Hi, I'm Chris Bench, Chief Curator

at the Strong National Museum of Play

in Rochester, New York.

And this is every top toy for the last 50 years.

[upbeat music]

So how did we come up with this list of 50?

It's based on toys that had the biggest cultural impact,

the toys that changed the face of play,

and the toys that all of us remember most.

1969's Snoopy Astronaut.

It's the year that the first person walked on the moon.

It was something that so many Americans

remember where they were.

An iconic event in popular culture,

and who else really got into the astronaut business?

Everybody's favorite comic strip beagle, Snoopy.

Snoopy Astronaut, it was perfect for the American

mood of the time.

1970, the Nerf Ball.

The Nerf Ball is credited to Reyn Guyer,

a freelance toy designer.

Nerf Ball wasn't gonna be a play thing,

it was going to be a game.

Originally it was going to be a Flintstones

war of foam rocks game, by one of the creators of Twister.

Well the folks at Milton Bradley hated the idea,

they passed on it.

Parker Brothers took up the concept

and they tossed out the game but they kept the foam.

They thought it could be the first indoor ball

that kids could toss around without

making mom and dad irate that they were

gonna break something.

The Nerf Ball sold four million copies in its first year,

a really blistering pace.

Nerf is huge, right down to the present.

[Announcer] This is how we play.

[Chris] 1971, Weebles.

♪ Hey hey look at me and Weebles ♪

♪ Weebles wobble but they don't fall down ♪

Romper Room makes Weebles toys.

Weebles wobble but they won't fall down.

The advertising tagline that made these

little egg shaped playing pieces, characters,

so popular that year from Romper Room.

They have a counterweight in the bottom

so you can bop them around and they will not fall over.

They're perfectly sized for toddlers' hands,

they are ideal for play sets like this Wild West version,

and they came in so many variants ever since,

and have been popular toys for kids across the decades.

1972, Uno.

It all started with the Robbins family in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Merle Robbins was a barber, his extended family

loved playing the card game Crazy Eights.

But family members kept forgetting the rules of the game,

so he marked the instructions right on the cards.

Eventually his family concluded that

wouldn't it be great to have a customized set

that included the rules on the cards?

The result was the game Uno.

It became a grassroots craze,

and by the time that 1972 came around, Uno was a hit.

1973, skateboards.

Skateboards had been around years before,

especially homemade versions.

They were credited to surfers who used them

as an alternative for days when there wasn't any good surf.

Although they had a surge of popularity in the 1960s,

it wasn't until 1973 that skateboards really took off

thanks to two big technological developments.

One was what were called Cadillac wheels.

They were composite wheels that were smoother,

faster rolling than any wheels that had come before,

and there was new specialized axles or trucks,

as they were called, that were made

especially for skateboards.

With both of those features, skateboards could become

more controllable, suitable for tricks.

Skateboards didn't receive TV advertising,

and what really sold skateboards

was people seeing folks use them.

Demonstrations, competitions, and watching kinds of tricks,

watching the agility that they allowed you.

Skateboards are part of our competitive culture

right down to the present,

with iconic figures like Tony Hawk.

1974, Dungeons & Dragons.

Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson created Dungeons & Dragons.

They were big fans of the war games

and other simulation games,

and they took it in a new fantastic dimension

inspired by things like the Lord of the Rings book series.

Dungeons and Dragons not only changed tabletop gaming,

and lured new adults into the world of games,

it gave you a framework, it gave you characters,

it gave you a mode of play with those polyhedral dice,

and it allowed you to spin imaginative yarns

with friends, with family, and to really take yourself

to places that you've never gone before,

certainly not with a traditional board game.

It also influenced computer games,

because those multi-sided dice and the way

that those controlled play were perfect

for the kinds of randomization for all kinds of

imaginative and role playing and strategy games,

in online and on disks.

1975, the Pet Rock.

One of the most brilliant fad toys ever.

If you wanna talk about making a million

off of something that's essentially worthless,

this is what Gary Dahl did with the Pet Rock.

He was a marketing genius and taking rocks

and packaging them in what were essentially

miniature pet carriers.

