13 toys sold on Amazon… in 1999!
In November of 2000, I placed my first-ever order with Amazon. Reviewing my account, it looks like I bought Charmander earrings, two Furby Babies, and twenty of the exact same Darth Sidious figure, just because it was marked down to a buck.
Probably shouldn’t have admitted all of that, but here’s the point: I’d guess that the vast majority of you have been ordering from Amazon for nearly as long. Maybe even longer. Many of us have ordered so frequently that our purchase histories read like diaries. It’s been our collective corner deli for everything that isn’t food.
I thought it’d be interesting to take a look at Amazon as it existed back when a lot of us were first hearing about it, so I dug up an old version of site.
This was Amazon, on August 27th, 1999:
Maybe Amazon’s comfort factor stems from how little it’s changed through the years. Today’s version of the site is slicker, more responsive and less heavy on the ten paragraph advertorials, but it’s still basically the same.
The screenshot isn’t a mockup. That’s what people saw on the Amazon homepage on 8/27/99. As I clicked through the site, so many memories came flooding back. I had to remind myself that 1999 really was fifteen years ago, and that it wasn’t crazy to see so many new movies in VHS format. (God, we’re all so old.)
I spent most of my time in the “Toys & Games” category. Holy nostalgia. The neat thing about sifting through Ancient Amazon rather than an old store catalog is that you’ll see much obscurer things. A catalog will remind you about “big launch” releases, but even back then, Amazon carried everything. It was as much “shit parade” as “hit parade,” and I loved every second of it.
To commemorate the hours I spent navigating dead links (and forced redirects to more dead links), here are thirteen random playthings Amazon sold back in 1999. Read More…
Highlights from TRU’s 1986 Summer Catalog!
I was separating a stack of papers into “keep” and “toss” piles, and buried underneath so many hotel receipts and menus for dead restaurants, there it was…
Yeah, this one went into the “keep” pile. It’s the Toys “R” Us Summer Fun Book, from 1986! Lightweight and only around a dozen pages, I’m guessing they came packed with Sunday newspapers. The contents aren’t nearly as voluminous as what we used to see in Sears Wish Books, but there was certainly enough to make me a remember a time when toys were my everything. Here are the highlights: Read More…
Jurassic Park Fruit Roll-Ups from 1997!
I wasn’t sure if today’s topic truly deserved to be one, so I asked the folks on Twitter:
Does anyone want to read about really old Fruit Roll-Ups?
— Dinosaur Dracula (@DinosaurDracula) July 31, 2014
They said yes. And that’s how you came to read 750 words about old Fruit Roll-Ups.
…and not just any old Fruit Roll-Ups, mind you. These are Jurassic Park Fruit Roll-Ups, made to promote The Lost World back in ’97. As a fan of all things dinosaurs and all things fruit snacks, I will forever hold my peace about this marriage.
I love Fruit Roll-Ups. I must’ve eaten a thousand of them by now. They prettied up my lunch boxes like vases on end tables. To this day, I know few finer comfort foods.
I love Jurassic Park, too. The first one, the second one, the third one, and even the still-incubating fourth one, which I believe will include mutants and space aliens. Whenever the mailman drops off a package I’ve been waiting for, I still hum the JP theme. Whenever I meet a woman named Amber, I want to grab her face and scream about mosquitos.
Yes, yes, yes. Jurassic Park Fruit Roll-Ups are so up my alley. Read More…
The five best CHUCKY items on eBay.
Hi, I’m Matt. Child’s Play fan.
I was a late bloomer with horror, but Chucky was an exception. From Day One, I was on his side. Of the right age to clearly recognize him as a riff on Hasbro’s My Buddy dolls, I stupidly assumed that the Child’s Play franchise was at least partially targeted at kids. It wasn’t, but I fell in love all the same. My earliest memories of horror movies come in blips and bleeps, but with Child’s Play, I was all-in.
In my mind, there’s no bad Child’s Play movie. The second one is my favorite, but even the more polarizing fourth and fifth films worked for me. Chucky started as a straight-up slasher, evolved into a sort of cartoon, and eventually settled into something approaching “outsider art.” I adored all of it.
To celebrate Chucky — because that’s what we’re doing today — I thought I’d dust off an abandoned Dino Drac series. Below are the five best Child’s Play items currently on eBay.
(And when I say “best,” I usually mean “weirdest.”) Read More…