little animal that just wanted love — and you were happy to give it to your new, blinking, talking friend.
Why It Was Garbage: Why did Furby always accidentally start talking in the middle of the night? The sounds that spontaneously erupted from toy boxes across the country still haunt grown ups today.
