Since we crank out so many stories each week some really good ones get lost in the cracks. And since so many new people visit Guyism every day (thank you), we thought we’d take some time on the weekends and holidays to share a few classics that many of our newer readers may have missed.

Just because kids are idiots who’ll buy anything with their favorite character’s face slapped on the box doesn’t mean that toy companies should take advantage of them. Here’s some of the most odious licensed crap to have ever been hawked as “fun” or “worth buying.”

9 WWF Thumb Wrestlers

What boy didn’t grow up and enjoy a flirtation with wrestling at some point in his life? And what boy doesn’t enjoy a good bout of physical competition of any sort? So you tie those two things together, add one plastic Hulk Hogan and one plastic Roddy Piper (because it’s logical to make one of the only free games people can play less cost-effective) and presto! You get this:

At first glance, you’d think Hogan and Piper must have also spent some time in the showers with Kamala because there’s no way of explaining their overly generous rectums otherwise. Fortunately, it’s okay…the holes are actually in the spine of the toys, not the bung. Still, thumb wrestling seems so much less innocent when there’s shirtless men involved and victory seems to entail forcibly sodomizing your opponent.

8 Spider-Man Web Shooters

One can only assume that Hasbro bought companies that had an excess of both rubber gloves and silly string when releasing this poor excuse for Spider-Man’s web. Or they just wanted a quick buck, which is stunning for a multinational corporation.

You could certainly see the appeal as a child of wanting to be like Spider-Man, with his web slinging him around, sticking from building to building. Then you can see less of an appeal when you actually buy the product and end up with one gloved hand (like Michael Jackson) shooting a sticky fluid at young young male friends while pretending that it’s web (also like Michael Jackson).

7 The Simpsons Don’t Have a Cow boardgame

Of course, the first thing that comes to mind with The Simpsons is how careful they are with their brand. Matt Groening and 20th Century Fox were never ones to latch The Simpsons name onto any old piece of crap, of course. So clearly a Simpsons dice game is going to be as revolutionary and unique as the show was.

Roll the 8 cubes which have pictures each of the 5 Simpsons. Try to match classic combinations like Homer and Marge, Bart and Homer or the 3 Simpson kids.

Players bet either against or with the dice roller. Losing bets go to the roller, winning bets come from the bank.

So hold on. This isn’t even a board game…it’s not even craps. It’s basically you rolling dice with little yellow people’s faces on them (which, for the record, you had to STICK ON YOURSELF…lazy child laborers at the factory not doing it for me), hoping that certain combinations come up. You wouldn’t see Ashy Larry with such an inferior product in the back alleys of Brooklyn or at the World Series of Dice, I guarantee you that much.

6 Ninja Turtles Vanilla Pudding Pies

I might be completely off base here, but I remember a different version of this pie pictured above that was yellow on the outside with green ooze on the inside. And even if that was just one of my drug-fueled 5 year-old hallucinations (of which there are many), this is still pretty heinous. Green foods of any sort are just gross, even if you’re a little kid and you really enjoy heinous things. Even ketchup, which is pretty much as simple a sell as you can get, couldn’t get something green off the ground…Heinz’s green ketchup line was discontinued in 2006.

Honestly, I don’t know why the Ninja Turtles made such a strong push towards food. I’m not sure how much stock I can put in the flavor habits of mutants who enjoyed thing like peanut butter and sardines on their pizza. Check out some of their other heinous foods here.

5 Hannah Montana Concert Candy

Sure, they’re delicious and not at all nutritious, but what immature tween with a hankering for sugar wouldn’t immediately start giggling when they see these? Then again, this was a pretty good compromise for Miley Cyrus. She’s probably not a huge fan of gummy treats but she certainly seems to have a hankering for boys and all their worldly goods, so for all we know, the phallic design may have been intentional.

4 Mario Bubble Bath

Granted, I’m not big on “bubble baths” or “personal hygiene” but this Mario bubble bath just seems like something I wouldn’t want. Mario could endorse a lot of products that I’d buy; Overalls, self-help books on how to overcome shortness, spring-loaded sneakers, even a grocer’s line of mushrooms…I’d line up for any of those. But when I picture a hairy Italian plumber having to run through a kingdom for days on end, eating all kinds of foreign foods and just working up a perpetual sweat, it’s not my first instinct to go, “Man, I’d love to smell like that fictional guy!”

Meanwhile, Bowser was powerful, daring, successful (he owned multiple castles, boats, AND flying ships) and probably smelled of the finest colognes and spices. I’m not saying Princess Peach should have picked him over Mario, but maybe she should have put a little more thought into it.

