Your Fave Childhood Toys Are Having A Major Comeback
Between Funko Pop figurines targeting every corner of popular culture fandom and the recent rise of blind boxes, adults are collecting and playing with toys like never before. Companies like The Loyal Subjects and Basic Fun took notice and have been attracting the attention of older toy enthusiasts, specifically Gen X and Millennials, by reviving popular brands like Rainbow Brite, Strawberry Shortcake, Littlest Pet Shop and several others.
Loyal Subjects CEO Jonathan Cathey told us, 'I don't think we had a conscious strategy other than to go after what we liked and knew — sort of that age-old writer wisdom — 'write what you know'. Being born in '74, I came of age with these brands, so I had a visceral connection... I knew there were many folks like me... so it just seemed like a no-brainer. It's sort of the anti-data approach, just go with your gut kind-a-thing.'It was a gut instinct that paid off. The brand's Rainbow Brite re-release took home the 'Doll of the Year' award at the 2025 Toy Awards. It's also worth noting that a Transformer toy took home 'Action Figure of the Year' and an updated version of Uno won 'Game of the Year.' Jay Foreman, CEO of Basic Fun, explained, 'What makes [these brands] popular is that they have an extra charm and appeal that makes them memorable and endearing, generation after generation. So the brands that bring back memories are the ones that tend to remain popular.'
Some of the toys have been restored just as you remember. Others have been updated slightly to align with current trends. We rounded up some of these throwback toys guaranteed to send you drifting down memory lane and spoke to some collectors about their favorites.
A new kind of Care Bear
Care Bears were originally created in 1981 to be featured on greeting cards. In the decades since, the characters have been the focus of TV shows, movies, games and (of course) dolls. The newest line, including this Grumpy Bear, are designed to help kids express their emotions and made from materials to help comfort children with sensory needs.Get it from Amazon for $13.97+ (available in 11 styles).
A truly outrageous music icon
Barbie has had a chokehold on the pop culture zeitgeist for generations, but the '80s were Jem's time to shine. As the star of an animated series from 1985 to 1988, her flamboyant style and personality left such a lasting impression on kids at the time that they're now snatching up the revived doll line. Our own Noah Michelson is one such collector: "I know some people think nostalgia can be dangerous because it romanticizes the past in a way that often isn't entirely accurate, but I think leaning into it can also be a relief in some ways. So much is terrible right now and these toys are a reminder of — and a portal to — a better time."Get it from Walmart for $34.95.
A colorful intergalactic superhero
First introduced in 1984, Rainbow Brite leads a group of heroes who protect all of the colors of the universe. The Loyal Subjects revival of toy line is one of their most popular endeavors so far, earning them awards and accolades in the industry and from fans. While this 12-inch doll is the clear standout, the collection also includes mini figurines, bag charms and enamel pins. Get it from Amazon for $14 (also available in three other styles).
A set of miniature animal friends
A few years before Pokémon took the world by storm in the '90s, Littlest Pet Shop had young people all over trying to collect them all. Relaunched in 2022 by Basic Fun, fans of the original pets are embracing their tiny friends again with open arms. YouTuber Emily Kay explains, "I have around 750 Littlest Pet Shops. I've been collecting since I was around 6 years old and I'm 23 now! I stopped buying LPS when I went to college, it had been so long since Hasbro had made the type of Littlest Pet Shops that collectors like myself preferred, and there were less and less people involved in the community. I find the community to be a big part of why I enjoy collecting LPS! Once Basic Fun brought back the older style, I started to collect and make videos again with my rediscovered passion."Get them from Amazon for $11.99.
An adorable adoptable dog
Millennials have been living by the "adopt, don't shop" mantra since we were little kids. Between Cabbage Patch Kids and Pound Puppies, we adored dolls that came with adoption certificates and gave them loving homes. The original line of Pound Puppies ceased production in 2003, but the adoption shelter reopened in 2019 when Basic Fun brought back some familiar faces and introduced a few new ones.Get it from Amazon for $14.99.
