Nerding Day: 1990 Kenner Toy Fair Catalogue 🌭

Not to get all the panties dropping at once, but I recently attended an antiquarian book fair in New York City. That’s right, the New York City, where Spider-Man fights the Rhino and salsa that cowboys don’t like is made. I also live here, so it’s really not that big of an accomplishment, although anyone who’s ever had to take the subway from Brooklyn to the Upper East Side knows that it might as well be a plane ride to Chicago. Local humor! We love that! This guy knows what I’m talking about! Anyway, let me tell you about this fair of old ass books.

I actually go to the antiquarian book fair every year because they have some incredible items and looking at old things gives me a sense of continuity with history that also allows me to ignore my own inevitable entry to oblivion. The book fair has it all, too. There are editions of books by classic authors like H.G. Wells and Jane Austen. There are loose pages from ancient bibles. There are massive, hand-painted maps from the 1700s. There are medical texts that look like grimoires from a shitty roleplaying game. All of which costs so much money. They had a complete bible from the 1600s that cost over $100,000, an amount that I would have described as “infinity” when I was a child. The only people who can afford most of this crap are super villains who face a floor-to-ceiling window while giving a monologue about how small people look from the top of a skyscraper.

That said, there are some gems that are affordable. Well, let me throw some quotation marks around “affordable” because good lord, it’s still expensive. I ended up dropping about $300 and I left with the complete set of Zork off-brand choose your own adventure books – which you just know I’m going to squeeze like a bloodless stone for content here. I also got some corny art prints, the novelization of Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome and, most importantly, “Good Things,” the 1990 Kenner Toy Fair Catalogue. If you’re wondering how much that one cost me, imagine $99 and then add one more dollar. While other people at the book fair were buying obscure 1800s erotica – there was a lot available – I was spending a hundred bucks on a catalogue that they once gave out for free.

Waste of money? No. Perfection? Yes. Just take a look at this table of contents.

It’s hard to say what I love most about this. Maybe it’s the fact that every toy listed in this catalogue sounds like an amazing name for a minor league baseball team. Maybe it’s because our culture would no longer allow someone to associate filthy rainbows with innocent children. Maybe it’s because I forgot that a toy named Sit’n Spin existed. Maybe it’s because RoboCop, based on a violent rated R movie, is right between Ernest P. Worrell and Fashionstar Fillies, neither of which are based on violent rated R movies. Ernest Scared Stupid is legitimately frightening, though. A lot of things are!

Unlike most books, when you get past the table of contents, things here get really interesting. Nearly every section starts with a splash page that is required by the government to mention the brand as many times as possible. I feel like this was SEO before the internet? Just saying the same word again and again and again so toy retailers would buy it. Although, if we’re being honest, how much did people forget who Batman was? The way the name “Batman” is capitalized each time sounds like someone made a plan to have Batman jump out at the right moment and Bruce Wayne just isn’t showing up. “It sure would be great if BATMAN were here. We all love BATMAN and his BATMAN friends. BATMAN’s enemy, the Penguin, is stabbing me to death with an umbrella, so I sure wish BATMAN jumped through that window to save me like BATMAN does!”

The Batman section is notable for two things: The coolest Joker toy ever devised and what I’d soon learn was the beginning of a series of toy guns that would cause a kid to get shot by the police in modern times. Approximately, oh, half of the brands in this catalogue feature a plastic firearm that would look real to cops at a distance best described as “itchy trigger finger.” I don’t mean to be an old man shouting at clouds, but if you brought one of these to school in 1990, the teacher would get annoyed and probably take it away. If you brought it to school now, you’d get tasered and tackled by a 300-pound security guard and then be forced to watch Adolescence with your parents.

One interesting facet in this catalogue of 1990’s finest cheap shit is that it throws jump scares at you when you least expect it, which is kind of how jump scares work. For example, in the section on Play-Doh, you have your regular toys in which kids make inedible food. And they’re kind of cool! Check out the Make-A-Meal Sub Shop! It includes that meat slicer that we’re all afraid of, except instead of meat, it’s whatever God puts in that clay. Personally, the idea of spending hours pretending to have a job in a store making fake food never appealed to me, but maybe that’s because I like real food and don’t like actually working. Still, all this is pretty normal, even if ain’t nobody making swiss cheese look that good with Play-Doh.

