Throwback Thursday: Top 5 90s Gadgets

Throwback Thursday is your weekly concentrated dose of nostalgia, where we round up the bests and worsts of all things 90s (and the early 2000s.) This week: the top 5 90s gadgets. 

Everybody has to self-actualize and acknowledge their own flaws one day, and I figured why not start here on the interwebz.  I write about a lot of girly things.  I’ve talked about princesses, puppies, and pop music (mostly Beyonce and the Spice Girls).  I’m one sparkly hind-quarter tattoo from turning into a My Little Pony.  So this week, I’m switching things up a bit. This week’s post is going out to all of you gamer dudes that never leave your dorm room during the day, haven’t gotten a haircut since your high school graduation, and spend all of your time playing Assassins Creed and talking about The Legend of Zelda.  This post is dedicated to all those bros who are still a nerdy eight-year-old at heart.  That’s right.  This week, I’m talking about the top five 90s Gadgets.

Yak Bak

Ever had a conversation where you only needed to say one thing repeatedly over and over again?  Then the Yak Bak is the gadget for you! For all of those awkward arguments where you feel like you are literally repeating yourself, with the Yak Bak, you literally can! All you have to do is record yourself saying it once, then press the button.  Seriously though, were our conversations as children so dull that they simply consisted of saying the same thing on repeat?  I feel like I remember having a lot of very meaningful chats where I said more than one word or phrase.  What exactly facilitated the necessity of this toy?  Who decided that this would be a great piece of technology?  Also, is it just me, or does the Yak Bak make everyone sound like Stephen Hawking?

Tamagotchi

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What was with people and virtual pets back then?  Did everyone have pet hair allergies or something?  With these advances in technology, between Tamagotchi and Neopets, one day real pets may become obsolete! Seriously though, how sad are those people that only had Tamagotchi as kids?  I guess the one advantage is that you never had to hang lost dog flyers, because your pet was constantly attached to your keychain. And what was it like when you begged your mom or dad to let you get one? “I’ll feed it and walk it and play games with it and never let it run out of batteries!”  I mean, they do say that as a society, we continue to rely more and more on our technology, but really?  I bet the Tamagotchi was invented by parents who didn’t want to have to pay for dog food and an invisible fence.

Password Journal

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Sure, all of us ladies certainly did like writing in our Password Journal that only opened to the sound of our voice.  But did the company that brought it to us really have to be called “GirlTech”?  At the risk of sounding like a raging performer in the Vagina Monologues, that’s ridiculous.  Are girls really the only ones that keep journals?  I’m pretty sure boys did too.  Just sayin’.  Also, what exactly did we really need to be writing down in those things that was such a big secret.  “Today, I ate the last packet of Gushers.  Must tell no one.  Except Mom, so she can buy more Gushers.”

Gameboy

This is where it all started.  Before this, you could only play games on the TV before Dad got home from work and wanted to watch the world news.  But now, you could play games anywhere.  In your room, next to your dad while he watched the news, in the bathtub, in church, probably on the moon, because at the time the Gameboy seemed like space age technology.  It is thanks to this toy, that I have had so much (or so little, depending on how you look at it) success in dating.  I can’t tell you how many times I have passed up the date with the awkward nerdy long-haired asian dude who constantly seems to have his Nintendo DS (in my opinion the predecessor to the Gameboy) attached to him as he were a doctor in the 90s and it were his pager.  So, thanks, Gameboy, for being invented, and for making it difficult for those awkward nerdy boys to connect with actual people, and yet love me.

Bop It

Nothing is better than a gadget that teaches children to blindly obey a disembodied voice.  I kid, I kid.  But, in all seriousness, Bop It was probably one of the greatest gadgets of the 90s.  I can’t remember a time when I had more fun than on the days where I was pulling, twisting, and bopping.  As a kid who never had the hand eye coordination for sports, wasn’t big into video games, and lacked the attention span necessary for board games (more like bored  games sometimes, am I right?) Bop It was basically my true calling.  I was the Bop It champ—and you can all tell that to Becca C. from down the street, because she sure as heck did not steal my title.

What were your favorite 90s gadgets? Tell us in the comments!
Next week on Throwback Thursday: The Top 5 Nickelodeon Cartoons