Toys That Sucked Part I

Like a sinister siren, toys beckon to children, offering untold hours of fantasy, rapture and entertainment. Yet their promise of joy is often made up of little more than a hollow husk of lies and betrayal. Sure some toys are great, and are fondly remembered for the hours of whimisical adventures they provided. But then there is the dark side: toys that simply sucked.

We all knew of these toys, everyone has had their own fare share of experiences, raised expectations and the following crushing reality. For many of us, they were the first telltale signs that life was indeed not quite as good as “pictured on the box”. They offered a world of joy and promise, yet the end result was more than a disappointment: it was a crushing, soul-dampening spiritual defeat.

Many toys sucked: this is undoudtably true. These are the ones that sucked for me.

Hungry Hippo (a.k.a Hungry, Hungry Hippos)

Everyone knows Hungry Hippo. Many desired it just like I did. With the frantic tapping and swallowing, it was surely a poster-child game for 80s consumerism and no doubt caused many youngsters to embark on a life of gluttony and obesity. Yet at the end of the day, it was simply crap.  Swallowing white balls, almost at random, by simply bashing a lever, offered no long term entertainment. Yet as a child, I lusted after the game that was a frequent advertising staple on my beloved children’s TV shows. The premise was intriguing, it combined African wildlife with excessive consumption: how could it go wrong? Despite my yearnings, my parents deemed the product unsuitable and I could only dream of those snapping mouths and the promised eventual thrill of consuming more than my competitors and therefore reigning triumphant. One day, however, I managed to come across what I considered the holy grail of interactive board games at a friend’s place. We commenced playing, and what should have been a glorious moment of game-playing turned out to be no more exciting than watching a glistening turd slowly dry out in the sun. Devistated, yet relieved that I had not shelled out my pocket money for the game, I realized the folly of my dreams, that indeed not all games were created equal and that TV did not always tell the truth. I never looked lustfully at the game again, no matter how much the hungry, hungry, hippos wanted me to.

Mouse Trap

Another game featured so famously on TV. It seemed so exciting: the pinnacale of spinning wheels, dropping balls and lunging traps. Yet once again, at the end of the day, the plastic cogs, wheels and chutes were simply the very lame icing on a very lame, sucky, cake. Mouse Trap was just a simple board game with little to no skill involved, merley following the throw of the dice. The standout feature was a nifty, yet eventually quite boring, practical display of the “gravity” phenomenon. It seemed so cool on TV: can *your* daring mouse *dodge* the trap? No it couldn’t, if you threw a dud roll. The “Mouse Trap” was just a superficial display of plastic manufacturing and basic science principles, no more, no less. There was no subtle hide and seek with the captor, just a mere physical representation of the lucky (or unlucky) numbers you threw. Once played a few times, the novelty of the whole trap conception wore off. Sure it was cool to build the “trap”, but once done and executed, the shine dulled. Mouse Trap was another brilliant marketing devised game, with a quick high then a long come down, much like crack cocaine. Except, unlike crack, you didn’t get addicted, only increasingly bored until you humbly shoved it in a cupboard, never to be rediscovered until the day where you yourself might have children and want to pass on down the frustratingly lame, shallow, experience that was “Mouse Trap”.

 

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