Having seen a couple of entries regarding iconic toys on theoatmeal.com, I figured I'd add my own take on some of them.

In a world where kids seem to increasingly only want things that are electronic in ways I can't fully imagine, the lifespan of some of these things is incredible. Now, with that said, I ponder a couple of other things: do the kids really want the latest game platform, or does Daddy want it? Also, some of these iconic 60s and 70s toys; do kids want them, or do their parents want them to have the toys because they wanted them in 1974?

Here goes, though:

Big Wheel. I was dying to have one. It was fun. You were at a weird angle to the street and a little plastic thingy on a spring made it sound like a motorbike. Kind of. Except that it was actually just a tricycle--a plastic tricycle at that, and by the time I got a Big Wheel, I could already ride a bike like a big kid, but like all the other kids in my neighborhood, I HAD to have a Big Wheel. I remember very sadly, though, that once I outgrew it, it lived in back of the house anyway and slowly faded from bright orange into a vague lip-glossy color. When I tried to ride it again out of childish nostalgia (when you're eight or nine, it's easy to be nostalgic for something that passed only two years before), the plastic cracked and it fell apart. Maryland winters 1, Big Wheel 0.

Silly Putty. What the hell was this stuff EVER good for? Oh yeah: lifting comics off the newspaper page. Except that they were then backwards, and after you did this a few times, the Silly Putty looked like a giant grey booger. You could not do anything else even vaguely entertaining with Silly Putty. It just stretched and looked like a big booger. I am aware that a lot of toys don't actually do anything--in fact, most of the best don't--but really, with a big booger there's only so much that imagination can do. I predict that in the near future, Silly Putty will be done. I'm not sure how it's lived this long, but as real print newspapers and therefore newsprint comics are dying a rapid death, the only purpose of this stupid crap will be obsolete. (NB: As a child, I was also dying to have Silly Putty, until I got some and shortly realized that the comics made a lot more sense on the page, where they weren't mirror image and weren't the consistency of mucus.)

Slinky. WTF, Slinky? How can you have betrayed me consistently for THIRTY FIVE DAMNED YEARS? As with the aforementioned icons-but-actually-crappy-toys, I was dying to have a Slinky as a kid. My parents (who also realized the foolishness of the Big Wheel and Silly Putty) didn't want to get one for me. My grandfather did, though, and I was so excited that I nearly peed. It had so much going for it, in theory. It descended stairs. It had a REALLY catchy TV commercial. And it descended stairs. Also, that's about all it did. And it DIDN'T EVEN DO IT. I don't know what kind of midget staircase the kids in the commercial had, but even the fairly modestly sized staircase of our suburban Baltimore house was more than the Slinkster could handle. It would get down one, maybe two, steps, and then just recoil itself and sit there glaring. It clearly resented having to fulfill its stair-descending typecast. It eventually got bent (probably from when I tried to MAKE it go down the steps) and disappeared in one of my Mom's cleaning frenzies.

Then, years later, as a college freshman, I re-entered the World of Slinky. One of my friends had one. A small group of us spent the day taking the slinky to various academic buildings, playing with it and trying it on stairs (which it obstinately still refused to descend properly). In a building with a two-story lobby and an open staircase, though, we discovered that you could stretch it out and make sine waves with it. It also made an awesome humming noise while doing this. (Please note: WE WERE ACTUALLY NOT HIGH WHILE DOING THIS.) I became enthralled with Slinkies all over again. Someone gave me a plastic one. Let me tell you: If a regular Slinky isn't worth a crap, a PLASTIC Slinky is about as useful as a carburetor on a walrus. Several years later, I got a real live Slinky again. After fifteen years of trying, it STILL won't go down the stairs.

Now, for a toy that's actually worth while: The Magic 8 Ball. I make major life decisions with this thing's assistance. Sure, it requires yes-or-no questions; most of its responses are positive, and "Ask Again Later" means that I will ask again in five seconds (it doesn't define how MUCH later). Does *blank* like me? Do I like *blank* or do I just think I do? Will I like *blank* when I'm sober? Should I buy stock in *blank-Corp*? Hey, as far as I can tell, the 8 Ball's advice is no worse than anybody else's.