Babble

Welcome to RetroFitted, a new feature that focuses on pop culture phenomena from the '70s, '80s and '90s, and assesses whether they still resonate with today's kids. First up: "Garfield."  The comic strip about an overweight cat and his dork of an owner made its debut in 1978. In the early 1980s -- when ...

I don't know who invented Clackers, the toy that consisted of two plastic balls on a string that smashed together with great force. But whoever did surely must have had this thought: "You know, I think kids today need another way to potentially injure themselves. I know, I'll develop a toy that can put their eyes out and/or cause a ...

Before there was Super Mario or The Sims -- hell, before there was even Pac-Man -- there was Space Invaders, the 1978 video game that gave us all the ability to shoot freaky buggers from outer space while sitting in the comfort of our own living rooms. It was so popular, even the British fell in love with it (by the way, I love that Super Breakout ...

In the early '80s, an epidemic swept through this nation, infecting millions. They called this affliction Pac-Man Fever. And it drove unsuspecting Americans out of their minds. The wildly popular video game was inescapable shortly after it was released in 1980. It dominated arcades, then spawned various handheld, tabletop and cartridge ...

It was virtually impossible to escape from childhood in the 1980s without owning at least one Smurf-related product. The Smurfs were EVERYWHERE. Although Papa Smurf and his posse of blue gnomes were first born in a Belgian comic strip back in the 1950s, they reached the zenith of their powers in the 1980s, when an NBC cartoon series and a ...

All the attention on the epic battle between Bratz and Barbie got me thinking about some dolls -- stylish action figures, really -- I loved as a kid: Glamour Gals. Four-inch-tall ladies who tooled around town in Firebirds, wore sparkly outfits and had names like Loni and Jessie, the Glamour Gals were similar to Bratz except: a. not as slutty; b. ...

Lite-Brite: It's not just the backdrop for "Larry King Live." The toy -- which lets kids create cool, funky glowing pictures with multi-colored pegs -- was always genius in its simplicity. All kids like to make pictures. All kids like things that glow. Put the two concepts together and you've got something truly groovy, as this ...

The electronic memory game Simon was unveiled in 1978 at Studio 54. And after a long night of boozing and doing hardcore drugs with its pal Speak & Spell, the primary-colored toy sobered up and got down to the business of becoming one of the most coveted kid items of the late '70s and early '80s. Based on the classic children's ...

Get Ally Sheedy into make-up and fire up some El Debarge: A remake of the 1986 family-friendly movie "Short Circuit" is currently in development. If the memory is a little fuzzy, the original "Circuit" was a comedy about a military robot named Number 5 who gets struck by lightning and becomes pseudo-human. I last saw the movie ...

Legos don't seem like a retro toy. That's what makes them so brilliant. Earlier this year, those ubiquitous, plastic bricks celebrated the 50th anniversary of  being patented. In the 1960s, the Lego as we currently know it became a regular fixture in every American kid's toy box and has pretty much stayed there ever since. ...