3 My Little Pony Ponyville Fancy Fashion Boutique

Girls are sugar and spice and everything nice. Apparently, the “everything nice” portion of things includes hay and horse crap because this little girl beauty kit with stuff like hair ties, shopping bags, hangers and other crap includes two perfume bottles. You can show me the prettiest pony in the world with the most lush mane and the most gorgeous physique and I can show 730 gangrenous bums who will still smell better than that pony. It’s basic Hobonomics.

2 Wonder Woman Lava Lamp

I’m doubting there are many kids who went after this one. Wonder Woman did some cool crap, sure, but I don’t think as a child anyone out there is trying to advertise their dedication to her craft.

But clearly someone out there has to have bought this. And to that person, I’m not going to say that there’s something wrong with Wonder Woman. I’m not even going to say that there’s something wrong with owning a lava lamp (it’s got lava, it supplies light, what more can you want). But when you think you need to get something to enrich your room’s ambiance and settle on a lava lamp adorned with Wonder Woman’s visage, you may need to reevaluate your priorities in life. Unless you’ve totally committed to the theme and also feature a bed made out of lassos and an invisible car that you ride to work every day. Though that may open you up to larger problems.

1 Hulk Hands

Hulk Hands could cure cancer and you’d imagine yourself looking like this guy above (assuming you’re equally as partial to tunics) and you’d probably think twice before wearing them around. On the plus side, they do awesome things like…make sounds when you hit them against things. So if you ever wanted to hear a silly growling smashing sound while hitting someone in the groin with padded hands, this might be the right purchase for you. Though I despise you for finding a way to take the humor and whimsy out of hitting someone in the groin.

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Anything that you regrettably wasted your hard-earned kid money on? You know, the crispy dollar bills you got from that stranger in the van who called them “Keep A Secret” payments? Share them below! The suggestions, not your traumatic memories.

We avoid Glee and every horrible thing it has spawned, unless they happen to be bikini pics, but it’s undeniable that a cappela is a cultural trend. And where there are cultural trends, there are app developers hoping to make a million dollars selling people software a dollar a pop.

This one does, at least, not use auto-tune.

It is, however, the same basic technology as auto-tune. You choose a song style, ranging from classical to pop, and press record. Then speak normally into your phone. The software tunes the recording to four different harmonies, sets it to the song, and you have instant music. Well, “music”. We’re pretty sure even dubstep is going to be better than the atrocities this turns out.

Unfortunately, if you know anybody prone to buying toys like this on their smartphone, brace for impact: the software is designed to share any tracks you record on Facebook and Twitter, or even, of course, send it to you over email.

You couldn’t just strip out the sharing functionality, guys? Really? You had to subject the rest of us to this?

Now You Can Totally Start That Barbershop Quartet Cover Band [Gizmodo]

Not really a whole lot of ambiguity there. Either way, kids have to learn to call innocent passersby a crazy bitch at some point in their lives. Why not learn it from an adorable toy with big blue eyes?

That said, if anyone’s crazy, it’s this doll. Needless profanity, twitchy head, vacant stare. It’s like this doll came to Toys ‘R’ Us straight from Vietnam.

Cursing Baby Doll [Buzzfeed]

Granted, with the tiny gas engine from Honda, you’re not exactly going to be moving at high speeds: top speed for this thing is three miles per hour. On the other hand, it does have some punching oomph behind it, and they’ll work for five hours on one tank of gas.

Which is good, because you’ll be paying $17,000 a pair for these robo-boxers. Hey, scaling up a toy costs money.

Bionic Boppers Put People In the Fightin’ Robot’s Seat [Gizmag]

At least give the kid credit; it took me years to master the graceful segway from “I don’t want to touch your phallic object” into tears. But he’s doing it at just a couple months old. Looks like someone’s going to have a much easier time in Boy Scouts!

In related news, what is the point of that thing? To teach kids an unhealthy fear of car washes? Being a toy maker must be the greatest job ever. Just make other simpletons create idiotic designs for no one’s amusement but your own. It’s like all of my pot fantasies come to life.

Baby Learns An Important Lesson [Videogum]

Allen's *Swimming Pool*

Paul Allen’s got a pile of money. After all, he did start Microsoft.

But because he’s such a rich, serious tech guy, we always just assume that he only does very important things (like take a private helicopter and land onto a a business meeting about acquiring Yahoo! or something ) with his money. Or at least I do; it’s easy to forget that if he and I swapped places, I would use that money to do really awesome things.

Like all the stuff AllenThere’s talk of jamming with Mick Jagger and Dan Akroyd, a 1623 copy of a Shakespeare book, building a rocket, and having a band on call year-round so that way Allen can jam out anywhere he wants in the world.

I really need to work on becoming a billionaire.