A million were sold in the first year.

The tongue-in-cheek manual that came with the Pet Rock

gave you instructions for how to house break it.

You could set it on newspaper and tell it to stay.

Pet Rocks were also wonderful at learning how to play dead,

and the manual gave you the necessary steps to do it.

It was hilarious.

1976, the Bionic Woman and Cher.

Why am I showing two dimensions

of American womanhood for 1976?

It's because they're such a great match-up.

Bionic Woman was a TV spinoff of the series

the Six Million Dollar Man,

in which Jamie Summers was essentially

a female superhero.

And if you loved the Bionic Woman,

you could get the action figure,

essentially indistinguishable from a doll.

With beautiful clothes and styleable hair,

she was sort of an interesting midpsoint

between Donna Reed housewives of the 1950s

and someone who was kick-ass like Linda Hamilton

in the Terminator movies.

At that same time, Sonny and Cher were big

in variety shows at that moment.

Cher with her Bob Mackie gowns was the essence of elegance.

They represent steps forward in feminism.

The Bionic Woman, she was the heroine of her own TV series.

1977, Star Wars action figures.

The toy that revolutionized not only the toy industry

but the world of entertainment.

Kenner took a contract to make toys

for a little science fiction movie

that no one thought was gonna do any business.

And they were so wrong.

They were glad to be wrong, but they were in trouble

because this summer movie release

that became the blockbuster to bust them all,

it really cried out for action figures.

What was Kenner to do?

They did the cleverest marketing technique

of selling gift certificates.

So many kids that holiday season

found wrapped gift certificates

for their Star Wars action figures

because Kenner couldn't get the figures made fast enough.

These little action figures and all the collateral

vehicles and accessories proved that movies

could make more money by licensing their toy products

than they could actually selling tickets at the box office.

1978, Simon.

Simon was a breakthrough idea from Ralph Baer,

creator of the video game concept.

Ralph was out to create a really simple to learn toy.

He was constrained by what microchips

were available on the market,

and he was limited to cheap microchips,

sort of the last previous generation

that were affordable for use in toys,

and all it could handle were four different notes.

Simon has set up in intersection of tabletop gamings

and electronic play and it's something that

we're doing right up to the present.

1979, the Atari 2600.

It wasn't the first home video game system,

that was the Magnavox Odyssey.

It may not have even been the best

in lots of peoples opinions,

but it was the Atari 2600 that broke through

into so many Americans' homes,

and taught them that playing games on your TV was a thing,

a thing that people hadn't really considered before.

The Atari 2600 had a price point

that was appealing to people.

It also was the game system that allowed them

to play the games they'd become familiar with at arcades.

Games like Pac-Man and Space Invaders,

tired of spending all those quarters,

now you could play it at home.

1980, Rubik's Cube.

The fastest selling puzzle ever.

It was a creation of a Hungarian architecture

and design professor named Erno Rubik.

He was trapped behind the iron curtain in Hungary

in a communist environment, where he came up with

this great idea but he really couldn't

make money off of it.

It wasn't until his idea was brought to the west

by Ideal Toy Company, to the US,

rebranded from being the Magic Cube to Rubik's Cube,

and suddenly everybody had to have one.

At one point, three of the top 10 paperback bestsellers

on the New York Times list were all about

how to solve the Rubik's Cube,

because everyone wanted to know the secret.

And if you couldn't figure out the secret,

people sold you sets of stickers.

You could paste over the scrambled sides

and make it look like you had figured out your Rubik's Cube.

1981, He-Man and Masters of the Universe.

Mattel was looking for a way to duplicate

the success of Star Wars action figures,

with little plastic characters.

And they essentially took a concept of their own,

the Big Jim action figure, and bulked him up,

and made He-Man into an absolutely absurd physical shape.

And they accompanied He-Man and the rest

of his Masters of the Universe,

with an entire backstory that they provided

in comic book form, so that you knew all the characters,

you knew that He-Man and Skeletor

were up against each other in eternal combat.

He-Man was by no means the first property

to make that sort of leap between different forms of media.

