Little Green Army Men, The Rubik's Cube, And Bubbles Inducted Into The Toy Hall of Fame

KFC11/11/2014 4:49 PM

ROCHESTER, N.Y. (AP) — It’s mission accomplished for little green army men. The molded plastic must-haves for generations of pretend soldiers were inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame on Thursday, along with the 1980s stumper Rubik’s Cube, and bubbles. The trio of toys takes its place alongside other classics including Barbie, G.I. Joe, Scrabble and the hula hoop after beating out nine other finalists including Fisher-Price Little People, American Girl dolls and My Little Pony. The tiny monochromatic heroes have been around since 1938, with ups and downs along the way. Their popularity waned during the Vietnam War but they became big-screen stars with the 1995 Pixar movie “Toy Story” and several manufacturers continue to produce millions of them every year. The army men were finalists two other years before making the cut this time around, offering hope to this year’s also-rans, which also included Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Slip ‘N Slide, the skill game Operation, paper airplanes, pots and pans, and the toy trucks sold annually since 1964 by the Hess gas station chain. Children have played with soap bubbles since at least the 17th century, according to the toy hall, when paintings depicting the play appeared in what is now modern-day Belgium. More than 200 million bottles of bubble liquid are sold annually. Bubbles got the nod as a toy of the imagination, spokesman Shane Rhinewald said, listing it alongside similar previous inductees including the stick and blanket. A national selection committee made up of 24 experts, including toy collectors, designers and psychologists vote the winners in to the hall each year. Anyone can nominate a toy, but to make it through the preliminary selection process and become a finalist a toy must have achieved icon status, survived through generations, foster learning, creativity or discovery and have profoundly changed play or toy design.

Congrats to Little Green Army men, Rubik’s Cubes, and Soap Bubbles. Big moment for these three powerhouses of entertainment. A Rubik’s Cube is nothing but a paper weight for an idiot like me, but theres no denying its a legend in the toy game. Bubbles are a classic. Theres not a single kid on earth who didnt blow bubbles growing up. Little Green Army Men are an interesting case. On the surface, those things sucked. They were just like little statues. Couldnt move their arms and legs. Really didnt do anything but sit there. It was like some depressing poor people toy. But if you didn’t tie Little Green Army Men to balloons and let them fly away, or put them in a little creek and watch them float away or straight up burn them and stuff like that, you just weren’t trying.

Some major snubs on the list this year. “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Slip ‘N Slide, the skill game Operation, paper airplanes, pots and pans, and the toy trucks sold annually since 1964 by the Hess gas station chain.” Talk about a POWERHOUSE year on the ballot. TMNT, Slip N Slide, and Hess Trucks are all absolute locks. Its inevitable. I was all prepared to declare Pots and Pans the most ridiculous HOF nominee ever, but then I took a look at previous inductees:

Previous inductees:

Barbie
Crayola Crayon
Erector Set
Etch A Sketch
Frisbee
Hula hoop
Lego
Lincoln Logs
Marbles
Monopoly
Play-Doh
Radio Flyer wagon
Roller Skates
Teddy bear
Tinkertoy
View-Master
Duncan Yo-Yo
Bicycle
Jacks
Jump rope
Mr. Potato Head
Slinky
Silly Putty
Tonka Trucks
Jigsaw puzzle
Raggedy Ann
Alphabet Blocks
Checkers
G.I. Joe
Rocking horse
Scrabble
Candy Land
Cardboard box
Jack-in-the-box
Easy-Bake Oven
Lionel Trains
Atari 2600
Kite
Raggedy Andy
The Stick
The Baby Doll
The Skateboard
The ball
Game Boy
Big Wheel
The Game of Life
Playing cards
Hot Wheels
Dollhouse
Blanket
Star Wars action figures
Dominoes
Chess
Rubber duck

STICK? BLANKET? What the fuck is this shit about? I mean yea I pretended sticks were swords and made forts out of blankets but we’re gonna call them HALL OF FAME toys? Fuck outta here. Pots And Pans can maybe qualify as a fucking toy during the Great Depression or something, but to just call that a Hall Of Fame toy in general is fucking preposterous.

Here’s your boy KFC’s Toy Hall Of Fame, not including board games and video games because thats a whole different ballgame. In no particular order:

1. Nerf Bow And Arrow

The greatest toy weapon of all time. Period. Nerf nowadays are probably like real firearms. They probably hold like 80 arrows and 500 foam balls and rapid fire and shit. But for my money I’ll take the bow and arrow all day err day. I was like the Nerf Robin Hood with this shit.