The 1990s were a great decade for toys. While kids these days are increasingly playing with high-tech electronics like iPods and iPhones, us kids of the 90s happily made do with devices that were much less technologically advanced. Below are ten amazing and memorable toys from the 1990s.

11 Nickelodeon Gak
Released in 1992, Nickelodeon sold Gak to millions of kids based purely on the idea that it “made a fart noise when placed into its tube.” While kids loved this idea (and also the squishy feeling of the simulated slime itself), Gak found its way into too many carpeted floors to garner a coveted parental seal of approval. Gak innovations throughout the years include glow-in-the-dark Gak, color-changing Gak and “Smell My Gak” – slime that was scented to smell like pickles, hot dogs and other foul abominations.

10 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Though the Ninja Turtles got their start in the 1980s, it wasn’t until the release of the first TMNT movie in 1990 that the franchise really took off. As one of the most popular action figures lines of the 1990s, us kids were scrambling to complete our sets with Casey Jones, Bebop, Rock Steady and other lesser-known characters. Of course, there were also classic high-end toys like the turtles van that shot spinning pizzas out of it. Cowabunga!

9 Super Soaker
While there are now dozens of Super Soaker water guns, the whole toy line began with one simple pump-action gun that was released in 1991. Sure, every kid has one of these high-powered water pistols nowadays, but when they were new one of these bad boys was a sure way to obliterate your friends who were still packing old-school point-and-shoot models.

8 Tamagotchi
Virtual pets got their start in the 1990s, and Tamagotchi was a major player in the business. While the idea of hatching a digital egg and taking care of it so it can “grow up” healthy and happy sounds a little odd, it proved a major hit for us 90s kids. In a big way, Tamagotchi serves as predecessor to more sophisticated games such as The Sims and Nintendogs.

7 Spirograph
Hey kids, who wants to draw a bunch of rounded geometric shapes!? Yes, Spirograph has been around since the 1960s, but still enjoyed fair popularity during the 1990s. With its assortment of plastic gears and simple use, the Spirograph made the mathematics of spiral art easy and fun enough to hold a kid’s interest. Sadly, in the world of digital design, the popularity of the Spirograh has dropped considerably.

6 Rollerblades
In the 1990s, it quickly became very uncool to be the kid rolling around on a pair of classic quad skates. Suddenly, everyone wanted that cool inline look that mimicked the appearance of actual ice skates. Who can forget rolling around on these bad boys while playing a competitive game of street hockey with friends? After all, we’ve all got the knee and elbow scars to remind us.

5 Koosh Ball
Sometimes, simplicity is the key to a toy’s success. Really nothing more than a bunch of rubber filaments radiating from a soft core, these balls first dropped in the late 1980s. However, their popularity continued in the 1990s, and gave every kid a nice item that he could chuck at his little sister without getting in trouble.

4 Pogs
Pogs was one of the biggest fad games of the 1990s. Every kid in every school across the country meticulously grew their collection and tried out different slammers to ensure maximum winning. Unfortunately, much like the slap bracelet and Trapper Keeper before it, the Pog proved too cool for school, and was eventually banned in most school districts across the country.

3 Magic the Gathering
Magic is the O.G. when it comes to collectible card games. When these cards hit shelves in 1993, it gave Dungeons and Dragons geeks a whole new game to play. Complete with strategy and role-playing elements, it was easy to get sucked into this super competitive card game. While still played today, the game’s popularity definitely peaked in the mid 90s.

2 Pokemon
The Pokemon franchise is arguably the most successful to come out of the 1990s. While everything from plush toys and video games were created, the most nostalgia-inducing Pokemon offering is probably the trading card game. Released in America in 1998, this Magic copycat allowed Poke Trainers to pit their collection of Pokemon against each other in the real world.

1 Super Nintendo
With the release of the SNES, Nintendo gaming technology doubled to an AMAZING 16-bits. Of course, the number of controller buttons also doubled, and us kids were transfixed in front of the TV screen for good. Classic SNES games included Donkey Kong Country, Street Fighter II, Star Fox and F-Zero. It was also the first console to feature a Super Mario Kart game.

The 90s were a big decade for video games. Other consoles that are obviously worth mentioning include the Game Boy Color, Nintendo 64 and Playstation.

I’m a guy but I think Barbie’s pretty awesome. Blond hair, doesn’t need to eat, nice boobs, she seems like a great deal. But having been around penetrating girls’ sanity for like a century, Mattel has made some missteps with the doll. Here are the big (absurd) ones.

