Sleeping, walking the dog, and rocking the cradle may sound like a boring list of chores. Still, if you were raised in the nineties, you’d immediately recognize these as tricks you could perform with your Yomega Brain yo-yo. While yo-yo toys have been around forever, a combination of industry innovation and marketing cleverness made them a must-have toy in the 1990s. Built around a centrifugal clutch system, The Yo-Yo with a Brain opened on the downswing for long steady spins with the flick of a wrist. It could also return automatically to the throwers hand once the rotation slowed down.
Founded in 1984, the Yomega yo-yo company was one of the premier manufacturers of yo-yos. Besides the Brain, the company also fashioned the Yomega Fireball, Raider, and Stealth Raider. The Brain’s brightly colored or translucent body weighed about 58 grams and was made of polycarbonate. It featured an automatic clutch mechanism with a low friction plastic bearing. It could be unscrewed to untangle knots or apply lubrication. It was known as a good yo-yo for beginner yo-yo enthusiasts to learn tricks. The Yo-Yo with a Brain was a worldwide best-seller for Yomega. Towards the end of the nineties, a lucrative partnership between Yomega and the HPK Marketing firm sparked the fuse for the yo-yo craze to follow, and the team sold an estimated 30 million yo-yos worldwide.
Christmas 1996: a holiday toy season that will live in infamy. The N64 video game system and Tickle Me Elmo were the two hottest toys to hit the market and nineties parents were freaking out. The crazed rush to buy up all of the Tickle Me Elmo’s...
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Toymakers in the 1990s really were all about the portable toy. From the Tamagotchi and portable CD players to handheld electronics like the Game Boy Color, if you couldn’t take it with you, what good was it to a nineties kid? Aimed at a somewhat...
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Having glowing star stickers on your wall was very popular as a '90s kid. Whether you got them as a prize from Chuck-E-Cheese, or found some in the dollar store - it was cool to sleep under the stars every night of the week. In fact, it’s still cool!
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K'NEX allowed budding designers, architects, and engineers the chance to construct replica models of everything from bridges and cars to rollercoasters and Ferris wheels. The construction toy system was invented by American entrepreneur Joel...
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Another example of nineties toymakers going HAM on miniatures. Tech Deck fingerboards are small skateboards that can be manipulated and “ridden” using your fingers. Fingerboards were initially produced as keychains for skate shops but evolved...
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This iconic toy still maintains a wrestler’s grip on the American imagination more than 44 years after it was first released to the public. Originally developed and produced by the toy company Kenner Products in 1976, Stretch Armstrong was the...
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With a sticky hand toy, you can master the art of grabbing things from a slightly longer distance than you can reach! As many '90s kids know, they are also a pretty useful tool for annoying siblings.
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Do you miss the days of being peed on by a toy doll? Well, miss them no more! Baby Alive is back and ready to provide all of the biological joys that come with caring for a very hungry and thirsty baby.
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Before Furbies or Nano Kitties came the electronic pet that kicked off one of the biggest trends of the late 1990s. Tamagotchi was the first pocket-sized digital companion: a computerized alien pet that you could raise and care for through birth,...
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Remember setting up toy cars and town scenes on your playmat? Well, you can still accessorize your living space and create your own mini town with this city life playmat. Just remember to pick up those legos when you are done – they hurt when you step on them!
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