Those kinds of things have been going on since the 1890s.

But he was really one of the ones that crystallized it

for our own era in the last 50 years.

1982, Care Bears and My Little Pony.

So what was so special about Care Bears?

Care Bears were all about emotions.

They were about kindness,

they were about loving characteristics,

they were cultivating the best kinds of behavior

and emotions.

It was something that parents liked

to train their children in,

and they made them appealing and heartwarming

in a way that other toys weren't.

I think what makes Care Bears so appealing

is their sweet nature.

♪ My little pony ♪

Like He-Man, My Little Pony was a trans media

sort of property that took a series,

originally of six pastel horse figures,

with their anthropomorphized faces

and their long, silky manes and tails,

and turned them into a media juggernaut

with TV series, with movies, with ancillary products,

and really produced expanding, an equine universe

with horses that were sort of crossed with dolls.

The Barbie variations that sell best

are ones that have the most hair.

So Rapunzel Barbie is one of the best selling ones ever.

If you love horses, what could be better

than a horse that has a styleable mane and tail

that you can comb, wash, and have fun with

in that kind of stylist designer way.

My Little Pony has gone through numerous resurgences,

perhaps least predictable in 1982

is that there would be guys known as Bronies,

who are fans of My Little Pony in the present.

That is something that no one could have ever foreseen.

1983, Cabbage Patch Kids.

In the late 1970s, Xavier Roberts was creating

art sculptures, essentially dolls that he called

the little people.

And you didn't buy one of his little people,

you adopted one.

With a unique face, a unique name,

and it was a really appealing concept.

But it was something that got a ground swell

movement behind it, and he couldn't keep up with the demand,

so eventually he licensed the concept to Coleco,

a maker of electronic toys that said that

they would be able to take his concept,

use their manufacturing prowess

to create really customized dolls,

so that they weren't all the same on the shelf.

Different hair color, eye color, skin tone.

Each had its own name.

Each still had adoption papers.

Renamed as the Cabbage Patch Kids,

they were the sensation of 1983.

Adopting was a different concept for a doll.

It gave you a different sort of investment,

that you weren't just paying a price

at the checkout counter,

you were getting an individual doll for you.

[Reporter] And a nursery for the Cabbage Patch Kids,

all under lock and key of course.

The media loved the idea of Cabbage Patch Kids,

and even more once the craze took off.

And parents were brawling in parking lots

to get the last examples of Cabbage Patch Kids

at the store, that everyone wanted to have that story,

and the more the story ran, the more people wanted

the Cabbage Patch Kids.

It was something that really boosted the sales

of Cabbage Patch Kids to the stratosphere.

1984, Trivial Pursuit.

Board games had been on a declining trend

ever since the advent of television in the 1950s.

But that all changed with the 1981 introduction

of Trivial Pursuit.

A trivia game that captivated grown ups in a way

that games hadn't previously.

[Announcer] It's here.

Big Bird!

[cheering]

[Announcer] It's there.

It's everywhere.

By 1984, the year we're recognizing,

there were parties everywhere,

everyone wanted to play, everyone wanted to win,

Trivial Pursuit was a hit.

1985, Teddy Ruxpin.

Teddy's name is Teddy Ruxpin.

He talks.

He seemed so incredibly advanced at the time.

By inserting a cassette in his back,

you could make Teddy a cure to read

children's stories to your kids.

It made him so engaging, it made him perfect

nighttime conclusion to a child's day.

Even though he cost a massive 69.99,

in 1985 he was the best selling toy of the year.

Teddy combined two things.

One was technology of the time.

He seemed very up to date for his moment.

But he also helped promote literacy with reading,

something that so many parents want to

encourage in their kids.

1986, Lazer Tag.

It was such a great competition.

For all the sorts of gun play that have

occurred over the years, this finally let you

prove that you had actually hit your opponent.

Not with a laser, but with infrared beams

so that your opponent knew that they'd been hit

and that you had succeeded.

Now, critics of the time felt that it was

encouraging violence and gun play,

but other folks said this was just

an ongoing way of competitive action,

that it was more tag than killing people.

