Asides from Pokémon (assuming you were alive in the late 90s/early 00s, anyway!) what sort of things were popular in school when you were a kid? Are they still popular now? Was there anything that was popular when you were a kid that you DIDN'T like? If you could revive one fad from your childhood, what would it be and why? When I was a kid we were all about yo-yos, pogs, tazos (these were around the time that the Star Wars movies were re-released, and you could find Star Wars tazos in crisp packets...I still have my completed album of those somewhere) and for a while these weird things that had small caps of gunpowder that made a cute little firecracker sound when you threw them to the ground. Yowie (which I believe has relaunched in the US?) was INSANELY popular in my school for a time as well, because the animal figures were MUCH better than the rubbish in Kinder Surprise and the chocolate was nicer. I didn't like Tech Deck finger skateboards because they were fiddly to set up and I couldn't keep my balance on a real skateboard. Plus they were expensive as hell. ...the fact that Gogo's Crazy Bones are still going is kinda alarming. I would revive tazos, because they'd probably be slightly cheaper to manufacture than pogs, and stickers these days are absolute garbage. I'm not sure I'd put them in packets of crisps, though...given that I almost choked on one as a kid, I suspect there would be a lot of complaints and maybe fatalities from reviving that practice =x
Yo-yos were hugely popular, yeah! I remember having one that lit up and it was the coolest thing. Then there were Pokémon cards (kids seem to be more immersed in their smartphones these days, and the popularity of cards amongst this age group is nowhere near what it used to be). Spoiler these things hnnng (pen with a various color selection, for those who don't know)
All of this. I remember having quite a few yoyos; I had a book that taught you how to do tricks, but I never got the hang of any of them. A professional yoyo-er (? what do you even call them?) even visited my elementary school. Everyone was blown away. My brother had a BUNCH of tech decks. We still find them around the house. Those multicolored pens and Pokémon cards were big too. Also, I'm just curious - did anyone else's school community make a weird sudden jump into YA fandoms? Right up until, like, the beginning of fifth grade, nobody had any idea what YA was, and then it felt like everyone was suddenly super into Percy Jackson and The Hunger Games almost overnight.
You also had pogs! I still have like 250 of them... somewhere. Open up some of these tubes and it's like falling into a portal to the late 90s. I can't even phrase how radical they are, and I consider myself a wordsmith of moderate-to-high passion! I'm sure there are a lot of things I simply don't remember right now, but all I can think of is a certain variety of cartoon. There's some aspect in the soul of many cartoons from the mid-90s through the mid-00s that I think is mostly (not entirely) absent from the cartoons of today, but that might just be part of me becoming a grumpy old man. There's just something that Invader Zim and Fairly Odd Parents and Powerpuff Girls and Xiaolin Showdown and Static Shock had that many of today's cartoons don't have. Even those that have spiritual successors or direct sequels seem to be lacking an unidentifiable secret ingredient (not Chemical X), despite probably having most of the same creative minds behind them. I so wish I could revive that unknown trait and re-inject it into more of today's media. Cartoons sure, but also the writing and plots of live-action TV or video games or so many other fun things that could just get a bit of that good blood transfusion.
The only thing I can remember being really popular in school was a web game called Poptropica (I believe it's called that, might be wrong). Club Penguin and Moshi Monsters were popular as well. And coolmathgames.com of course.
Pokémon cards were actually banned in my school because of all the fights they caused...not that we paid much attention. To our peril - we were caught trading them once and our teacher decided to put them all in his drawer...in one big pile. It took us about an hour after school to sort them all out =x Cartoons-wise I think Digimon was actually more popular than Pokémon...this was the first two seasons, when Digimon was actually good. Cardcaptors was very popular too because it was airing on ITV all the time. When I moved up to Secondary School it was all about YGO and DBZ...and Shaman King, I think? I didn't have Sky so I missed out on these. We didn't actually talk about cartoons all that much in Primary School I don't think, and Secondary School it was more about video games...Final Fantasy X was pretty huge, and so was the Gamecube generally.
Gosh, sillybandz were incredibly popular in later elementary school. we would tie them together to make insanely long chains For snacks I remember gripz with those spoon commercials, and some special go-gurts plus those go-gurt cups. Moon shoes and heelies were a big thing, and I was allowed neither bc in the first day they had one, a friend rolled back on his heelies and cracked his head open on a brick (he was completely fine, surprisingly) and the other was holding his mom's hand with the moon shoes on and still twisted his ankle There was also some chip thing that was in a pringles container but had a little cup to pour it in? I saw it a lot but never had it
When I was little I had so many beanie babies it wasn't even funny. I do remember silly bandz and how most of the schools were I lived banned them.
Aside from Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh and Dragon Ball were kind of the big things. We had a bit of a tech deck fad bad in middle school, but it didn't last very long. I didn't know that was something that got popular in other areas, one of my friends claimed to be the one who started the fad and I guess I just thought it was so dumb that it wouldn't be picked up in other places. I vaguely remember that all of the girls were obsessed with flavored lip gloss and gel pens. I mean, OBSESSED. Kind of a weird one. Gel pens ended up getting banned. We weren't even allowed to write in anything other than pencil back then, so I guess that was a given.
Aaaah I totally forgot about gel pens! Those were pretty big here as well for a time...I don't think they were ever banned though. Just frowned upon for schoolwork or homework. Comic Sans was also considered THE font to use back then, too. I know it's something of a trash meme now but in Primary School if you didn't use Comic Sans your work was considered boring. xD
I remember Big Nate and Diary of a Wimpy Kid being extremely popular in elementary school. It seemed like everyone was reading them.
All through primary school, Poptropica was a big thing. I loved it. In third grade the big thing was silly bands, which I remember some girls used them as hair ties and they had to cut them out. (I never did that.) and for whatever reason in my school, in second grade, crocheting was popular. I still have some yarn and hooks at my house. I’d love to have that be a big thing. I kinda want to get back into it.
To be honest, I grew up in the middle of nowhere and they all started doing drugs and drinking come grade 7, and it was like what the "Cool kids" did.
