AARON ADVERTISER BARBIE_DOLL CHILD CHRIS CHRIS_B DAVID EHI ERIN JACKIE MARISSA NATALIA PEYTON RICK RUTLEDGE PEYTON This week on History's Greatest of All Time, let your inner child out, 'cause we're talking toys. We're ranking the top 10 with help from a panel of 100 experts. MARISSA It was one of those toys that really focused on the possibilities. It wasn't so much about what the toy did, but what kids could do with it. AARON People were transfixed. They stopped in their tracks. They saw it and started asking how much? PEYTON Our pundits huddled up and ranked them based on stats, innovation, and legacy. From the cute and cuddly. JACKIE This was one of the biggest toy crazes of all time. AARON I remember parents getting into fights in toy stores to steal that last Cabbage Patch Kid. PEYTON To the simple and smelly. AARON There is nothing quite like that aroma. RICK All you do is you do this, you watch it go downstairs. Is it that exciting? PEYTON These are the ones we can't put away. EHI It's just a flattened metal coil that's two and a half inches tall, yet it's almost mesmerizingly kinetic. RUTLEDGE For me, Hot Wheels were everything. NATALIA Barbie is the greatest of all time because she's so powerful. PEYTON Work's over. Time to log off. We've got some playing to do. PEYTON There really is no better feeling than opening up a new toy on your birthday. Tearing off that wrapping paper, I hope I got what I wanted. It really is like Christmas morning because I can't wait any longer. The first toy on our countdown is one cool spud. At number 10, it's Mr. Potato Head. ERIN I love Mr. Potato Head. It definitely deserves a spot on the list. CHRIS It was just silly, and quirky, and funny. And over the years, it's evolved. AARON Mr. Potato Head embodies children's play and experimentation, and I think that's why it's been such a success. RUTLEDGE It should make the GOAT list just for our own stupidity, like, we bought a toy where the toy wasn't actually included in the purchase of the toy. So, you know what? For that, you get GOAT status. PEYTON The birthplace of Mr. Potato Head: a kitchen table in the 1940s, in Brooklyn, New York. CHRIS B George Lerner was an artist in Brooklyn. JACKIE And he used to entertain his younger sisters by taking potatoes and pieces of fruits and vegetables, and using them to create a face on the potato. CHILD An ear, and then the mouth. CHRIS B This is after World War II, when there had been food shortages and rationing, and the thought of wasting food that way was a little bit problematic. They talked about apples, they talked about oranges, but they kept coming back to potatoes as being available all year long. JACKIE So he had this great idea to create plastic pieces that would serve as facial features on a real potato. PEYTON I mean, talk about innovation. What's simpler than a potato with googly eyes? Mr. Potato Head allowed all of us to play with our food and not get in trouble. JACKIE Hasbro launched Mr. Potato Head. CHRIS It was really very, very simple. It was just a few pieces of plastic in a box and yet the imagination that happened when you opened it up, was pretty magical. RUTLEDGE So why was Mr. Potato Head successful? Well, it was the first mass marketed toy on television. So early '50s, they come out with this thing, people see it and they go, oh my gosh, I gotta have this. They sold a million units their first year of Mr. Potato Head, potato not included. Brilliant. CHRIS B There is never anything as foul and smelly as the rotten potato. If you think about kids punching holes in potatoes and then tucking this punctured potato under their bed or in their underwear drawer, it wasn't too many years before parents were begging Hasbro to do something else. CHRIS Hasbro introduced a plastic potato, so that was the first time that a real representation of a potato was included with Mr. Potato Head. RUTLEDGE He also carried all of his parts like a marsupial, like a little kangaroo pouch. You'd hide his hat and his big googly eyes. I always liked the glasses, you know, big floppy shoes. And then when you're done playing with it, you're supposed to just take it all off and jam it inside the potato, and just there lies this naked plastic potato. It's a weird lifecycle if you think about it. PEYTON In 1995, Mr. Potato Head reached a new level of stardom. He and his wife, Mrs. Potato Head, co-star with Tom Hanks and Tim Allen in Toy Story. I mean come on, from household vegetable to the big screen. Now, that's GOAT status in my book and Hasbro made some serious coin. RUTLEDGE They've sold over a hundred million Potato Head family members, in over 30 countries, so we're not the only suckers out there, turns