It generated so much success,

not only for the Lazer Tag product,

but by starting laser tag emporiums

and venues across the nation,

that in their successors of paintball

and other kinds of grown up and big kid play,

are popular right down to today.

1987, Jenga.

The classic tower toppling game.

Dexterity to the Nth degree that anyone can play

with enough strategy and a steady enough hand

to actually maneuver the blocks out of the tower

and set them on top.

English woman Leslie Scott had played

a block toppling towering game

when she was growing up in Africa.

When she went home as a grown up to England,

she took this concept with her.

It was a hit at parties, it took a while for it to lift off,

but eventually in Canada, in the US,

it became a massive hit and eventually

went back to Europe as a sensation.

Now Jenga is all over the world in so many variations.

1988, the Nintendo Entertainment System.

In 1983, Nintendo introduced the Famicom,

a system that was popular throughout Asia

that they rebranded as the Nintendo Entertainment System,

or NES, for the North American market.

And in 1988 it was the go-to system

for people in the US and beyond,

because it had the best games.

It had Donkey Kong, Super Mario Brothers,

Legend of Zelda.

It became the standard of its time

and for many years to come.

1989, the Nintendo Game Boy.

[Announcer] All the power and excitement of Nintendo

right in the palm of your hand.

[Chris] If you loved the NES in 1988,

chances are that you wanted to take your gaming portable,

and Nintendo was out to do that with the Game Boy.

It was a way that you could play your games

anywhere you wanted to go.

And rather than having specialized games

that only allowed you to play football or baseball,

the cartridges for the Game Boy allowed you

to have a multitude of games.

[Announcer] All you need is a Game Boy.

It's a personal game playing system with over 200

puzzle, action and sports games to choose from.

It was simple, it was clear, it was efficiently designed,

it allowed you to have head to head competition,

and the Game Boy became the standard gaming

in terms of mobiles play.

The legacy of the Game Boy shows up

in all of our pockets and purses today

as we play games on our smartphoness.

Maybe even play Tetris.

1990, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

In the 1980s, Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird

were out to create a satirical comic book

that was making fun of superheros,

so they created a bunch of mutant turtles

who lived in sewers, were named after Renaissance artists,

and thought that their tongue in cheek comic book

would be the end of it all.

What they couldn't realize was that

it would go on to become its own media juggernaut,

in light of all sorts of toys that became

a hit with kids who love the irreverent humor,

who loved the pizza eating teenage characters

that they could relate to in a way that

Batman, Superman, Spider-Man, really didn't resonate.

1991, the Super Soaker.

Lonnie Johnson was working for NASA,

trying to develop a water cooled device for spacecraft,

and he developed a technique that he was pressurizing water

and sprayed it all over his bathroom,

thought, you know, this is not gonna work for my project,

but it would make a great play thing.

The Super Soaker took water play to a whole new dimension.

Kids and adults loved it.

Super Soakers went from basic versions

like the one I'm holding, to ones where

the water capacity was so big you wore it in a backpack.

1992, Super NES.

The successor to the Nintendo Entertainment System

brought new capacity to gaming,

with a 16 bit system that allowed more opportunities

for higher grade graphics, faster play,

and one of the things that's different

in video game systems than some other play things,

is that technology keeps advancing,

prices keep coming down for computer chips,

allowing greater and greater capability.

So if you're a fan of a particular series of games,

you want to have the latest version,

the slickest gameplay, and that's what systems

like the Super NES allowed you to do.

1993, Barney.

[upbeat music]

♪ Barney is a dinosaur full of imagination ♪

Barney conveyed so many positive messages

on his PBS series, the purple tyrannosaurus rex

was anything but a Jurassic Park dinosaur.

He was the un-scary dinosaur who represented

really kindly qualities.

He was perfect for toddlers and early preschoolers.

He may have driven parents crazy,

but he was one that was a hit with the kids

and Barney became a cultural icon

in his purple dinosaurness and his friends

across the PBS timeframe.

1994, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.

♪ Go go power rangers ♪

Another trans media property that became

a successful TV series which generated successful toys,

which generated all kinds of other

licensed products along the way.

