Fadtastic!

Yesterday we had one of those great conversations down the local pub. We weere reminiscing about past times, as you do, when we got on to the topic of the 'fads' or 'crazes' of our time.




I like to think that despite my young years, I've seen a fair few fads and gimmicks. Those toys or trends that one week would be the talk of the school playground and then be completely forgotten the week later (if the headteacher hadn't banned them from school before then).

Always a favourite in our school was Premier League stickers. Every break groups would huddle around each other (not in a homo-erotic way you understand) and the only two words you'd ever hear were "got" and "need". Each collector had photographically memorised which sticker they needed and for 10 minutes, all you would here someone say is "Got, got, got, got, got, got, got, got, got, got, got, got..need" As soon as the "need" came out, the bartering would begin.

The general rule of currency in our school was that cards were swapped like-for-like, bigger stickers were worth 2 small ones and shinys were worth 3 small ones or two big ones. However, the trick was never to let on that you DESPERATLY needed this one sticker to fill a page in your book. If you did, you would be held to ransom big time. It was fairly common for someone to lose their entire collection of swapsies, just to get the one sticker.

There was also Pogs, remember them? I think they started out in cereal packets, before some brightspark decided that they could sell 6 pieces of cardboard, about the size of a £2 coin, for £2.50 a pack. The idea was to stack your Pogs in a pile on the floor, and use a plastic 'killer' or 'slammer' to try and flip them over. You got to keep any that got flipped. They also made metal killers but our school banned them when one bounced up from the ground, hit someone in the mouth and chipped his tooth! Pogs eventually got banned altogether at our school as the cry-babies cried when they lost their pogs because they were rubbish.

What else was there? Oh yes, Tamagotchi's! These were also called 'cyber pets' and were little computer games that simulated the experience of looking after a pet, just without having to clear up the shit. It wasn't long that they lasted before incurring the wrath of the headteacher either, after umpteen lesson disruptions.

I also remember Yo-yo's making a brief return not so long ago. Put again, if I remember rightly, another tooth related mishap also put paid to that little craze. I think I've still got at least one of my yo-yo's still in the loft somewhere, unless I took them all to the car-boot sale.

There were others as well which I could go on about. I sort of missed out on 'marbles', never bothered with Pokemon cards and only vaugly remember 'clackers'. You know, two balls of resin, attached to a string and the idea is to wave them above your head like a manic - what could possible go wrong? I bet Britain's dentists were laughing all the way to the bank when those things came out!