25 Top It Products of All Time

#25 - The Pet Rock
This blogger remembers when his dad first brought home his Pet Rock. The rock was in a box, resting in comfortable nest of straw, and his new pet had come with a 36-page training manual. "There are all sorts of tricks a pet rock can do," his father said. "Like, sit. It can play dead. And with a little push, it can roll."

· Full Post on the Pet Rock

25 Top It Products of All Time

#24 - Matchbox Cars
With remote control cars and simulated racing games clogging toy stores, it's hard to remember that, once upon a time, humble little die-cast cars represented the ultimate gift for any burgeoning car freak. Then, Matchbox's tiny little 1/78-scale automobiles were the absolute alpha and omega of child car culture.

· Full Post on Matchbox Cars

25 Top It Products of All Time

#23 - The Magic 8-ball
Why pay for a psychiatrist when you can go to the Magic 8-ball for advice and insight? Sure, the possible answers are limited to 20 (10 positive, five negative and five non-committal), but the Magic 8-ball will never ask you how that makes you feel, or cut you dead when your insurance lapses. It will probably just tell you ask again later, by which time you'll probably have solved the problem yourself.

· Full Post on The Magic 8-ball

25 Top It Products of All Time

#22 - The Slinky
The slinky requires no batteries. You can't buy fancy outfits for it. You can't play in on the Internet. You can't pay extraordinary amounts of money for extravagant versions, and if you're waiting for your kids to break it so you can throw it away, good luck. The slinky does one thing, and does it very, very well; it obeys gravity. As Jay Leno said, It's the one toy that encourages kids to play on the stairs.

· Full Post on The Slinky

25 Top It Products of All Time

#21 - CB Radio
In the mid-70s, the song "Convoy" was a number one hit on both the pop and country charts and CB trucker slang like "breaker, breaker 1-9" and "rubber duck" had entered the vernacular. As motorists discovered the thrills of dodging smokies and cursing out speed-crazed men driving 40-ton rigs, the CB joined the cassette deck as must-have auto options.

· Full Post on CB Radio

25 Top It Products of All Time

#20 - The Transformers
With the 2007 release of Michael Bay's Transformers movie, it's easy to forget that the toys have been with us for over 20 years. An adaptation of Japan's Microman and Diaclone lines, the Transformers offered something truly unique: toys that could, with a few deft moves, morph from one thing to another.

· Full Post on the Transformers

25 Top It Products of All Time

#19 - The Lava Lite
Excepting Aladdin's, it's the one lamp everyone seems to know, yet you can't even read by it. You maybe even owned one once, that torpedo-shaped vertical glass tube full of slowly churning goo. We call them Lava Lamps, but their real name is Lava Lite. The first Lava-Brand Motion Lamps lamps came out in 1965, just in time to help a generation of psychedelic dropouts tune in and drop out as they gazed into the gloopy miasma within.

· Full Post on The Lava Lite

25 Top It Products of All Time

#18 - My Little Pony
The 80's Saturday morning cartoon line-up included The Smurfs, Pee-wee's Playhouse and My Little Pony. Not only did a sense of right and wrong permeate those shows, the dolls and toys kids begged their moms for were a great inspiration to their childhood imagination. A shining, glitter-covered case in point: My Little Pony.

· Full Post on My Little Pony

25 Top It Products of All Time

#17 - The Princess Phone
Baby boomers will remember the 1930's classic -form follows function telephones - clunky, black and squat. You'll remember when colors arrived and the emergence of the wall phone. If you were a girl, though, what you'll remember most fondly is the girl's best friend, the princess phone.

· Full Post on The Princess Phone

25 Top It Products of All Time

#16 - The Mood Ring
The mood ring may be far out, man, but it has a practical, medical history. The ring was conceived in the 1960s, when Marvin Wernick went to an emergency call with a doctor friend, and watched him use a thermotropic strip to take a child's temperature. Wernick got some of the product and fitted ovals of it into rings with glass "gemstones" to show off the color. He wrote up some incredible claims about the connection between body temperature and mood, and a new psychological accessory was headed toward American history.

· Full Post on The Mood Ring

25 Top It Products of All Time