But then, gahhhhhh! Play-Doh faces! Jesus Christ! Jesus fucking Christ! Apparently there’s some “game” attached that lets you roll dice to figure out what facial features you’re going to mangle? Look at them!

Look at her screaming. Look at his eyes agape with horror. Like Commander Data’s daughter, Lal, they can feel it! It’s like someone thought Mr. Potato Head wasn’t terrifying enough at an uncanny level and wanted to see if they could push the limit. If someone had shown these to me as a child, I’d still have nightmares. And, not for nothing, what a missed opportunity for a Batman/Clayface crossover.

It was around the Police Academy section that I realized this pristine copy of the 1990 Kenner Toy Fair Catalogue was actually falling apart and full of loose pages.

I paid $100 goddamn dollars for this! Man, why do I always fall for shit? I’m such an idiot! God! This is what I’m fucking talking about when I tell my therapist I can’t do anything right and I ruin everything I love. Just… fuck. Fuck! You know? I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Let’s keep going. Where were we? Police Academy? Yeah, that seems right.

We don’t need to get into the nitty gritty with Police Academy, a franchise lacking both nitty and gritty, but rest assured, it’s yet another rated R movie that got turned into a children’s series. Fortunately for all the youth watching, they kept the racism intact as well as raised the stakes of the policing to frightening levels. One of the toys is a police officer hiding in a mailbox with a human rights-violating tiny prison cell behind him. Don’t look away. You couldn’t even sit or lay down in that cell. And it’s outside in view of the public, so people can attack you and you’d have no defense. It’s barbaric. It’s terrifying. So is that cage on the back of a police pickup truck. Then again, this is how I imagine half of the country wants crime to be handled, so don’t be surprised if I’m not the only one looking at a toy catalogue for ideas. I’m just saying, during the summer, that cell will kill people.

It’ll come as no surprise to you that the Police Academy toy set also features a gun that would get a little tyke merc’d. But what may come as a surprise to you – as it was to me because, honestly, this might be the most batshit thing in the whole catalogue – is a Police Academy “role playing assortment.” We’ve all seen a fake toy badge. Arnold Schwarzenegger used one to great success in Jingle All The Way. But you could apparently also buy fake police tape, fake traffic tickets, fake identification, and – this is the one that got me – fake tear gas canisters with the face of a crying man on it. I mean, I don’t think the Police Academy series is really propaganda the way some others might but this does not help the case!

What a Christmas morning! Finally the kids on my block can leave tickets on cars and then pepper spray the driver when they come out to contest it. All in good fun! Kenner!

Meanwhile, in a section for GIRLS – yuck! – there is Baby Alive, a toy with a name that implies one day the opposite will be true. The less said about Baby Alive, the better. But, as the picture says, she really eats and really dirties her diaper. This toy isn’t actually offensive in any real way – just vaguely gross – and, unlike 50% of the rest of the catalogue, won’t get you murdered by a disgruntled sheriff. But still. This was a thing that existed. Also, again, I can’t stress enough just how divided these sections are based on gender. There is not one picture of a boy in the section for Easy Bake Oven despite me constantly asking my parents to buy me one when I was a kid. My parents would happily buy me these rated R toys, but there was no way in hell they’d let their masculine son learn about cooking at a young age.

But RoboCop? Hell, yeah, baby! Look at him firing those massive guns at suspects! Due process? More like pew-pew-pew process! And no, I ain’t deleting that. RoboCop and the Ultra Force is great because it basically takes the entire point of the first movie and intentionally misses it. I do love, however, that in order for this to be child safe, the most threatening gang name they could think up was the “Vandals.” Like, is RoboCop using a backpack machine gun on a teenager tagging a wall? That could be a bit extreme, I think? Also, I love that they remind you that the latest movie is going to be PG-13 and not rated R, as if that really makes a difference with a robotic police officer blowing the heads off people in toy form. You better have a permit for that mural or you’re dead, son.