A boy doll from 1985 with an unforgettable theme song
Historically, most dolls have been designed to appear female and they've been marketed toward girls. Hasbro attempted to shake things up in the mid-'80s by creating My Buddy for boys. There are long-standing rumors that the doll served as visual inspiration for the murderous toy star of "Child's Play" franchise, but not even Chucky could stop this little guy from making his big return to shelves in February of 2025.Get it from Walmart for $34.97.
A special anniversary-edition figurine for horse girls (and boys) everywhere
My Little Pony has had several iterations since its debut in 1981. The adult fanbase for these magical horses is large enough that it was the subject of a documentary made back in 2012. Basic Fun introduced a limited edition re-release of the original line-up to celebrate the brand's 40th anniversary in 2021. I'm not sure they still qualify as ponies at 40 years old. Get it from Amazon for $13.99+ (available in six styles).
A sweet-scented doll with some equally fragrant friends
While Rainbow Brite is off on her intergalactic travel preserving color in the universe, Strawberry Shortcake and her pals are holding it down on Earth baking sweet fruity treats. The first doll was introduced in 1979 and continues to have a devoted following with each new release thanks to The Loyal Subjects. Get it from Amazon for $13.99+ (available in two styles).
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21 minutes ago
- Yahoo
2025 NBA Finals: Step aside, millennial stars, we're about to crown our first Gen Z champion
When Michael Jordan hit the clinching shot over Utah in the 1998 NBA Finals, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander wasn't even born yet. When Kobe Bryant threw the iconic 'oop to Shaquille O'Neal in the 2000 Western Conference finals, Tyrese Haliburton was just a few months old. Feeling old yet? Advertisement Millennials certainly do. But nothing makes this millennial feel older than the following fact: The 2025 NBA Finals winner will be the first Gen Z champion in league history. Welcome to the Zoomers NBA. Headlining these Finals are two youthful teams — the Oklahoma City Thunder and Indiana Pacers — whose franchises haven't won a title in decades and whose average age makes them too young to qualify for the millennial cohort. The rotations of the Thunder and Pacers hardly have any 30-year-olds. The playoffs used to be the domain of older, savvy vets deep into their 30s, but the league has gotten younger, and the best teams seem to be heading in that direction more rapidly. Advertisement Is contending for a title increasingly becoming a young man's game? (Amy Monks/Yahoo Sports Illustration) The first Gen Z champ While there is no official separating line between Gen Z and millennials, leading think tank Pew Research Center has defined 1996 as the last birth year for the millennial generation based on their demographic work looking at technological, economic and social shifts throughout the last century. For the first time in NBA history, all four conference finalists — based on minutes-weighted average age, which accounts for playing time — will fit into the Gen Z category. This postseason, the Celtics' minutes-weighted average age was 29.9 years old, a birth year of 1995, making them the last millennial team that was remaining in the playoff field. The much younger and healthier Knicks squad (27.7) ousted them in six games after Jayson Tatum tore his Achilles in Game 4. (For the research study, ages are derived from Basketball Reference's historical pages using a player's age on Feb. 1 of the season.) If current trends hold, the Celtics will be the last millennial team to ever win the championship. Advertisement The kids are doing more than alright. Led by 26-year-old Gilgeous-Alexander, the Thunder's minutes-weighted average age clocks in at 24.7 years old. That gives the West's No. 1 seed a 'team' birth year of 2000, three years after the 1997 cutoff for Gen Z. The 25-year-old Haliburton represents the face of the speedy Pacers, who, at an average of 26.2 years old, blitzed past the slightly more senior Cleveland Cavaliers (26.5) and Milwaukee Bucks (28.1) in earlier rounds. If you've been paying attention, the NBA's elder statesmen have all been kicked to the curb this postseason. There is no LeBron James, no Stephen Curry, no Jimmy Butler left. No Kevin Durant, who didn't even make the play-in tournament. Not even Jrue Holiday, who won a title with both the Celtics and Bucks; the 34-year-old might as well be known as Uncle Jrue around some of the remaining youngsters. With an 80-18 record including the postseason, the Thunder are redefining everything that older generations thought they knew about what championship contenders look like. If OKC were to hoist the Larry O'Brien Trophy this season, it would be the second-youngest