The teen heroes of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers,

with their color coded gear,

were ones that were big hits with American kids,

and they were so much the flavor of the month

that they were the must have toy for the holidays in 1994.

1995, Beanie Babies.

This was marketing par excellence.

To turn soft toys full of little pellets

into a collectable juggernaut that dominated

gift stores everywhere.

The Beanie Babies were predicated

on a perception of scarcity,

that these were limited edition toys

with their in-ear tags that made them extra appealing,

allowed people to buy them as investments, they thought,

and to create crazes when they thought that

their favorite characters were about to be retired

and they better grab them now.

1996, Tickle Me Elmo.

[Announcer] Who's giving everybody the giggles?

It's Tickle Me Elmo!

There had been soft electronic toys previously,

but Elmo was really more advanced

than someone like Teddy Ruxpin.

His simulation of laughing and uncontrollable joy

from being tickled was tremendously appealing.

And when he was demonstrated on TV shows

like The Rosie O'Donnell Show,

he helped create a marketing craze,

and parents everywhere competed to get their Tickle Me Elmo.

He was the must have toy of the holidays for 1996,

and he has persisted as the most identifiable character

from Sesame Street right down to the present.

The legacy of Tickle Me Elmo is that more and more

we expect even soft cuddly toys

to come with electronic components

or online linkage that means that

it's not just a physical thing,

it's something that has greater capacity

for play and simulation than ever before.

1997, Tamagotchi.

If you weren't quite ready to keep a cat or dog,

or even a hamster, Tamagotchi virtual pet

might be just the solution for you.

You could have a key chain sized pet

to look after, to care for, and to identify with.

It was a digital virtual pet, something miniaturized

in a way that hadn't been seen or popularized before.

If you didn't do it right, a skull icon showed up

at the bottom of you screen that you were doing it wrong,

and you could perhaps pull the fat out of the fire

and make sure that your Tamagotchi didn't expire.

But it was a lesson both in marketing digital play

and it was a lesson in pet care giving

that loads of people found popular for years to come.

1998, Furby.

Tiger Electronics set out to create a media craze

for their interactive talking, jabbering pet, Furby,

and they did a brilliant job of it.

From its introduction on The Today Show,

more than six weeks before they were

ever available in stores,

the media picked up on this interactive,

learning capable toy.

In fact it was such a phenomenon for its learning capacity

that the National Security Administration in Washington

banned Furbys from its offices,

lest they pick up on state spy secrets

and shared them with nefarious forces.

1999, Pokemon cards.

♪ I wanna be the very best ♪

♪ Like no one ever was ♪

If you loved the video games,

you're sure to love the trading card game

that spun off, that let you collect your Pokemon,

compete with your friends in the three dimensional world.

Pokemon cards were so successful that they

generated tournaments where people could

watch competitions and compete themselves.

It is an entire industry and an entertainment force

in its own right.

2000, the Razor Scooter.

Scooters had been around certainly since

the early part of the 20th Century,

but the Razor Scooter was slicker looking,

it was more compact, it was foldable,

so you could carry it with you

when you didn't want to ride.

A Razor Scooter allowed, with its smooth rolling

composite wheels, for you to have a great ride,

and it became one of the must have toys of the holidays.

The Razor Scooter proves that even in an era

of digital play, there's still a great amount of appeal

for speeding along in the real world on a wheeled vehicle.

2001, Bratz Dolls.

Barbie had dominated the fashion doll segment

for decades before the advent of Bratz,

who offered an entirely new look.

They had big heads, twig-like limbs,

oversized kind of anime eyes,

and what also made them different was

they were really multi-ethnic,

with names, skin tones, hair colors

that represented more of the American population

than ever before.

They had an appeal to a tween market

who considered Barbies for babies,

and they really took fashion doll sense

to a different level and really gave Barbie

a run for her money.

People have said that Bratz are representative

of the slutification of American dolls.

I'm a little more generous on Bratz.

I think they really help give options for doll play.

2002, Beyblade.