In 1965, Mattel came out with Slumber Party Barbie. Along with the Barbie doll, the package also came with pink fuzzy bathroom slippers, a scale that read 110 pounds, and a book entitled: “How to Lose Weight” whose contents read, in entirety, “Don’t Eat” (it was much easier to get a book deal in 1965). Apparently that upset some folks for A) Saying the fact that you weigh 110 pounds means you still need to lose weight, B) For a book telling girls not to eat, and C) Expecting girls to know how to read books.

1992 saw a lot of crazy things…Presidential candidates playing saxophone on shows where the host encourages viewers to bark loudly and, more importantly, Teen Talk Barbie. And while Barbie said traditional vacuous stuff like “Will I ever have enough clothes?” or “Wanna have a pizza party?” (ignore the fact if Barbie ate anything other than dried lettuce she couldn’t keep her sexy body), she made an uproar when one of her phrases was “Math class is tough!” The American Association of University Women bashed Barbie and Mattel for implying girls couldn’t do math. Then they went back to braiding their hair and asking daddy for a pony, I’d assume.

Ken has always been Barbie’s man of choice even though people, most notably hacky comedians, always speculated that Ken might enjoy the company of other gentlemen more than Barbie. Well, that speculation really came to a head when Ken decided to prance around in the outfit pictured above as “Earring Magic Ken”. Now sure, he just seems like a regular Joe, just hanging out, being a man in his purple mesh shirt and vest. But note the ring object around his neck…yes folks, it appears to be a chrome cock ring. In fact, the doll was so gay that it became the highest selling Ken doll in Mattel history, primarily due to its kitsch appeal amongst gay men and Asian guys in need of cock rings.

Barbie was always kind of a whore for cross-promotion, be it for the WNBA or Nascar or Beastiality so 1997′s Barbie partnership with Oreo seemed pretty run of the mill. Only, since Mattel always makes a white Barbie and a black Barbie since political correctness set in, having a black doll that says “Oreo” on the front (“Oreo” being a phrase that says a black person is “black on the outside but white on the inside”) may have sent the wrong message. The doll was pulled from the shelves and that cartoon Chips Ahoy guy was beaten violently during a protest rally to send a message to Nabisco.

1997 proved to be a crapty year for Barbie when Mattel released a new doll called “Share a Smile Becky”, which came complete with a pink wheelchair. They probably all patted themselves on the back for that one…that is until a 17 year-old girl with cerebral palsy tried to put the doll in Barbie’s Dream House and couldn’t get its wheelchair through the doorway. Mattel would fix the problem in future Barbie homes rather than fessing up to the simple belief they held that said that disabled people should live their lives in Barbie’s garage with her car since disabled people in wheelchairs are all basically like Transformers anyway.

In 2003, Saudi Arabia proved its dedication to being pro-women by banning Barbie dolls in its country. The progressively-named Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice had the following to say (stunner, they blame the Jews):

“Jewish Barbie dolls, with their revealing clothes and shameful postures, accessories and tools are a symbol of decadence to the perverted West. Let us beware of her dangers and be careful.”

Middle Eastern girls didn’t have to go dollless for long though, as a doll designed solely for them called “Fulla” soon hit the streets. The doll was a huge success, making hundreds of millions of sanddollars. And she even comes with her own burka! I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen a doll and been like, “Darnit I wish her whorish calves weren’t exposed.” Well, problem solved!

If I’m a nearby fly heading to temple, I’m definitely watching my ass.

After Hours of the Day [The Daily What]

Since we crank out so many stories each week some really good ones get lost in the cracks. And since so many new people visit Guyism every day (thank you), we thought we’d start taking some time on the weekends to share some classics that many of our newer readers may have missed.

I’m surprised I survived the 1980’s. I was small and fragile and looking back at the toys…I can’t believe that at some point someone didn’t need my dental records and an eyewitness account to identify me. I was young and naïve and bleeding a good portion of the time. Yeah, mostly bleeding. I had a daunting sense of adventure; made worse by the fact that I was armed with some of the most dangerous toys in the history of time.

“Helmets? We don’t need no stinking helmets!”

Actually, we probably did…

10 Pogo Balls

Now these toys may seem innocuous and fairly safe, but that was only if you used them correctly. I know of maybe 3 people who actually did. They were pretty boring if you didn’t find clever new ways to play with them. In a time of skateboards their were ramps and in the time of pogo balls there were roofs (more on this later). When friends weren’t trying to find the maximum height they could jump from in which these things would stay intact, they were using them indoors. That was where the danger really stemmed from. Pogo Balling was only fun if you had an obstacle course and limited space; only indoor Pogo Balling seemed challenging.

