At various points during the Halloween Countdown, I'll be covering some of yesteryear's finest spooky toys -- even if they're only connected to the season in a borderline way, such as wristwatches with giant rubber frogs attached. Some would call it filler...Hasbro called it SLIME TIME!
I've long had a soft spot for these obscure 1986 time-telling creatures. Most of you probably haven't heard of the Slime Time brand, so it's my duty to tell you that it was a series of wristwatches with the timepieces hidden inside the rubbery mouths of several slimy animals who all shared the unjust reputation of being evil and/or gruesome. "Gross toys" were a major trend in the mid '80s, and it seemed that all anyone had to do to create brand loyalty among preteen boys was market their wares as disgusting and girl-scaring. It's why half of the toy commercials from this era started off with a little girl quietly reading on the couch, and ended with her brother popping up from behind said couch with a monstrous, rubber plaything in tow.
Still, the idea of "frog watches" and "snake watches" seemed a little low-fi for a toy giant like Hasbro. These seemed more like the kind of bargain basement things you'd find alongside plastic army men and knockoff Slinkies in some local pharmacy's token toy aisle. This is not a complaint. Even frog watches deserve their fifteen minutes, and in 1986, they fucking got it.
The actual timepieces were just your standard cheapo digital watches, and assuming you had super strength and a surplus of patience, they were removable. The real stars of the show were the rubber animals, such as the malformed, piggish purple bat shown above.
Now, here's the problem with Slime Time: Watches weren't exactly fun to play with. Watches were for wearing. And since us kids weren't privy to an extensive array of fashion accessories, if any of us had a watch, we wore it everywhere. That includes school, family functions...everywhere. Normally, this wouldn't have been a problem, but normally, a kid's watch wasn't attached to a rubber bat three times the length of his wrist.
I wore my Slime Time watch constantly, beginning the process with great pride and ending it with tremendous shame. I was in elementary school in 1986, but even kids that young tend to be a little "aspirational." Things that were fine to enjoy at home weren't always fine to enjoy in front of your peers, and the sight of this hideous rubber animal clanking against the pockmarked desk in my old classroom didn't bring me the predicted fame and fortune, but rather, complete ridicule.
Kids like dumb stuff, but wearing a giant rubber bat to school was a definite line-crosser.
I spent a week or so wearing the watch, believing that new fashion trends could only be sparked by determined repetition. But my classmates didn't budge. I gave up, and not only did I stop wearing my Slime Time watch, I went so far as to toss the thing into depths of my closet, too hurt and daunted to even look at it ever again. Suicide seemed like the noble course, but I settled on taking it out on my sister, who gave me the stupid watch for my birthday.
There were six Slime Time watches in all, but the final three were just palette swaps of the first three. I don't know if I have a favorite, but the green snake always seemed to get the most attention from Hasbro. I have a hard time reconciling the idea that a series of wristwatches with rubber animals attached had a main character, but if it was possible, that green snake was it.
My childhood was rife with toys that were intended to be worn, including everything from Transformers zipper clips to little Skeletors that snapped onto shoelaces. Unfortunately, I was never any good at knowing when I had become too old to shout my passions from the rooftops, and if I had to assign pie graph slices to the list of reasons why I got punched in grade school, wearing things like this would equate to a pretty large sliver. In fact, the only sliver bigger would be the one dedicated to all the times I blew a kickball game with three fouls. I said it was because I was a lefty, but really, I just sucked.
Posted by Matt on 09/25/2008. E-mail me!
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