Seeing the cool, new toys hit the shelf this Christmas really made me want to be a kid again. I thought back to the toys of my day (being a child of the 80’s) and realized that there is not a lot of difference if you take away the heavy influence of technology. Check out my comparison study where I compare toys from 1988 and 2008 (20 year span) and feel free to add your own:

Oh the sweet memories of being entertained by a plastic hoop! I’m not embarrassed to say that this was one of my prized possessions growing up…and still is. For those of you who are not familiar with this amazing phenomenon let this paint a picture for you.

After doing some quick research, I discovered that the hoola (“hula”) hoop has actually been around for thousands of years. Historians say that even Egyptians were known to partake in the hooping. Plastic hoops were first manufactured and sold in Australia, and eventually the founders of the toy company Wham-O saw the potential of producing hoops in the US. Because the company could not patent a product that had been in existence for so long, they decided to modify the name.
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Cabbage Patch Kids, still marketed today, became a growing fad in the early 1980s. The product itself was actually invented in the 1970s by Xavier Roberts, and was originally named Little People. It wasn’t until 1982 when the name “Cabbage Patch Kids” came into existence.

The name “Cabbage Patch Kids,” according to Roberts, is said to have come from a mother’s answer to where babies come from — the cabbage patch. (If you’re a parent and you’re reading this, I bet you are thinking about how you’ve answered this same question).

The company website describes the “legend” of how Cabbage Patch Kids came into being. Check out the link.

By: Kelly Wilson

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Literally every day, growing up, I had Hot Wheels vs. Matchbox championships. I would tear out a piece of my sketchpad, draw a bracket, make some fake crowd noise and fire up the little plastic engines. Turns out, in 1996, Mattel acquired the Matchbox brand from Tyco. I always wondered why the Hot Wheels always won; must have been a little foreshadowing. The Hot Wheels logo has always been one of my favorites due to its perfect fit for the target audience. Drawn by California artist Rick Irons, the logo is symbolized through its unique retro-esque typography and a distinguishable outer flame shape. Although established in 1968, the brand Hot Wheels really started to pick up speed in the 70’s, and revolutionized the die-cast toy car market, beginning to leave its competitors in the dust.

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