Hating the Past: Fads

Magic the Gathering- Never bought or really played.  Game was confusing and generally played by what I would have considered weirdos at the time.  No offense to anyone who played it though.  Looking back it had alot more to offer than most of the things on this list and was probably played by semi intelligent kids.

Pokemon- I can't believe I chose these over buying more baseball cards on a couple of occasions. Granted I was looking to sell them because you always got to be hustling but I owned this garbage and got sucked in.  These cards were really expensive and were a total waste of money and you do not need to catch em all.

Pogs- They were retarded.  They made no sense and yet I found myself buying them eventually. They were cheap so their wasn't much push back from the parents. Never really did anything with them including playing that dumb little game. I once attended a pog and baseball card birthday as a little guy and traded my pogs for 1990-91 proset hockey packs. 

Those Robot Pets (I think Taguchis or something like that)- Never had one but played with other kids during a school day.  Kinda fun for a day but little playback value even for $15 bucks or so.

Beanie Babies- Got in real late and had a few of the so called valuable ones.  We even had some book predicting their value in 10 years and boy was that wrong.  Had the tag protectors and cases for a few of them as well.  So lame to spend my little money or my parents money on anything but baseball cards at that age.  The expenses on these added up as you collected them.

Devil Sticks- Never bought because I'm not that skillful but I know someone in my family had a pair. They were stupid but relatively cheap.

Girls- Cats Cradle thing.  I don't know what this was but the girls seemed to play it alot.  I'd like to here some comments if you played with it.  It seemed rather harmless.

Yo-Yos- They made a comeback with our generation in late elementary school. I can remember the Fireball and I believe Duncan Yo-yos were among the best to have.  My parents bought a couple for me as gifts but my lack of skill and practice with them made them relatively useless.  A legitimate little toy that's cheap and has more staying power than most of this list.  Will probably be a fad again at some point if you can avoid giving cell phones to pre teens.

Paper football- Played quite a bit. Easy to make and I even attempted to sell well made ones for nickels and dimes in 3rd grade.  Obviously that didn't go to well but revenues did clear $1. The game itself was not so enjoyable and it was always more fun to flick them across the room.

Please add more because I'm sure I'm forgetting some.

Most fads I held out until they were near the end of their run and gave in.  Some I was able to wait out entirely and successfully avoid getting sucked in. 

Looking back it was easy to predict that I would be an individual rather than a clone.  I was still wearing hand me downs and sweatshirt and sweatpants in 5th grade because I was comfortable in them at recess. The rest of the day didn't matter too much to me.  In reality nothing has really changed.  I never created a myspace or a facebook just because everyone else was doing it. However I scooped up my name on twitter hoping it would kill facebook in the workplace. So while I take pride in not going with the crowd, I am prone at times to giving in. Don't follow the leader all the time and do what you want to do.