Nihilstalgia

Slip 'N Slide- All skinned knees and broken dreams. Nothing good would ever come of hurling yourself onto a thin damp piece of plastic, trusting your life to gravity, and hoping for the best.

Virtual Pets- Whatever your brand of choice, Tamogatchis, Nano pets or Giga pets, they all pretty much taught the same important lesson. That life is full of more crap than you can handle, and then you die. 

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Sabrina the Teenage Witch: Sabrina's Psychic Phone- You know what this phone wasn't? Psychic. Salem's prediction was just the phone's first ring. 

Now don't get me wrong, kid me didn't actually expect the thing to be psychic. But I did expect it to use, I don't know, special sciency invisible airwaves or whatever to predict incoming calls. Way to fail me again, magic and science.

Talkback Dear Diary- I have zero memories of actually using this thing for its intended purpose, but can vividly recall poking that tiny reset button in the back every time I forgot my password. Which was apparently all the time.

Kelly and Krissy- I was still pretty young when Kelly was introduced and later I was peripherally aware of Krissy. These dolls were both new little sisters for Barbie. Except, let's be real, Barbie's got to be in her thirties at least. Kid-me was always convinced that Mattel labeling the younger dolls her "sisters" was an elaborate conspiracy to cover up her illegitimate pregnancies with some dude other than Ken. Adult-me is sure of it.

Also, can we just remember for a second that this fuzzy haired little weirdo Todd existed? I was never really sure if he was supposed to be Ken's illict love-child with Teresa or like Ken's little brother or something. Research tells me he was actually Barbie's "brother" (yeah, okay) and Stacie's twin. The more you know.

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Beanie Babies- Lol. 

Barbie Rollerblade- You know those little car toys with the clockwork motor where you pull it back and when you let it go it propels itself forward? That's exactly what Barbie's rollerblades, despite kid-me's expectation to the contrary, didn't do.

Shout 'N' Shoot- Wanna look and sound like a complete asshole? Great, then this was the toy for you! You just strap that hilarious thing on your head then walk around yelling "Fire!" to shoot off a dismal spray of water that just drips sadly down your face. So fun. This toy actually got me into trouble for shouting "Fire!" in public. Like, who actually thought advertising it that way was a good idea? Thanks a bunch, Cap toys.

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Bop It- Because it is completely reasonable to make an obnoxious version of Simon with no volume control that shrieks and then insults you when you inevitably crumble under the pressure of its increasingly urgent demands.  ...That description covers most aspects of adult life and it's kinda making me uncomfortable.

Mcdonald's Happy Meal Snack Maker- I don't know if it's worse that kid-me really expected I'd be able to make a McDonald's hamburger at home with a tiny plastic play set, or that it was actually just vanilla wafers and brown icing. Either way, diabeetus.

The Easy Bake Oven. Not only did it make us believe that we actually wanted to eat the smallest crappiest cake in existence, but that we should pay five bucks a pop for the privilege. No, seriously, those 'cake mix' packets used to cost around $5.