What's Inside?

The 80s and 90s were the golden age of the surprise toy. The same instinct that today brings us unboxing videos and premium blind bags was once channelled into all manner of secret keeping toys. Let's dive into some of the tastiest examples.

Keypers

Keypers were a thing of beauty. Not only freakin' adorable, they also came with exciting, pastel-toned plastic keys to unlock parts of their bodies. It's not as weird as it sounds.

Look at this absolute queen.

There was nothing inside them, but you could fill them with whatever you wanted. Across the free world, children's bedrooms were suddenly brimming with swanfuls of Lego, turtlefuls of Barbie shoes and penguinfuls of scented erasers and biscuit crumbs. The babies were even cuter, though once something went in those bad boys it was never coming out again.

Precious cinnamon roll.

Their best friends were Finders. Tweet me if you have any clue what they're supposed to be.

Finders Keypers. I just got that.

Bespectacled rodent clouds. Legless beasties with giant shoes. Cute af, in a variety of rainbow colours, but WHAT ARE THEY?

Polly Pocket, Lucy Locket, Mighty Max

Remember when miniature alliterative children with single, circular feet were a major choking hazard? Of course you do.

Polly Pocket was 2cm tall and lived a life you can only dream of. She had a beach house. She had a country cottage. She had a pool. She had a freaking castle. And all this enclosed in aspirational little powder compacts and pencil cases.

Not bad for a girl who only bends at the waist.

Her mate, Lucy Locket, was inexplicably marketed as 'life size'. This is only true if the 'life' you're referring to is intrauterine or some kind of tiny bird or mouse. She was, however, significantly bigger than Polly, and that kind of missed the point of what made Polly so popular.

Loser Locket: close, but no light-up castle.

But what about boys? Boys don't live in houses or go to the beach! Never fear, Mighty Max is here. He, like Polly, only has one point of movement and one conjoined foot, but he's ready for death-defying adventure.

I guess he lives in a snake. Why the hell not.

Kinder Eggs

AKA Eggs of Numbing Inevitability. But heck, how exciting were they when you were a kid? If the answer isn't 'very exciting', I don't know what's wrong with you.

Yes, they still exist. Yes, the chocolate was and is below par and the toys were and are cheap and nasty. And yet. And yet.

Who could resist the lure of two-tone chocolate (how do they do that?) plus a collectible hippo?

Or crocodile, or lion.

And when they weren't doling out eccentric zoo animals, Kinder offered tiny little kits so that you could make the toy yourself: click the crappy wheels into the crappy toy car and stick an oversized go-faster-stripe sticker on that mofo. Boom. Glorious.

Clarks Magic Steps

OK, I need a moment to collect my emotions. I never got over Clarks Magic Steps, or the crushing despair of never owning them. They weren't a toy. Just a pair of shoes. But every girl I knew would have sold her own grandmother to organ harvesters if it meant they could own them. Why? Oh, my sweet summer child.

Clarks Magic Steps were advertised like they were the actual Messiah, come to bless a select few little girls. I mean, look at this.

Goosebumps. I want those shoes now. No matter that they won't fit me, I would cut off parts of my feet and cram the bloody stumps into that white pleather like Cinderella's ugly stepsister in order to wear a Clarks Magic Steps shoe.

The shoes themselves had a little see-through window on the soles, which would change the picture it showed when you used the magic key. I mean. Hot damn. Sign me up for all of this. Sadly, very little evidence for them seems to exist now. But they remain whole and mighty in the hearts of a million 30-something women who were once 90s kids.