Chapter 8

Chapter 8

Fads

            Now this is a subject that I fine absolutely hilarious. I am not one to follow in with the crowd most of the time, but when you grow up with a bunch of kids that are into something you kind of have to be. If your friends are into football, for example, why would you be the only one playing baseball. Now even though I felt like that sometimes, I have to admit I did get into some of the big fads growing up. In fact, some of them were my forte.

            One of the biggest things to collect during my childhood and even my teenage years were different types of cards. When I was really young, baseball cards were the shit. I couldn’t get enough of my favorite team, which for some reason never seemed to come when I bought a pack of cards. I love the Pittsburgh Pirates, but yet when I would beg my mother to buy a pack of cards for me I would get 12 cards of teams I hate. No matter how many cards I would get, the ratio of Pirates I would get would be at least 50:1. You would think this would be the other way around, being that no one outside of Pittsburgh actually likes that team, but it isn’t. That isn’t how it works when I collect things… unless…

            On of the only things I have ever been good at in my life was collecting Pokémon cards. I could wheel and deal like no one had ever seen before. For those of you who don’t know, there were four different types of cards back when I collected these things. Now that there are nearly 600 different ones, I have no idea if they changed this. But back when I collected them there were common cards, uncommon cards, rare cards, and then the holographic cards. These were represented by a circle, a diamond, a star, and a holographic star. If you got the last one of any card, you were the coolest kid on the block. There were also certain cards that made you even cooler. If you had the holographic Charizard you were the king. I knew a few people who had a couple of them and it made me jealous. But I finally got my hands on one and that’s when I made my move as wheeler and dealer of the century. I was flipping packages of ten common cards for rare cards, which no one could do but me. I had a way of talking these kids into it that no one else did. I was on top of the world. But then… I grew up. I realized how stupid it was to own all of these pieces of cardboard that were worth nothing. I mean no one even played the fucking game. I know I tried a couple times, but all people wanted to do with them was put them in some protective sheets and run around town with them. It was asinine behavior. Here are some cards made to play a game. People buy literally millions upon millions of them, and no one plays the damn game. People just wanted to collect them all. I gave all of mine to my cousin years later because I honestly could have cared less about them. My honest opinion? I think trading cards and game cards are made to teach kids the basics to bartering. And it worked.

            If there is one thing everyone knows it’s that most kids don’t like to read. But every once in a while there is an author who catches every kids imaginations…except for mine of course. There was a man whose name was R.L.Stine, which no one knew what the hell stood for by the way, who wrote these terrible horror books. Such literary gems with names as “Welcome to Dead House”, “Let's Get Invisible!,” and “ The Blob That Ate Everyone” were obviously written to win the Nobel Prize. I mean, that second book I mentioned obviously wasn’t even a pun. Now that’s what I call creativity. How couldn’t something like these books trap every 12 year olds imagination? Well I didn’t get caught up in the hype. For one, I hate reading. Two, if I did read I would want to read something fucking better than some shitty horror story that isn’t scary. Shitty horror stories aren’t my bag baby. But then he came out with these books where you could choose your own ending. I said “wow what an interesting idea.” Then I read it. Even worse than the other books, I swear. If there is something written that can’t even hold the attention of a nine year old, there is something wrong. But seriously, the people in my school literally bought ever fucking book that came out. I don’t even know if they read them I was smart and took them from the library. I win. But like I said, I didn’t read them. I would try, but then would realize how awful they actually were after about ten pages.

            People had an addiction to furry animals while I was growing up too. Actually not just furry animals, animals in general. One of the products that reflected this were these idiotic bead animals that everyone was fucking making. I even did it. But now looking back I realize how time consuming and stupid it was. I don’t even know where they are but I literally did at least 100 of each of these…

bookers, who are usually old women too. So that sort of makes the craft store industry sort of a niche market… to old bags.

            Not only were bead animals king of the jungle during the nineties, there was another product that everyone literally went bonkers over. These fuckers were at craft stores too, along with every other damn store you passed. Apparently the days of polyester stuffing had passed and thus the days of plastic pellets ruled. Yes, I am talking about beanie babies everyone and I hate to say it, but I also fell into this trap. I had hundreds of these overly expensive bean bags hoping one day my pay day would come. Yes, I was thinking I was going to make some dough in the future off of these things. Boy that was foolish. But at least I wasn’t one of these fucking idiotic, psychotic, and moronic people who thought they were going to make enough money to retire if they got their hands on something like this…

Seriously? You think you are going to retire off of this thing? People are really gullible. I’m going to retire off my good looks… I remember when these were hot. People would literally hit each other if they saw one of these they needed in their collection. And I stress “needed” because of how friging ridiculous that word sounds when talking about bean bags in the shape of an animal. But I sort of understand it I guess. I mean who wouldn’t go wacko over something as cute as Tangerine the orangutan. That was sarcasm by the way, though that’s another thing. Those stupid freaking names are out of line. Some of the classics include Belvedere the bear, Sophisticat the kitty cat, and Dewi Y Ddraig the dragon are just a few of the classics that people splooged their pants over. How the fuck do you even say that last one? All I know is I got rid of that shit as soon as I realized that these things really weren’t worth the money that people were saying they were worth. They were honestly just sitting on a shelf collecting dust, so what did I care?