Speaking of which, I do have to give the RoboCop toy line credit for having the most “seriously, you will get a bullet in you if you take this outside” gun of them all. Yes, it has the word “police” written on it, but your hand is going to cover that while you hold the gun and nobody is going to see it until NormalCop kicks your prepubescent body to see if you’re still alive like that baby doll toy. You’re not, but you did poop yourself.

I will say this: Somehow a talking Ernest doll is the most normal toy in the entire catalogue. It’s also the one I actually went to eBay to check the price on. Most of the ones that are still in the box run for about $150, which is only $50 over my “moron who will buy anything” level. We really didn’t know what we had with Ernest. We made fun of him for just talking to Vern and having a good time. We were cruel and now the world has no Ernest. We deserve the Hell we’ve made for ourselves. We deserve pain and darkness.

Meanwhile, Fashionstar Fillies is just the best. I love, love, love that someone probably pitched this as a mature version of My Little Pony. Like it’s the feminine-coded version of Sega doing what Nintendon’t. The fact that some of them are called “Sixteens Horses” is a bit disconcerting since that sounds like an execution method saved for the worst traitors in the kingdom, but look at these beauties. Some horses are wearing literal shoes! I mean, come on, folks! Somehow a horse that dresses like Blossom from the hit show Blossom makes sense. Or maybe I just appreciate that these are some of the few toys that don’t involve pooping or the specter of death. Then again, if these were popular now, they’d likely have a lot of questionable fan art.

After a boys’ section called MegaForce (boring military equipment) and a girls’ section called Yum Yums (creepy flavored bears), we finally get back to the good stuff with Beetlejuice. The film was rated PG despite being horrifying, so we’ll allow it. And, honestly, these are the coolest toys as a whole. I have zero notes on any of these and I want them all.

There is an old man who turns into a buzzard! A fat guy who turns into a pig! A Beetlejuice that comes apart piece by piece. It’s a budding goth kid’s greatest dream outside of getting revenge on that 5th grade jock Thomas Valverde who won’t leave you alone. I want all of these toys and I want them now. Plus, there is nothing here called something like “The Beetlejuice Blaster” that will get you sent to the actual afterlife to meet Juno, your caseworker. That’s a nice surprise.

Meanwhile, the less said about the Sit’n Spin Ride-On Toy, the better. Ugh. I feel like I’m going to get sent to prison for having this photo on my phone.

Eventually, after a long, boring section of toys based on athletes – who fucking cares – we get to the headliner: The Real Ghostbusters.

If you remember, the Real Ghostbusters was the cartoon series that actually did Ghostbusters the best of any of the Ghostbusters, including the first movie. I know folks might disagree with me, but also, come on. I’ve literally got friends who acted in the latest movie and I still would tell them that the Real Ghostbusters was where it was at. They had an episode called “The Collect Call Of Cathulhu.” Yes, they spelled it wrong. It doesn’t matter; it’s an H.P. Lovecraft kids cartoon episode. This show was great and had some great toys that could’ve been mixed and matched with the Beetlejuice set if my parents had worked a little harder when I was a child. They could’ve picked up third or fourth jobs rather than coming home.

And so ends “Good Things,” the catalogue for Kenner’s 1990 toy line. I was hoping to take a lesson away from this of some sort. Something along the lines of nostalgia not being as good when you look back but, honestly, I would love these toys to exist now outside of overpriced re-sellers. This nostalgia’s pretty good. I mean, the toys are generally creepy. And if someone gave me that Play-Doh face set, I’d consider it a threat. That said, it’s fascinating how many toys would get your face on the news under a headline with the words “mistake” and “tragedy” if the police saw you with them today. We’d all be gone.

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Aaron Croston. AARON CROSTON has impeccable taste. AARON CROSTON is incredibly smart and sophisticated. AARON CROSTON can punch a hole through seven inches of SOLID STEEL™ (sold separately).