NBA champion ever, trailing only the 1977 Portland Trail Blazers (24.2) led by a 24-year-old Bill Walton. A modern precedent to these Thunder doesn't really exist if they pull it off. The youngest championship team of the 21st century was the 2015 Golden State Warriors, who were 26.3 years old, almost two full years older than the current OKC squad. Advertisement With the Thunder leading the way, the average age of the two finalists stands at 25.5 years old, which is the lowest on record. As recently as 2014, that same figure was 30.4 years old. This continues a surprising trend that has seen the NBA get younger and younger in its final stages of the season. A Gen Z champion was only a matter of time, but if late 1990s roster trends held firm, we'd be about 2-3 years away from reaching that point. With these four teams, we're way ahead of schedule. While it's true the league, in general, has gotten younger across the decades, the final teams used to be far older than the also-rans. Nowadays, the age gap is narrowing to the point where, especially this season, there doesn't seem to be much of one at all. What's going on? Zooming out, this could be a function of injuries weeding out the old man. Previously, I pointed out the postseason is being riddled with injuries to star players more than ever. Heading into this postseason, the NBA averaged seven injured All-Stars over the previous five postseasons, a rate that has increased more than sevenfold since the late 1990s (0.8 per season). Advertisement Older stars like Stephen Curry (hamstring strain) and Damian Lillard (Achilles tear) were knocked out due to leg injuries while other veteran-led teams like the L.A. Clippers and L.A. Lakers only lasted a round. Can millennial bodies still hold up and go the distance in today's pace-and-space era? It's a question that has gnawed at Steve Kerr. The Warriors head coach was almost 33 years old when he won the 1998 NBA Finals as a player with Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls. That's roughly the same age as T.J. McConnell, the elder statesman of the Pacers who turned 33 in March. On that veteran-laden Bulls team, McConnell would have been just one of the guys. Scottie Pippen was 32. Jordan and Ron Harper were 34. Dennis Rodman was 36. The babies on the team were Toni Kukoc and Luc Longley, who were both 29 years old — the same age as Knicks 'veteran' big Karl-Anthony Towns is now. The Bulls' average age on that team was 32.1 years old. There's not a single 32-year-old or older player on the OKC roster. Advertisement Kerr has taken notice. Steve Kerr wonders if the schedule impacted Stephen Curry. (Photo by) (Ellen Schmidt via Getty Images) When I asked Kerr to compare the league back then to now, the nine-time champion immediately pointed to the pace — the number of trips up and down the floor in each game. In the 1998 playoffs, the game was played at a snail's pace, just 85 possessions per 48 minutes. Today, with teams favoring an uptempo playing style, playoff teams average about 95. Kerr then points out how the 3-point shot — 'the pace and space' — has broadened the physical demands of today's defenders. It's not just the frenetic pace of today's game; it's the expanding dimensions of bodily activity and psychological attention. He's not totally surprised Curry, Lillard, Tatum and others have fallen victim to injury in today's environment. 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He asked Rick Celebrini, the team's longtime director of sports medicine and performance, about the circumstances surrounding Curry's first-time injury. Advertisement 'Do you think Steph pulling his hamstring has anything to do with playing 48 hours after logging 46 minutes of Game 7 in Houston?' he asked. 'One hundred percent,' Kerr remembers Celebrini telling him. 'If he had an extra day or two … we can't prove this, but I have no doubt based on our understanding of the scientific literature that the hamstring injury was the result of inadequate recovery and fatigue.' Kerr relents that it's impossible to know what would have happened if the two rounds were more spaced out. But he certainly nodded along when he heard millennial and former NBA champion Aaron Gordon speak on the issue following his own hamstring injury. After the Denver Nuggets lost to the Thunder in the conference semifinals, Gordon was critical of the schedule that also required his Nuggets to play a Game 7 and Game 1 in a 48-hour span. 'I would really, really appreciate it if there were a couple of days in between games in the playoffs instead of every other day,' Gordon told reporters. 