Talk about a bull in a china shop? More like Courtney Love at the Waterford Crystal factory after a bottle of Stoli and a handful of Xanax. You could go one, maybe two rounds before breaking something expensive (like a vase or an arm), so you had to make those runs count. And when you did, you often counted out allowance money afterwords to help pay for the damages. Stupid Pogo Balls…

9 Lawn Darts

The most boring game in the world was only made interesting by the fact that someone could possibly die from playing it. And in my day, there had already been some injuries with the game so the darts weren’t very sharp, but were still very solid, very metal and flying through the air willy-nilly over your head. It was like blindly lobbing greased-up hammers into the air with little disregard for where they landed; as children ran under them trying to catch them to keep you from getting your points. That said, I’m one of the lucky morons that decided throwing darts in the air just wasn’t as fun as it could be.

And why would it? You throw the dart up in the air and you have to wait literally 3’s of seconds for the dart to succumb to gravity and land (hopefully) near it’s intended target. This is not a fun way to play so we blatantly ignored the warnings on the box and played our way. An hour later, with a possible concussion, I tearfully explained to my cousin that I was no longer interested in Lawn Darts. That was the day I learned that it’s people like me that ruin the harmless fun of others by sometimes becoming a statistic for the lawyers to use.

8 BB Guns

You’ll shoot your eye out. Or someone else’s. Or the eye of a neighborhood cat. At the end of the day someone was going to be wearing an eye patch. I don’t know one person who had a B.B. gun that doesn’t have a story of getting injured by said gun. Mostly boys were armed with these and the thinking of a 10 year old boy is usually murky as best.

I remember we used to shoot each other with these things. This is where the situation would go terribly wrong; everyone was supposed to abide by the “one pump” rule when going Lee Harvey on their neighborhood friends, but that’s when over-thinking in the trenches of war ended up getting someone hurt. “One pump, but what if it doesn‘t get there? Two pumps is for pussies. Probably should go at least three unless this was made in Taiwan; wait, yep, made in Taiwan–that means probably add another two pumps.” And before you know it you’re at the emergency room and your buddy looks like Captain Ron.

7 Trampolines

I’ve seen a lot of dumb people get hurt in my day and most of the worst, most severe injuries came on this bouncy middle finger to gravity. Well, not necessarily on the trampoline, but mostly on the ground somewhere within a ten foot radius of said trampoline. Black eyes, arms that went in the complete wrong direction, various sprains, bruises and lots of lost blood. These things should be banned from use by anyone under the age of twenty one. The days I remember on them were as if Cirque Du Soleil had downed two bottles of Jack Daniels all got on the trampoline at once. Arms and legs flailing in all directions, while people shot of the thing in all directions like a landmine went off underneath us.

And remember the Pogo Ball I talked about before? I once saw a buddy get on a Pogo Ball on top of the shed in his backyard, then jump off the shed onto the trampoline–sending him wildly careening 15 feet into the corner of a backyard where he miraculously landed the Pogo Ball on a pile of rocks where it then exploded in way that would have made the Manhattan Project jealous. My knees still hurt from watching that. I’ve seen less buckle on the waists of rodeo champions. Kids today don’t know anything about the type of reckless ingenuity it takes to really get a doctor to raise his eyebrows when you tell him the story of how you got your injury these days.

6 Big Wheels

I was the Evel Knievel of Big Wheel riders in my neighborhood. And by that I mean I never backed down from a jump (no matter how bone shatteringly stupid it was). And I carried a gun. You know, because of ruffians and the roving bands of 18th century Spaniards that were always brandishing swords and causing trouble in the cul-de-sac. Alas, that is a whole other story.

The Big Wheel was the safety bar set by your parents and the people at the Darwin Awards to see when a young man or woman was mature enough to handle riding a bicycle. I had a big wheel till I was 14. And boy did I go through them. I must have had 10 different big wheels because of controlled slides, curb jumping, ramp jumping, racing on grass, asphalt and once tried to jump a creek at the bottom of a huge hill near my neighborhood. It was my Snake River Canyon. And it also heeded the same results. There was blood, crashing, rocks and to add insult to various injury, I ended up soaking wet. I’m pretty sure most people reading this who lived in the 80’s have a similar story. Or maybe I’m just “that guy.”

5 Scooters

See, I rode bikes a lot, but never suffered severe injuries from them until I got to 15 or so. But, I had a scooter when I was like 8 or 9 and I’ve never had a toy that seemed to always have such a complexly different agenda than I did. Later on I would discover “girlfriends” and the circle would be complete, but scooters were my first foray into learning that gravity and inertia would never want to do what I thought we were going to be doing that day.

