Childhood's Reruns
Feb. 13th, 2004 12:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
clayhornikUSA Today did an article on this year's big toys. Rainbow Brite's making a comeback. GI Joe, Transformers, Strawberry Shortcake, Carebears, He-Man: they've all returned.
This bothers me. Today's children aren't getting a childhood, they're getting a rerun of our childhoods.
Sure, as kids we had holdovers from earlier generations: Batman, GI Joe, Barbie, Mickey Mouse. But a funny thing happened in the early to mid-eighties: an explosion of cross marketed product. GI Joe shrank to the size of Star Wars figures and gained more crap than you could stuff in the big guy's footlocker. Then they got a tv show, as did the strange newcomers from the east: big robots that transform. Transformers. Go-Bots. The damn things were like Rubik's cubes with personalties and plotlines. Comic book tie ins. The girls got the uber happy Shortcake, Brite* and Carebears. Syndicated cartoons, the popularity of which provoked a backlash of sorts since the shows were, in essence, a thirty minute commercial
The Joe, the Bears and Transformers all got feature films, with voice acting provided by talent as diverse as Don Johnson and Peter Ustinov.
Then something happened and seemingly over night, the disappeared. Thankfully in some cases.
The kids that collected them went to high school, college, and all this detritus from childhood became the stuff of drunken nostalgia.
"Yo, Joe!"
"DUDE, you watched that?"
"Channel 27, every day at four thirty."
"Cool, me too... I think I musta had alla those guys. The red headed chick. The ninja..."
"Stormshadow or Snake-Eyes?"
"Both."
"Dude!"
GI Joe never really faded away like the others. A few years ago, Hasbro started making the original sized Joe's, appealing to the collector's market and the nostalgia of an earlier generation. Recently, during a Fringe Theatre festival in Toronto, there was a live production, complete with very impressive costumes, of one of the episodes.
But pretty much everything else had become relegated to cult status, the attic, or the bottom of the toy box.
I think what changed all this was e-bay. That allowed these former children to say "hey mom- it's mine again." Finally they could get the things they'd lost or worse yet, been denied.
Eventually the corporations took noticed. Trips to KB Toys (going out of business... stock up for Christmas now) became a walk down memory lane. Hell, even the Skeleton Warriors were making a comeback.
Third tier comic book publishers are elbowing their way past DC and Marvel with GI Joe, Transformers, Thundercats and Battle of the Planets. There's a market again.
Those former kids now have their own hard earned money to spend and could purchase whatever they wanted, without waiting for Christmas or a birthday. Mom and Dad aren't around to tell them no. Many of them even have kids of their own, and more than willing to share their toys- the ones they'd take out of the packaging anyway.
Me? I'm waiting for Jem & the Holograms. Media figures as heros. Technology spawned rock groups. Ahead of it's time.
--
This one's for Kevin, who remembers this stuff too.
This bothers me. Today's children aren't getting a childhood, they're getting a rerun of our childhoods.
Sure, as kids we had holdovers from earlier generations: Batman, GI Joe, Barbie, Mickey Mouse. But a funny thing happened in the early to mid-eighties: an explosion of cross marketed product. GI Joe shrank to the size of Star Wars figures and gained more crap than you could stuff in the big guy's footlocker. Then they got a tv show, as did the strange newcomers from the east: big robots that transform. Transformers. Go-Bots. The damn things were like Rubik's cubes with personalties and plotlines. Comic book tie ins. The girls got the uber happy Shortcake, Brite* and Carebears. Syndicated cartoons, the popularity of which provoked a backlash of sorts since the shows were, in essence, a thirty minute commercial
The Joe, the Bears and Transformers all got feature films, with voice acting provided by talent as diverse as Don Johnson and Peter Ustinov.
Then something happened and seemingly over night, the disappeared. Thankfully in some cases.
The kids that collected them went to high school, college, and all this detritus from childhood became the stuff of drunken nostalgia.
"Yo, Joe!"
"DUDE, you watched that?"
"Channel 27, every day at four thirty."
"Cool, me too... I think I musta had alla those guys. The red headed chick. The ninja..."
"Stormshadow or Snake-Eyes?"
"Both."
"Dude!"
GI Joe never really faded away like the others. A few years ago, Hasbro started making the original sized Joe's, appealing to the collector's market and the nostalgia of an earlier generation. Recently, during a Fringe Theatre festival in Toronto, there was a live production, complete with very impressive costumes, of one of the episodes.
But pretty much everything else had become relegated to cult status, the attic, or the bottom of the toy box.
I think what changed all this was e-bay. That allowed these former children to say "hey mom- it's mine again." Finally they could get the things they'd lost or worse yet, been denied.
Eventually the corporations took noticed. Trips to KB Toys (going out of business... stock up for Christmas now) became a walk down memory lane. Hell, even the Skeleton Warriors were making a comeback.
Third tier comic book publishers are elbowing their way past DC and Marvel with GI Joe, Transformers, Thundercats and Battle of the Planets. There's a market again.
Those former kids now have their own hard earned money to spend and could purchase whatever they wanted, without waiting for Christmas or a birthday. Mom and Dad aren't around to tell them no. Many of them even have kids of their own, and more than willing to share their toys- the ones they'd take out of the packaging anyway.
Me? I'm waiting for Jem & the Holograms. Media figures as heros. Technology spawned rock groups. Ahead of it's time.
--
This one's for Kevin, who remembers this stuff too.
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Date: 2004-02-12 10:49 pm (UTC)And walking through Kmart a few months ago I remember seeing Care Bears. And yes, all the Thundercats and other stuff from the 80s coming back on Hot Topic tshirts. Argh!
I'm too young to see my childhood recycled already.