Remember how simple toys seemed when we were kids? You picked it up, you played with it, and that was that. No backstory required.
Turns out, some of our most beloved childhood classics were hiding some pretty surprising secrets. A few are just quirky. A few are genuinely dark. All of them are fascinating.
The Teddy Bear
Every kid has had one. But here is what most people don’t know. The teddy bear traces back to a hunting trip President Theodore Roosevelt took in 1902. He hadn’t had any success, so his companions captured a bear and tied it to a tree for him to shoot. Roosevelt refused, saying it would be unsportsmanlike.
That story spread through the news and inspired a toymaker named Morris Michtom to create a stuffed bear and name it after the president. Sweet story, right? Here’s the dark part. Roosevelt may have refused to pull the trigger himself, but he did order the bear killed. It had already been beaten with clubs and tied to that tree. He simply had it put down to end its suffering.
The Slinky
Richard T. James invented the Slinky by accident. He was trying to develop a spring for naval ships when he discovered that one particular spring walked end over end down a shelf. He and his wife, Betty, started the James Spring and Wire Company to sell it, and they became very wealthy.
Then, in the late 1950s, Richard became disillusioned with material things and joined a religious cult. He donated nearly all of his Slinky profits to the group, then left Betty and their children behind and moved to Bolivia with his congregation. Betty never saw him again. She salvaged the company on her own and rebuilt it from scratch.
Barbie
Barbie has been around for nearly 70 years now, but her origin is a long way from the wholesome doll we remember. Before she was Barbie, she was Bild Lilli, a character from a German comic strip. That original doll was not made for children at all. She was overtly sexualized and sold primarily in adult shops.
When Mattel acquired the rights to Bild Lilli, Ruth Handler transformed the doll. She gave her fashionable clothing instead of racy outfits, and actual feet instead of legs that ended in black stilettos. The Barbie we know is essentially a very thorough reinvention.
Cabbage Patch Kids
If you had kids or grandkids in the early 1980s, you know what a Cabbage Patch craze looked like. But creator Xavier Roberts had more than a few unusual habits. For starters, the original concept wasn’t his. He reportedly purchased dolls made by folk artist Mary Nelson Thomas and used them as a blueprint for his own product.
Roberts also insisted that the dolls never be called dolls. They were babies or kids. Stores were adoption centers. People were not buying them; they were adopting them. And Roberts stamped his signature on the backside of every single one. The marketing approach raised more than a few eyebrows, even at the time.
Furby
If you had a child or grandchild in the late 1990s, you probably remember Furbys. Those big-eyed, chatty little creatures were everywhere. Their ability to seemingly “learn” from interactions made them popular and also made certain government agencies very nervous.
The FAA required that Furbys be switched off on airplanes due to concerns about interference with aircraft systems. The NSA went further and banned them from their offices entirely, worried the toys might record sensitive information. The manufacturer, Tiger Electronics, had to issue a formal statement assuring the public that Furby was not, in fact, a spy.
Aqua Dots
Aqua Dots (also sold as Bindeez) were colorful craft beads that stuck together when wet, no hot iron needed. They seemed like a safer alternative to other bead craft kits. They were not safer. Not even close.
In 2007, Spin Master recalled 4.2 million units after reports of children vomiting, losing consciousness, and falling into comas. The chemical that made the beads bond when wet turned out to break down into GHB when swallowed, a substance known as a dangerous club drug. Depending on a child’s size and age, swallowing the beads could cause an overdose.
Elmo Knows Your Name
Fisher-Price made several talking Elmo dolls over the years, and most of them worked just fine. But in 2008, a mother in Florida changed the batteries in her son’s Elmo Knows Your Name doll and got quite a shock.
Instead of saying “Hi, James,” the doll said, “Kill James.” Her two-year-old son James started repeating the phrase. Fisher-Price replaced the doll, looked into whether others had the same issue, and later that same year, discontinued that particular Elmo model.
Evilstick
This one comes with a lesson that applies to any generation: pay attention to what you are buying, especially from discount stores. The Evilstick was a cheap princess wand sold at dollar stores. It came with a creepy laugh. And when you peeled back the foil on the front, the images underneath were disturbing, sometimes sexualized fan art of anime characters, sometimes bloody images. The most widely reported version showed a demon girl harming herself.
The name was right there on the package. Evilstick. Some warnings really are that obvious.
It is funny, isn’t it? Toys that seemed so simple and innocent often had a much more complicated story behind them. The next time you spot an old toy at an antique shop or a garage sale, you might find yourself wondering what it is not telling you.