I was the Carl Lewis of scooter riders. I flew over the handle bars with the grace and speed of someone twice my size. My friends didn’t have scooters, so they rode mine. They also knew the pain of having the front tire stop and the back tire swing around to clock you in the back of the head at 15 mph. At one point, we just all agreed to leave this thing alone. I mean, we ALWAYS got hurt riding it. It gave you the thrill of skateboarding mixed with the false sense of security a bike gives you. It was dark red and we referred to it as the “devil scooter.” The brakes on the thing lasted like 2 weeks, tops. And when the tires finally went flat, we left them that way. Like an alcoholic Step-Daddy, we didn’t want it hurting anyone else.

4 Skateboards

Even attempting to stand on a skateboard can lead a child with a poor equilibrium to a serious concussion. Let alone attempting anything more advanced.

Need I say more?

3 Giant Styrofoam Airplanes

You’d have to be the Werner Von Braun of Styrofoam aeronautics to get these damn things to fly more than 10 feet. Or move to a place with a wind tunnel.

That or you’d have to climb up on the roof of your house and get a running start. I did the latter and that was why these things were massively dangerous. Airplanes gave me my first taste of the fickle pain in the ass that was gravity, wind direction, and gave me a wicked fear of heights.

2 Sit and Spin

The only thing more dangerous than Dean Martin’s “All-Liquid Diet” is ol’ Deano’s equilibrium. But that’s exactly what a child experiences when they sit and take this horrible idea for a spin. It’s a personalized merry-go-round with all of the fun side effects: vomiting, insane dizziness, vertigo, massive head trama and more vomiting.

Who thought this was a good idea to give this to children? Who likes feeling like this? Just because I’m “10,” doesn’t mean I want to feel like Dudley Moore on a bender.

1 Sleds

Anyone else have to read that book “Ethan Frome”? Where the main character and his lover get on a sled and slam head-first into a tree in an attempt to end their lives? Welcome to every winter of my life since I was 5 years old. I’ve been gearing up and the sled and slamming head-first into trees every winter just at the off-chance that I’ll forget ever reading that book. So far, no dice.

Sledding is one of the activities that often flies under the radar of the dangerous children’s activities. Because snow is soft; until you’re falling recklessly into it froma ten foot ramp you and your buddies built. Or maybe, let’s say the roof of a neighbor or other snow enthusiast, such as yourself. And throw in the possibility of concussions, frostbite and the fact that you may very well slide into an oncoming Ford Taurus; sledding is often a recipe for an exciting screeching disaster.

Look, I know it probably isn’t normal, but the same things that made me excited when I was younger still entertain me today. I guess that some activities and people in life just never get old. Some of you will tell me I’m juvenile, while others will tell me that I live a sad and pathetic life. But sometimes it’s re-living the experiences we enjoyed when we were young that help us remember how carefree and fun life can be. I mean that’s the reason some people love having kids so much, right? I’d just rather leave kids out of the equation and enjoy these things on my own.

8 Big Wheel
The Big Wheel was probably the best form of transportation ever invented. It goes big wheels, tanks, and then those little cars the Shriners drive in parades. The Big Wheel was the most fun you could have on three wheels as a kid, and think that statement still holds water today. They make adult sized Big Wheels now, but I just can’t bring myself to get one. If I had other people that liked to drink and race Big Wheels around me I’d totally get one. Unfortunately my friends are all semi-responsible or don’t have the health insurance necessary to really race these babies. But I’d still totally rock one if I lived in a place where others were as juvenile as I.

7 Nintendo
Sure, the video game systems today are unbelievably amazing, but that doesn’t mean some of us don’t long to go back and play the classics from time to time. Games like Zelda and Super Mario Brothers 2 are the games that I grew up on, and sometimes I throw them on and play awhile. I’ve probably lost a boatload of money gambling on RBI Baseball, which, in my opinion, is still the greatest baseball game of all-time. It’s the little things like losing $20 on Frank Viola that sometimes keeps life interesting.

6 A real General Lee
Now I know that the stars and bars aren’t PC, but when I was setting up jumps for my Matchbox General Lee, I was longing for the days when I’d be able to jump bales of hay in my own General. I would be able to run from the police and pull sick doughnuts on the lawn of that neighbor I hate. Unfortunately, at the time, I didn’t exactly understand how off-base the physics of jumping a car over a ravine was–if I tried it today I’d probably end up face down in my steering wheel with “Dixieland” playing until the horn went out… Still want one though. Totally worth it!