'The product of the game would be a lot better. You'll see a high level of basketball. Probably less blowouts.' Advertisement Kerr hopes the league takes action and either spaces out the existing schedule by adding a week to the season calendar or cutting regular season games. But in his discussions with the league both publicly and privately, he hasn't gotten very far. I think all the complaints of the wear and tear, and the scheduling, are all valid. But they all fall on deaf ears because of the dollar sign. Warriors coach Steve Kerr 'I think all the complaints of the wear and tear, and the scheduling, are all valid,' Kerr says. 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Up the road in San Antonio, the Spurs have already signaled they see Victor Wembanyama's title window as appearing sooner than initially assumed. At the trade deadline, the team acquired 2022-23 All-NBA guard De'Aaron Fox to upgrade from the 40-year-old Chris Paul, who provided a steady hand as the team's point guard. With Paul set to become a free agent, Harrison Barnes, 32, remains the team's only player older than 27. Advertisement It'll be fascinating to see how the Spurs complement Wemby, who missed half the season with deep-vein thrombosis. Do they put Stephon Castle and/or their No. 2 pick in the 2025 draft in a potential package for Giannis Antetokounmpo, who will be 33 years old by the time his contract expires in 2027-28? And then there's Dallas, which could make Golden State's two-timeline experiment look timid by comparison. Does it make sense for Dallas to add an 18-year-old Cooper Flagg to a team anchored by a trio approaching their mid-30s in Kyrie Irving, Klay Thompson and Anthony Davis? Or does Dallas cut bait on the millennial core? Despite Kerr's misgivings about the rigors of the NBA season, it doesn't seem like reform is on the way. Looking at the remaining teams in the postseason, it does seem like it's a young man's game now. Kerr feels conflicted in going that far. 'I wouldn't put a blanket comment saying, 'It's a young man's game,' because in some ways that's always been true,' Kerr says. Advertisement He gives it another thought. 'Maybe now,' he says, 'they're going to be taking over the league a little bit earlier than they were 10, 20 years ago.'
Newsweek
an hour ago
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Gen Zer Loves New Tattoo, Then She Realizes Something: 'What Do I Do?'
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. A woman was admiring her new tattoo when she had a dawning realization—to anyone other than her, it was upside down. The woman, 18, who did not give her name but who posts to Reddit under the username u/Lazy-Ad3123, took to the r/tattooadvice sub on May 8, where she wrote: "Got a new tattoo and I LOVE it but I just realised..." She showed off the tattoo, a black-and-white spiral staircase on her arm, with the stairs beginning from the bottom—from her point of view, at least. "It's upside down to people when I show it off," she wrote. "What do I do? I am in love with everything else about it. Is it that big of a deal?" Luckily, Redditors flocked to the post—which has collected more than 12,000 upvotes—to assure the woman it was likely not an issue. "Looking at it upside down, it still looks like a funky staircase," one commenter said, as another suggested "just point upwards when you show it off." And as one pointed out: "Otherwise you are looking at an upside down staircase for your life. They see it once, you see it daily. You are good." Another said the placement of the railing "makes it look like an impossible staircase. Which is kind of cool, honestly," as others compared it to a piece by Dutch graphic artist MC Escher. Escher's Relativity artwork features a room with staircases criss-crossing in a labyrinth-like way, with figures walking on them defying the laws of gravity. The famous piece has been referenced many times in pop culture, including 2010 film 'Inception' and 1986's 'Labyrinth' starring David Bowie, according to the BBC. The woman's tattoo, which she took after realizing it would be upside down to others. The woman's tattoo, which she took after realizing it would be upside down to others. Reddit u/Lazy-Ad-3123 In a comment under her post, the woman shared her gratitude to the commenters, and wrote: "I think I just kind of forgot about angles and perspectives and it was just a shock when I realised haha. Thank you I'm overthinking." A 2021 study found that tattoos are most common among Millennials in the United States, with 12 per cent of Millennial respondents stating they had one tattoo, and 29 per cent having multiple tattoos. When it came to Gen X, 14 per cent had one, and 18 per cent had multiple, compared to 67 per cent who had no tattoos. With Millennials, that number dropped to 57 per cent, according to an Ipsos study of 1,016 respondents from the continental U.S., Alaska, and Hawaii. Newsweek has contacted u/Lazy-Ad-3123 via Reddit for comment on this story. Do you have funny and adorable videos or pictures you want to share? Send them to life@ with some extra details, and they could appear on our website.
