- Because who doesn't love gross stuff?
There are so many toys we love and the grosser the better! Here are the rest of the best gross out toys in America.
The mid 1980s was the height of gross out culture especially with movies like Gremlins, Ghostbusters and Ghoulies.
The toy industry went from gross out substances to gross out characters and next up was Madballs. They were foam balls with faces and distorted features and gross textures. There were all different gross characters and it made the
kids want them all.
Dubbed “the ugliest toy ever,” in 1986, more than 10 million Madballs flew off the shelves, bringing in more than $100 million in todays dollars. They didn’t bounce because they had funky shapes but kids loved them.
Toy companies were now competing for gross out characters and the weirdest and most disgusting creatures ever.
Mattel had Stinkor, the stench of an evil villain. There’s also the humanoid Sjunkman. This gross out classic was one of the only toys ever produced whose action feature is an odor. And not a good one.
They mixed patchouli with the plastic formula to make him stink and it worked. Is this one of the toys we love?
Hasboro launched its own line of strange mutant creatures in 1986. Soon
there’s everything you can imagine on the market, with nearly every kind of gross out characters.
The popularity of these toys was quickly dwarfed with what came next. And what came next was the Garbage pail kids.
These cards of babies getting killed or exploding or just doing something gross became the newest fad. They were thought of as the bastard stepchild of cabbage patch dolls. Some cards had babies with acne and some had snot coming out of their nose.
Garbage pail kids became a phenomenon, selling over 800 million cards between 1985 and 1988. These were clearly toys we love.
These cards are breaking all the rules and of course this makes kids like them even more. The cards were banned from schools because they were inappropriate and distracting.
In 1987, the garbage pail kids got their own movie and toy companies continue to keep the trend going .
By the mid 80s, overall toy sales hit $13 billion.
Manufacturers want more gross offerings and they begin to give older hit toys a gross out makeover. They made a pooping golden retriever dog for Barbie. It even came with pellets and a leash, which of course you would ned for dog poop barbie.
In 2002, Hasboro tried to make gross out girls toys to appeal to boys. They tried with the queasy bake cookery, basically an easy bake oven for making disgusting foods. The bake set included recipes for crud cakes and drool dog bones, trying to catch the boys but it didn’t catch on.
The oozeinator in 2006 comes with bio ooze that flies up to 20 feet. It’s the gross out version of a super soaker.
The grossest makeover toy ever was poo dough, made with play dough of various brown colors so you can make your own poop.
Gross out fun has become one of the biggest segments of the toy market to date and doesn’t seem to be slowing down. What do you think of these toys we love?