5 Moon Bounce
You know you still look at moon bounces and are secretly jealous of the kids that get to take their shoes off and go nuts in these things. At birthday parties kids get all hyped on sugar and start bouncing around like kangaroos on meth until they end up vomiting. The exact same thing happens when you have a moon bounce around 20-somethings with a keg. It’s fun as hell though. I guess some activities just transcend age. And admit it, you know you’ve always wanted to have sex on one of these things…

4 Laser Tag
Laser tag was always fun as a kid because it was pretty much as close to a real gun battle as you could get without someone getting pelted with a BB gun. You had to wear the little vest and you’d run around like you were in the movie Tron while your buddies cheated by trying to cover their reflectors. I actually know a place that is a bar/mini-golf/bowling alley/laser tag arena. It’s exactly what I picture Heaven is like, except with more stoners cowering in the corner mumbling about always getting shot the most. It’s a pretty awesome place because apparently I’m still 12 and still enjoy doing all of those things while drinking.

3 Speak and Spell
Sometimes I get a little too much of the sauce in me and I tend to yell at my television set when football season comes around. That means that occasionally I’ll lose my voice and need something to relay my abstract thought process and complex vernacular to others in my vicinity. Yes, I once used a Speak and Spell to communicate with others one afternoon after a particularly tough football loss. I would mouth, “Do I have to spell it out for you?” as I typed in the letters. Yep, that was probably one of the douchiest things I’ve ever done, but the Steven Hawking voice made it quite entertaining for the first few minutes. I don’t recommend it unless you want to be punched in the face.

2 Snow-Cone Machine
I like snow-cones and cotton candy more than an adult probably should. What can I say, fair food is the sh-t. When I was little I liked getting those multi-colored snow-cones from the Good Humor man. And then when I got to college I realized that snow-cones were good for putting booze in and being able to walk around campus without any “John Q” lawman bothering me. With flavors like Cherry-Strawberry Pass Out and Deep Purple Nightmare (made with Everclear!), they were a big hit at summer parties.

1 Pop-a-Shot
I liked basketball when I was little and I still like it now that I’m big. I got one of these for my basement when I was 12-years-old and I was sinking shots for the next two years. After being only a few feet away for so long, I eventually moved back further from the hoop in order to create a whole different game called “Breaking All the Glassware of Value in the Basement.” I used to clean house playing this at arcades and got copious amounts of tickets for being so good at it. These days I use my pop-a-shot skills to win bar bets at Dave and Busters. Now I can finally start making payments on that clock I broke in ‘91.

When I was twelve it was the ‘90s and I lived in the South. Parents in the south are notoriously lax about what kinds of dangerous things they will let their kids play with. Unfortunately for me, my parents were from the North and that meant that I often was left out in the cold when it came to getting to play with toys deemed “dangerous” by the media and society in general. Looking back at my decision-making skills, it was probably for the best, but I at the time I always felt like I was getting gypped. Here are a few of the things that most 12-year-old boys wanted for Christmas or a birthday but probably never got for one reason or another.

7 Pony
It’s the one thing that boys and girls could somewhat agree on. Girls wanted to ride through the woods like a princess after watching My Little Pony, while boys wanted to saddle up and ride like cowboys on the ol’ range. But we didn’t fully realize what an undertaking an animal of this size was. You needed food, shelter, shots and a litany of other things that made pony ownership both expensive and time consuming. Not to mention the danger of falling off a spooked horse in the middle of the woods. Face it, mommy and daddy only loved you enough to rent you a pony for your birthday party. Remind them of that when it comes time to pick a retirement home…

6 Four-Wheeler
Sure, if you wanted to drive a motorcycle or a car you’d have to wait till you turned 16, but for some reason four-wheelers were perfectly acceptable to drive as long as you could reach the pedals. They are exceptionally fun to ride but are ridiculously easy to tip over. Parents knew it was only a matter of time until you became comfortable enough to construct a crude dirt ramp and jump one of these things over a creek. There was a good reason Evel Knievel spent a good portion of his life coated in plaster and it had everything to do with thinking like a 12-year-old on a four wheeler. Need proof of this? The guy wore a cape his entire life…which was awesome but obviously not normal.

5 BB Gun
I think the film A Christmas Story may have ruined BB guns for my entire generation. And it’s not hard to see why a lot of parents are uneasy with the thought of arming their children. As a young man, I had friends with BB guns, and while it didn’t always end badly, there were some one pump wars that ended with blood and crying and a lifetime of being stopped at airport metal detectors. Would you really end up shooting your eye out? It’s hard to say. But for a lot of us, mom and dad weren’t going to give us the opportunity to do so.

4 The Good Fireworks
When you’re a kid you don’t really understand how fireworks actually worked, you only knew them to be awesome. You’d go to the fireworks stand and ask for the biggest box with those monster mortars that you saw at the 4th of July parade last year. You’d end up with a box of sparklers, those stupid black snakes that grew out of the ground, and a few of those funnels that sparked and screamed but never sent anything careening a couple hundred feet into the air like you dreamed they would. You’d get mad at the guy at the fireworks stand for bamboozling you into buying a product he knew you didn’t want. I’m 12, chief. Hit me up with the good rockets or I’m coming back with that stick I smash those black snakes with and wail on your lying knees.