Newsweek
2 hours ago
- Newsweek
Woman on Vacation Asks Gen Z and X for Same Photo—Can You Tell Who Took It?
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. A woman visiting Singapore has gone viral after asking both Gen Z and Gen X passersby to take a photo of her and her boyfriend—only to discover a hilarious difference in results that sparked a generational debate online. Ruby Doyle (@rubsjean), 22, from Melbourne, Australia, posed for a photo with her partner Luke Oates, 23, at Lantern, the rooftop bar at the Fullerton Hotel in Singapore, on May 28. In a TikTok video that has since garnered 15,000 likes and almost 535,000 views, Doyle compares the two photos: the first, taken by a Gen Z, is a polished high-angle shot that captures the dramatic cityscape in the background—believed to be Marina Bay Sands. The second, snapped by a Gen X stranger, is a close-up of the couple with little regard for composition or setting. "I was not expecting the post to garner as much attention as it did and I also wasn't expecting to create a generational war in the comments," Doyle told Newsweek. The Gen Z snap of Ruby and Luke versus the Gen X one. The Gen Z snap of Ruby and Luke versus the Gen X one. @rubsjean/@rubsjean "When we were posing for the photo being taken by the Gen X stranger my partner and I knew we weren't going to like it as she was holding it very low and only snapped the one pic," she added. The clip prompted hundreds of TikTok users to weigh in, sharing their own experiences and preferences when it comes to capturing a moment. Gen Z typically includes people born between 1997 and 2012, while Gen X refers to those born between 1965 and 1980. Generational differences in photography styles are often chalked up to the eras in which each group came of age. Gen Z, having grown up with smartphones and social media, often prioritize aesthetics, angles, and background. In contrast, Gen X—raised on film cameras and early digital devices—may approach photography with a more functional mindset. Doyle said she often offers to take photos for others when she sees them trying to take selfies, ensuring they have plenty of shots to choose from. "We took a photo of them in return making sure to get the background and take a few photos for them. We were happy when we found some younger people to take our photo as we thought they would have a similar eye as us," she explained. "When we compared the two photo it was funny to see the subtle differences in photography style so that's why I made the post. It also reminded me of my graduation when a girl stopped and asked my dad (Gen X) to take a photo of her and her family. My mom and I both laughed as we knew he is not very good with technology and jumped in to take over," she added. TikTok users flooded the comments with their takes. "First one is better, you can see the building," said one user. "Should have asked a millennial I think," quipped another. "I am constantly telling my mom to lift my phone higher and higher why do they go so low down," said Tess. "None of them, as a millennial I make two: one full-length and two cropped close up to the waist," said Vlad. "Gen X and I'd never take a photo like the second one—I take pride in my photos and take about 5 for people of all different angles," said another. "Lol, the Gen X photo is better tho," said another user. "First one is for the scenery while the second is like a fit of the day," another noted. "Both wrong. You should get both the buildings in the background and the full body without the feet cut off," someone else weighed in. "And neither is a photography masterpiece I'm afraid," added one critic. Do you have any viral videos or pictures that you want to share? We want to see the best ones! Send them in to life@ and they could appear on our site.