2. Super Soaker 50

Probably the most perfect toy of all time. The Super Soaker 50 was literally the perfect water gun. The air pressure was a game changer. It was much bigger than the little mini squirt guns you used to have to dunk under water to fill up. But not too big that you couldn’t run around with it. Best summer time toy of all time.

3. Slip and Slide

Correction. The Super Soaker was the second best summer toy of all time. Slip and Slide was like part toy, part sport. Fuck that Crocodile Mile shit. The “jump” or the “ramp” that you were supposed to fly off at the end was just a bump that crushed your dick. Slip and Slide was the original. Only drawbacks were A) sliding when it wasn’t wet enough. Slip and Slide taught every young man a valuable life lesson they would later realize was incredibly important – don’t dive in if it isn’t wet enough. and B) You were always covered in blades of grass all over your legs. I bet Slip N Slide gets in on the 2015 vote.

4. Wiffle ball and bat

The cheapest, simplest way to have fun. All you needed was this bat and ball set and some sort of chair for the strike zone and bam, you had yourself an entire sport to be played. Also, if you filled up a wiffle ball bat with water you had yourself a real life torpedo in the pool.

5. Big Wheels

The first version of transportation you knew as a kid. A few years later you would graduate to Roller Blades. After that a GT or a Dyno or a Mongoose. But first there was Big Wheels. Physically impossible for anyone over the age of like 8 to ride them. Your legs needed to be the perfect stumpy length. I felt like Jax Teller cruising around the neighborhood peddling like a mad man.

6. Blue Ball

For my money, my favorite toy of all time. All I needed was a blue ball and a wall and I could play Butts Up for like 50 hours straight. Quick sidenote – the most important piece of advice ever during Butts Up is when you’re on the wall getting pegged, make sure you tuck your sack up. Nothing worse than getting a blue ball coming in the back door and smashing your testicles. Anyway, give me a roof and a Blue Ball and I’d play off the roof for days too. Or just dribbling it around, bouncing it as you walk like Rocky. Whatever. Plus they smell amazing. My personal favorite.

7. GI Joes and Hot Wheels

The quint essential action figures. All due respect to Little Green Army Men, but GI Joes are the best figures of all time. Hot Wheels edge out Transformers in my book for simplicity and their veteran status. And the red/white Ferrari that changed colors with hot and cold water was practically magic in my book.

8. Spy Tech (specifically the Good N Plenty cover for the camera)

Not sure how prevalent Spy Tech was – did you guys have this shit? They had a whole line of spy gear. Long distance microphones. Motion censors. Finger print kit. Spy glasses that let you see around corners and shit. The hidden camera was the best. It came with a Good N Plenty cover to make it look like you were just a poor person eating poor people candy. . PS – None of this shit worked. My parents probably spent like 500 bucks buying everything in the set and I don’t think anything worked.

9. Play Doh (Honorable mention Nickelodeon Gak, Silly Putty)

Gooey shit to squeeze in your hands. Probably the most primitive form of toy ever. Play Doh is the champ, as long as you keep it in the jar so it stays soft. Also tastes delicious. Gak was pretty legit too. I remember being excited about that shit. And I guess Silly Putty was the veteran of the bunch. Still have no fucking clue how you can press it against the newspaper and it copies it. Thats more magic than the Hot Wheels changing colors.

Creepy Crawlers

Well, here’s a good idea – Lets give 8-12 year olds firing kilns so they can cook gooey insects. This had to be the most dangerous thing ever. Girls had Easy Bake Ovens that cooked shitty cupcakes – boys had Creepy Crawlers that made burnt insects. How many houses in America burned down because some 8 year old with the attention span of a fruit fly put these things in to cook and forgot about it? I cant tell you how many of those plates I ruined because the goo got permanently cooked in there after i left them burning for 45 minutes. By the way, the best gooey toy ever is the stick hand, commonly found in those 50 cent vending machines.

Talk Boy

It never really worked as good as you wanted it to. There wasn’t much use for it other than acting out the scenes from Home Alone. But goddamit Kevin McCallister had one and so I wanted one too.

PS – I realize a lot of people are gonna say Legos should be on the list. They probably should be, I just wasn’t much of a Legos guy. Some people would take the time to build like the Nina, The Pinta and the Santa Maria and I was the kid who just stacked rectangles upon rectangles and made a “tower.” Only thing worse than Legos were Erector Sets. You had to be a goddam mechanical engineer to work that shit.

PPS – I really wanted to put my Teddy Ruxpin Tape Player bear on the list but I figured it would hurt my street cred