YOU get in shape, jerk.

Hey do you remember Popples? If you're about my age (25 LOL ) then the word should ring a bell. Popples were stuffed animals that had a pouch where they could be folded up into a ball. I never owned a Popple, I didn't see the appeal, they weren't as cool as Wuzzles (not to be confused with Puffalumps). Remember Wuzzles? Wuzzles was even a cartoon. I wanted a Wuzzle but instead I think I just got a Care Bear. They had a cartoon that was popular but not as musically memorable as the Gummi Bears. Occasionally the theme song to the Gummi bears will pop into my head and I'll be forced to sing it. It's like the Fresh Prince of Belair theme....people can't help but join in...you don't realize you know all of the words until they spill out of you.

My favorite stuffed animals were the pound puppies and pound purries. At one point Hardees had a mini pound puppy giveaway and my generous parents actually let us eat there, multiple times, to collect the ones that a we wanted. I also had pound puppy colorforms. Do they still make colorforms? I would play with those for hours! (ETA: Amazon has a wide selection. Who knew?)

Is it me or were 80's toys just weird? I mean remember Pogo Ball? (Pogo ball is what you call it!) Until that thing went flat you didn't stand a chance with it. I think I would bounce on mine for about five bounces at a time and then I'd leave it for a month or so. If you feel like you're up to the challenge you can get a pogo ball for yourself here: http://www.bebodysmart.com/. I wonder if I could justify buying a roller racer or a skip it for exercise purposes. Would the sit and spin keep me in my target heart rate zone? Probably I should hold out for some Get in Shape Girl. Man, just typing that filled me with residual anger. Can you imagine getting that for an adult woman as a gift? You would (rightfully) get slapped. I mean, even the name makes me furious. "Hey what's up? I just got you a present. You need to get in shape, gurrrrl." Unless you got me the one with the ribbon in it so I can do ribbon dancing like they do in the Olympics you'd better save the receipt and get out of my blood circle.

(I preferred to get my exercise by doing Mousercise and - REAL TALK- did the Step In Time routine in my basement throughout high school. I'm totally buying that mp3. My other favorite exercise routine was Miss Piggy's Aerobique Exercise Workout Album which sadly does not seem to be available from Amazon.)

The other day as we were going to sleep I started, out of the blue, to tell my husband about Fashion Plates. Remember those? You had a set of plastic plates filled with feathered hair cuts, shoulder padded blouses and western inspired skirts and you would mix and match them to create new looks. Then you'd take the side of a crayon and make a rubbing of the plate and supposedly you'd color it in. The first time I heard about using rubbings in archeology I thought, "Huh. Like fashion plates," so I guess that toy really was educational. It was a good use for the black crayons just like egg dying was the only use for the white ones.

I don't know about you but MY Little Ponies always played in the bathtub with my pretty mermaids. You know, those single mom mermaids toting their little baby mermaid around all day. No sign of those deadbeat Mermen at any point. I had a whole ton of them but they were no match to my army of ponies. ( They were similar in the way that Herself the Elf was biting on Strawberry Shortcake). Both toys were great at the pool but the ponies lead to some tough choices. You could leave the tails in and the ponies would float but then smell all moldy later OR you could take the tails out and use them as water guns but they were more likely to sink. When your older brother is nearby it's a tough call.

Speaking of older brothers, my big brother has two toys that I associate with him the most. The first is track ball. Track ball was kind of like jai alai for wimps and doesn't seem to have any clear rules or goal that I am aware of besides catching the ball and throwing it again. If you're curious you can buy one and try to play it. I was always eager to play, catastrophically bad and it generally lead to a lot of teasing. Which brings me to the toy that never fails to make me think of my brother...Big Trax.

Big trax was kind of a robotic tank that you could program to follow around your kid sister and torment her....very slowly. You would set a path for it using it's control panel and it would take off like an evil Roomba and chug around and bleep and blink. Kick ass.

Breyer Horses, Jem, GI Joe and Cabbage Patch kids were commercialized and fed to us like the breakfast cereals they inspired but I feel like they were better toys than what's all over Target today. They didn't run on batteries or plug into computers. You had to get down on your knees and make the action figures talk to each other. The best you could hope for was a button that caused real chopping action. They were toys that begged to be taken outside and dragged through the mud. If the kids in my family took their $50 battery operated toys out into the yard and dropped them in the stream to send them on an exposition I'd probably be pretty aggravated but when I was little if it couldn't go into the stream behind our house I probably wouldn't even ask for it.

What toys from your childhood do you wish were still around? (And not in a blockbuster summer movie kind of way.)