            Digital pets were a big thing when I was a kid as well. This was one of the fads that went on for quite a while if I remember correctly. Why the hell did it go on for so long? It’s literally a machine the size of an egg where you have a pet that looks like a pile of poop. Then, your pile of poop poop’s, a lot. Then you gotta clean up the poop while trying to figure out the difference between the actual poop and your poopy pet. Then it usually grows up into some other animal looking thing while you feed it meat and clean up poop constantly… all day every day… it’s exhausting. People played with these during school, like it was any more interesting than social studies. In fact, it was probably less interesting. It literally does nothing but shit. There were people who actually had these things just to keep resetting the pet and killing it off again. What the hell is wrong with some people? I mean seriously. People would actually buy the game “The Sims” to just starve their character and kill them off. What a bunch of re-re’s.

            Those finger skateboards were a big deal for a while. I tried them, but I could never fucking do it. It’s just like regular skateboarding, it’s a frigin travesty if I try and do it. I honestly think the people who are actually amazing at the sport are super heroes. They literally defy gravity. There is no way in hell someone should be able to make a piece of wood on wheels go up in the air and have their feet stick to it the whole way. I have no idea how it’s done. And those finger skateboards are even worse. How the hell are you supposed to do that with just two fingers? It doesn’t make any fucking sense to me. Anyways, all of these people I knew were good at it and then there was me who could only really put his middle finger on it and then push it around with my pointer. Yeah, that’s how I roll. But they made these accessories for people who were really good. They made half pipes, grind rails, and anything that was made for real skateboarders. So apparently they were a big hit. I could just never figure out how to do it. If you haven’t figured it out yet, things that I can’t figure out how to do really makes me angry.

            That slime stuff, or Gak, was a fad for a short time. It didn’t make any sense. You couldn’t do anything with it except kind of touch it. Then after you touched it for a while, no matter what you did. It got all dirty and fuzzy and then you could never play with it again. The fact that you could only really play with it for a short period of time didn’t really make it any easier to accept the fact that you just paid $10 for that container of slime. To top it off, it literally smelled like fish. So then after you played with it for an hour, made it look like a fizzy ball of dirt, and then realized that its actually a useless consumer item, your hands smell like shit. Great job wasting my time and money you stupid slime makers.

            Every ten years Yo-Yo’s come back. I am 24 years old now, and I think I saw some hoodlums using them the other day. I remember ten or so years prior they were a hit while I was in school. I had a Duncan butterfly, which was a cheaper model but was notorious for being a good sleeper. So it was good for learning some tricks. I could only really ever do a couple tricks, but that’s not the point. In the technological age of interactive video games and computers, why the hell do Yo-Yo’s keep coming back. They aren’t fun. I actually guarantee its one of those things that when a kid plays with it for more than 20 minutes, they throw it in the corner of their rooms and then lay there and watch some stupid fucking mindless kids show until their awful parents, who bought them that very Yo-Yo, make them go to bed at an very late hour. I don’t really know where I’m going with this other than the fact that I didn’t play with mine more than a couple days before I threw it in a box and left it there to rot. I guarantee every other kid in this world, except those dedicated few ridiculous people who are professional Yo-Yoists, do the same thing as I did.

            Probably the biggest trend while I grew up was one of the dumbest things ever invented. Unlike the card game I talked about at the beginning of the chapter, this was a game that I actually witnessed people playing. Hell, I actually played it myself. This game is called pog’s. Pog’s were, and I refer to them in the past tense because no one in their right minds plays this stupid fucking game anymore, a game where you bought hundreds of these cardboard circles with pictures on them. You then take those circles and stack them very high and throw a metal or heavy plastic circle at them. This was called a slammer. That was it. Invigorating. Now you could play with other people, and by doing this you were playing for keeps. You would hit each other’s stacks with your slammer and whatever pog’s were left face down would become yours, and vice versa. I did this a couple times but it always seemed that my crapper of a slammer never got the job done. So I was like fuck it. You would transport them in these gigantic cylinder shaped tubes that were literally longer than a car. People actually carried these things around. And speaking of hilarious, what the hell was the deal with the designs on the pog’s? Every pog had an 8 ball, skull, or a ying yang on it. Most people don’t even know what the hell a ying yang is. I swear to you, every one of my pog’s, except maybe a few, had those designs on them. All I know is if this fad ever returns I will want to punch a hole in a wall. It was literally the lamest thing I have ever done in my life.

            Why do we feel the need to buy these idiotic trendy items? It boggles my mind, but it still happens. Even though all of the things I have talked about happened in my younger days, adults do it too. With electronics, cars, and clothes, adults do the same exact thing just on a larger scale. I even do it now even because I buy every damn DVD I can see. I exaggerate obviously, but it’s a hobby I guess and I guess all of the things above kind of were to. Only thing is, movies will never die.