10. Styrofoam Fighter Planes
AmazonScale model building was an expensive hobby. It took time, patience and the deft hand of a Jedi Master. And even then, once you had finished the finicky business of sticking all the bits of plastic together to create your jet or tank or X-Wing, you still couldn't play with it. Because it would snap in half, and then your mom would shout at you. Which is why the invention of flimsy styrofoam fighter planes was a godsend for so many of us - you didn't have to paint them, they took all of five seconds to put together, and you could fly them all over the show without fear of breaking a window. The planes themselves tended to last all of ten minutes before a wing broke off or the propellor was sent reeling into a pot plant, but since they only set you back a couple of bucks there were very few tears shed.
9. Furby
YouTubeChristmas shopping hell was made even more hellish towards the tail-end of the nineties thanks to these furry robocreatures. We were instantly captivated by their apparent intelligence - in those days the idea of a toy animal which would learn to communicate with others of its kind and even learn to speak English was eerily close to witchcraft - and quickly had parents swinging their handbags furiously in toy store isles across the globe. Furbies made a huge impact right away, with toy stores shoveling around 40 million of them in the first three years since their 1998 release. With numbers like that, its no surprise that Hasbro has since tried to relaunch the brand in recent years, but kids these days have their noses pressed up against their iPads to worry too much about a little waddling owl-bear-hampster hybrid.