Beyblades are essentially a rebrand of an

earlier toy from Ideal, Battling Tops,

that had been a success in the 60s or 70s.

♪ Beyblade ♪

They promoted all kinds of tournament play,

and they were supported by an animated cartoon series

that allowed you to see what was even more possible.

It's sort of cool to think that something

that's been around for centuries,

if not thousands of years, Tops,

that are a persistent play thing,

can be updated and made appealing

to a contemporary audience, and people who wanna

play in a digital age.

2003, Robosapien.

If Furby is a little too benign for you

and you don't wanna story from Teddy Ruxpin,

why not this massive robotic play thing

that was a big hit of the year?

He had learning capacity, he could dance, he could fight.

He was something that really made you feel

up to date by having this super sized

and super capacity robotic toy.

2004, Puppy Surprise.

♪ Puppy Surprise ♪

When you get one of these, you aren't buying a puppy,

you're buying a mother dog who comes with

unborn puppies inside.

And a Velcro slit across her belly

that allows you to reveal the surprise number of puppies.

Creepy or not, I'll let you be the judge.

2005, Webkinz.

♪ And we live in a Webkinz world ♪

Like Cabbage Patch Kids, Webkindz inspired you

to not just get a pet, but to adopt it.

And Webkinz came with internet connectivity.

This is part of a whole vanguard of play things

that weren't just a three dimensional toy,

but they had an online component,

and a unique code that let you go on there

and play with your friends, interact with environments,

add to your virtual pet as well as your physical one,

going up against different ecosystems

like Club Penguin, also of the time.

Webkinz were one of the most successful

and they were a huge deal for kids everywhere in 2005.

2006, the Nintendo Wii.

Nintendo's fifth generation of consoles

came with what was called the Wii mode,

that was a gyroscopically controlled handheld controller

that let you use it as you would a baseball bat

or a tennis racket or as your bowling ball

that you were sending down the lane.

It was so intuitive, especially for adults

who might not be familiar with other

more complex controllers.

It made a huge inroad into the senior citizen market,

as well as the kid friendly market.

And it really changed how people reacted to games,

that they could do it in a very natural way,

rather than just pressing buttons.

2007, the ipods Touch.

This Apple device wasn't just a music player,

it was a platform for gaming as well

with its touch screen.

It allowed really intuitive play.

It let parents have confidence that

they didn't have to buy a smartphones for their kids

to play games or listen to music.

And it was the latest iteration and a successor

to something like the Game Boy.

And with kinds of capacity for touch screen control

that we assume is everywhere today.

2008, the Littlest Pet Shop.

People have always loved miniatures and tiny things,

whether that's dollhouse furniture

or charms on a bracelet, and little play things

have a special appeal.

The Littlest Pet Shop with its huge cast

of toy pets was an immediate sensation.

It was built on a 1990s toy with a similar concept,

and it has proven to be a successful franchise

with great capacity fro collectability

and also for play sets, like this immense one.

2009, ZhuZhu Pets.

Meet Mr Squiggles, your electronic toy hamster.

One of the downfalls of hamsters and gerbils

is that they tend to be nocturnal animals,

so they're asleep when kids are awake and vice versa.

ZhuZhu Pets have none of that problem.

They also don't need to be cleaned up after,

and their electronic capabilities

from their cuddling version to their exploring version,

they've got those two modes,

allowed them to be a hit of 2009,

with all kinds of accessories,

so that you could have your entire crew

of animatronic hamsters rolling around in balls

and exploring their Habitrails.

2010, Monster High Dolls.

Inspired by the success of the Twilight series

of books and films, Mattel introduced a whole

sequence of high school students who were monsters.

I'm holding Frankie Stine, and there were multitudes

of her friends, and dates out there in the series.

They are definitely the un-Barbie from Mattel,

with their goth look.

They were ostensibly to prove that

everyone needed to fit in and people could be

varied looks and feels.

Although, critics pointed out that they were

still stick thin and wearing short skirts

and lots of eyeliner, a little bit like

their competing Bratz.

2011, Skylanders.

One of the most successful iterations

of the category known as toys to life,

where three dimensional play things

interact online via a portal that sends them

into an online world.

