By Candice Montenegro, Contributor
INQUIRER.net

PARDON the bias, but I think kids who grew up in the 90s (myself included) were pretty lucky with toys. It was sort of a transition year, and we had the best of both worlds — dolls and robots were still in, while video game consoles were introduced. And because computer games were slowly becoming popular, toymakers had to be innovative with their traditional plastic toys.

Here are five toys that were pretty big in the 90s. I’m not going to include the remote-controlled cars and the Barbie dolls because these weren’t really introduced then (much earlier, I believe) and, well, they’ll ruin the title. Here are some toys I remember enjoying when I was growing up:

1. Pogs. Remember those colorful cardboard discs that you stack? Pog is actually an old Hawaiian game that was first introduced in Canada in 1991. Here in the Philippines, it came free with bottled softfdrink crowns, and you claimed your free “pog pack” from your neighborhood sari-sari store. You needed a slammer to hit the stack of pogs, and all the discs that flip will automatically be your playmate’s property — or at least that’s how we played it. I don’t think anybody knows exactly how to play them. They don’t come with instructions, so the rules vary per barangay, I guess.

2. Power Rangers action figures. When you’re seven and gap-toothed, nothing is cooler than a bunch of teenagers who are also masked superheroes. I think every 90s kid can tell you which Power Ranger they were, and the fact that there were only five characters (three boys and two girls) made picking some sort of a first-come-first-served challenge. Anyway, good thing they came up with six-inch action figures. These were plastic models of the five Power Rangers, and the cool thing about them was a little button at the back that made them morph from their “ordinary” faces to their masked superhero counterparts. Talk about some mighty morphin’.

3. Polly Pocket. Polly Pockets are dolls less than an inch tall, with miniature accessories that come in rectangular or circular cases. The furniture is usually fixed, except in the later versions where you can rearrange the furniture in the house- or castle-shaped cases. In 1999, Mattel purchased Polly Pocket from Bluebird Toys and made them bigger and plastic jointed. This new generation Polly Pocket is more child-friendly; the original ones were so small that they could easily fit inside a child’s nostril and get stuck there (er, not that I would know). Of course I still prefer the original small ones that actually fit your pocket.

4. Pound Puppies and Pound Purries. Not everyone was allowed to have a pet as a kid, so plush stuffed dogs and cats came to the rescue. Pound Puppies and Pound Purries had cute droopy eyes and floppy ears that had hair you can brush (and yes, the brush comes with the toy, too!). Every dog or cat had its own carrying case, and each one came with an adoption certificate. Naming the dog or cat and and signing the adoption certificate were actually the pretty exciting parts of having a Pound Puppy or Purry. After that, they’re great at collecting dust. Still, very cute and adorable nevertheless.

5. Power Penz. Now this one’s really cool. Every second grade kid wants to sneak in a toy in school without getting caught, and Power Penz allowed us to do so. It looked like your average pen, except a game (or something cooler) was attached at one end. One pen came with a racecar that you released at a push of a button, and another one came with a small basketball and a hoop. The cooler versions were the ones that came with invisible ink and the Yak Bak, a mini voice recorder. The only thing that wasn’t cool about Power Penz was the teacher who confiscated them in the middle of class.