3 Half-Pipe
I had a friend that was lucky enough to have a half-pipe in his back yard. If you were a kid who rode BMX bikes, skateboarded or had roller-blades, you may have asked your parents to build you one, as it was the ultimate ramp experience. When you are little you don’t understand things like “liability” and “health insurance policy” as they pertain to building a structure that will pit gravity against uncoordinated 12-year-olds. There were horrific bruises, stitches and a concussion that didn’t deter the neighborhood children, but did cause panic amongst adults that lectured their battered children as they drove to the hospital. Even with the injuries, it was still fun. And most kids would tell mom it was “totally worth it” if their mouth wasn’t wired shut for the next six to eight weeks.

2 Compound Bow
Some kids who wanted a serious bow went into full “William Tell me why I can’t get a red bandanna and a compression bow” and go all John Rambo on the neighborhood. I lived in the south, so I had friends who had these babies from a young age, and honestly, they were more of a menace to neighborhood birds and squirrels than anything else. But it only took video of one kid on the local news coming home looking like General Custer to ruin Rambo-time for everyone within a 100 mile radius. It was always the stupidest kids that drew first blood and killed the fun of juvenile munitions for all of us.

1 Trampoline
There was probably not a more dangerous or enjoyable “toy” that you could get. There was the game “popcorn” and back flips, front flips and trying to bounce people off, and then came broken bones, concussions and agonizing bruises. Trampolines possessed all that was great about gravity and being a kid and mixed it in with all that was terrible about gravity and being a kid. You knew that everything that went up had to come down, but had no idea of the bone density needed to land at angles so awkward they would make Cirque du Soleil cringe. Hello bouncing fun…hello shattered femur…goodbye dreams of being a trampoline owner.

Via Gizmodo, product specifications for this $2600 wondertoy:

* Flat desk area
* Left and Right built-in mouse pads
* Bench seat that fits two children and offers storage inside for supplies
* Two locking cabinet doors
* Computer wiring stores safely inside ventilated cabinet.
* Locking castors keep unit from rolling during use.

Computer equipment features:

* Think Centre PC
* Internal DVD-ROM
* 1GB RAM (minimum)
* 160GB Hard Drive (minimum)
* 10/100 Ethernet
* Microsoft® Windows
* Sound Card and 2 External Speakers
* Surge protector
* 19″ Widescreen Flat Panel LCD Monitor
* Custom Little Tikes Learning keyboard and Tiny Mouse (colors are subject to change without notice)

Computer Warranty: 1-year parts and labor.
Pre-loaded educational software:

* Millie’s Math House®
* Sammy’s Science House®
* Bailey’s Book House®
* Trudy’s Time and Place®
* Thinkin’ Things®

I’m not sure what’d be worse…that you’re trapping your kid at a cubicle at this young of an age or the realization that your child has a far more kick-ass cubicle than you do, Sorry, we all love your Dwight Schrute bobblehead, but you don’t have a whole lot more to offer.

If the makers of Baby’s First Cubicle preload some Number Munchers on this bad boy, then we can talk.

Baby’s First Cubicle: The Most Depressing Toy Ever? [Gizmodo]
Young Explorer™ [Little Tikes]

I guess this is supposed to inspire young women that yes, in fact, they too can one day work in technology, be successful, and own a really stupid looking pink laptop with matching emo glasses. I’m kind of concerned for the little girls though; it doesn’t seem like Barbie can hold down a job for very long at all. It’s great that she’s had such a breadth of experience, but how about we settle down and focus for a bit? Barbie seems to have more coked up ideas and get-rich-quick schemes than Kramer did on “Seinfeld”.

Barbie’s New Profession [Buzzfeed]

Then again, if anyone needs penile enlargement pills, it’d be a Ken doll. I can’t imagine how unsatisfied the ladies of Barbieland are. They probably just sit in their respective dream houses as Ken makes apologies with their heads in their hands. The only relief for the Barbies comes when the Harlem Globetrotters have a game in town. When Ken comes home and hears Sweet Georgia Brown blaring out the window along with 7 shadows and Barbie looking like a pig on the spittle at a luau, he probably just goes for a drive.

[Reddit]

One of the toys the little kid in your life and/or basement will want this summer is a singing Hannah Montana Christmas doll. Unfortunately, as happens every year, the audio quality on the talking doll is a bit garbled, making it sound like the doll is cursing. You can see the doll expressing its vulgar love for pumpkin pie at 0:43.