Skylanders generated lots of different stories

and characters, and it was really a proof

that people wanted to play with three dimensions

and online multiplayer games.

2012, the Nintendo Wii U.

Building on the success of the Wii,

the Wii U had much more advanced graphics capacity,

and it also had a new touchscreen controller

that allowed you to play games in multiple dimensions

and to see them on that screen as well.

It was a carry on advance from the Wii

and one that was a success in its own right

and took things into greater processing speed

and speed of gameplay.

2013, Tekno the robotic puppy.

If you want more capacity than a Furby,

Tekno allows you to have a dog that can sing and dance,

can sleep, can do tricks.

He also makes rude noises, whether you like him to or not.

And he is just the latest in a series

of advanced robotic play things.

2014, Rainbow Loom.

After Tekno, the robotic puppy,

its good to know that there's still an appeal

to crafting play things and jewelry for your friends

using something as analog as a loom

that weaves rubber bands together.

And rather than being a corporate product,

Rainbow Loom was a creation of an individual

entrepreneur and toy inventor in Detroit,

who initially made these in his home.

He washed the rubber bands in his bathtub

with an ore to get the dust off of them,

and what he really tapped into was the lure of social play,

of creating gifts for your friends and family,

for turning something three dimensional

into something with added value.

That kind of art kit, that kind of craft project

had an enormous amount of appeal.

Stores couldn't keep Rainbow Looms on the shelf.

They sold so rapidly.

And it won four different categories

of the toy of the year awards.

2015, the BB-8 Robotic Droid.

The breakout droid in that year's Star Wars movie,

The Force Awakens, was undoubtedly BB-8,

the adorable snowman shaped droid,

and everybody wanted one for home.

This version for Sphero was amazingly advanced,

used gyroscopic controls to move BB-8 around your home

through various tricks.

The best part of BB-8 is he looks so much

like the one in the movies.

He's not just like an action figure of R2-D2,

he looks and functions the way the droid in the movies does.

It was what everybody wanted and it was a perfect match

for the continuing demand of Star Wars fans,

even 40 years after the initial movie,

that they still can't get enough Star Wars,

and especially the robotic characters.

2016, Hatchimals.

The start of what is now called the blind box kind of toy,

where you don't know what you're getting inside.

Hatchimals were so alluring because you bought an egg,

you didn't know what stuffed toy was inside of that.

You had to warm them up with you hands

so that they would hatch, and peck their way out.

It was a thrill of unboxing as umpteen videos

have shown on YouTube ever since.

And Hatchimals was the must have holiday toy of 2016,

and continues in different iterations

to show that surprises in eggs are so alluring

to kids and grownups everywhere.

2017, L.O.L. Surprise.

Carrying on from the success of the Hatchimals,

L.O.L. Surprise took that same concept,

not knowing what was inside the package,

and turned it into its own separate product.

This one is L.O.L. Surprise under wraps.

They're kind of like mummies,

and you don't know what's gonna be lurking inside of this.

They have a reasonable price point

so that they're smaller than the Hatchimals,

and you could get lots of them in your quest

to get all the surprises that are out there.

2018, Fingerlings.

Fingerlings cling to your fingers,

that's where they get their name,

and they're the perfect culmination

of all the trends that we've been seeing

through so many of these toys.

Connectability, learning capacity,

micro chips that enable them to have so many tricks,

as well as still having a three dimensional item

that you can cuddle and care for.

Fingerlings really in some ways are no surprise.

They're really a way of pulling so many threads

that we've been seeing develop across the history of toys,

and really represent the way that miniature technology

and our expectations of digital reality

come together in a three dimensional play thing

that sets the stage for what's going to come next.

We don't yet know what's going to be the hot toy for 2019,

but based on what we've been seeing,

you can be pretty confident that

it's gonna have some cuteness factor.

It may have surprise qualities,

interactivity and online connectability,

all mashed together in a way that is compelling

for kids and grownups today.

That's every top toy from the last 50 years.

I hope you've learned something along the way,

and I can't wait to see what the next 50 years hold.