out. There's a whole planet full of suckers. CHRIS I think the legacy of Mr. Potato Head is sort of the silliness, the creativity, the ability to build a personality that reflects whatever's going on in your life, and just the fun of it. Bringing a potato to life. PEYTON If putting eyes, nose and a mouth on a potato sounds like a wild idea for a toy, that's nothing compared to our panel's number nine choice. The Slinky. RUTLEDGE Slinkys are so much fun. I mean it's literally, it started out as just leftover scrap coil. MARISSA It doesn't do a whole lot, but it is about the mesmerizing experience you get when you have a Slinky in your hand. It's one of the earliest fidget toys. ERIN There's something really soothing and hypnotizing about watching it go down stairs, at least until it gets tangled and then you're like, in for some torture. RICK It has hung on. When all these creative, complicated toys came out, the Slinky still doing its thing. CHRIS B I love Slinky because it was a toy that wasn't meant to be a toy. It was going to be cushioning for delicate instruments on ships at sea. It was a total failure for its intended engineering purpose. CHRIS Richard James was working with springs that held things in place on ships, during World War II. JACKIE By accident, he knocked over one of the coils off of his desk, and it tumbled to a chair, and then to the floor. And he saw how it kind of went end over end, and it sparked the idea. CHRIS B He said to his wife, Betty, "I think we've got a toy here." And I love that kind of eureka moment, that light bulb in the comic strip, that here's something that suddenly you see the play value of it. JACKIE One of the most interesting things about Slinky is Richard James' wife, Betty James, is the one who came up with the name Slinky. She was looking in the dictionary and when she came across the word slinky, it meant graceful and sleek, and she thought it was the perfect name. CHRIS B The initial Slinkys came packaged terribly, I have to say. They were wrapped in yellow tissue paper with instructions on them. They looked like absolutely nothing next to fancier toys, dolls, games, on toy store shelves. Retailers refused to carry it. MARISSA But then he brought it to a Gimbels to demonstrate it. AARON He had the idea of stacking boxes to make steps, to show the falling motion of the Slinky, and people were transfixed. They stopped in their tracks. MARISSA And all of the parents who were just shopping with their kids were like, what is that? I want one. And they sold out immediately. JACKIE The jingle for Slinky is incredibly catchy and it sounds silly, but I think that's part of its appeal. � Bounce up and down, just like a clown � � Everyone knows it's Slinky � RICK Since it was invented, they've sold more than 300 million Slinky toys. MARISSA I would actually put Slinky a little higher up on that list. The impact that it had on the toy industry was huge. It's a low cost toy that doesn't do a whole lot, but when you add in a kid's imagination, the possibilities are really endless. And today we see so many toys like that. EHI There's a concept in the toy industry called simplexity. Simplexity is absolutely evident in something like the Slinky. It is a single component, but it yields so many hours of play, and fun, and memories. PEYTON When we return, we'll reveal our number eight on our countdown list, a toy that's clearly gained our honor and respect. RUTLEDGE That's a rag tag bunch of people that love to fight for what's right. MARISSA Literally nothing existed quite like that doll. And now there are full aisles of toy stores, dedicated to it. PEYTON And later, what will be the greatest toy of all time? I sure hope the Big Wheel made the list because, man, I always wanted one of those things. Stay tuned. PEYTON Welcome back. Now, we were going to ask a bunch of kids to rank their favorite toys, but they wanted too much money. So we asked our experts instead to rank their favorites, based on innovation, stats and legacy. Coming in at number eight, an American hero that pioneers an entire new category, the action figure. It's G.I. Joe. ERIN G.I. Joe is a classic toy, so I do think it belongs on the list. And I think people are gonna be upset that it's not up higher. RUTLEDGE I love the G.I. Joe toys because I love the cartoon. And because they had so many different characters, you're like, oh, that's a rag tag bunch of people that love to fight for what's right. MARISSA The thing about G.I. Joe is it birthed the action figure. AARON G.I. Joe was created at a time when toys were heavily gender segregated. And with the success of Barbie, there was a desire to make a doll toy that could be sold to the other 50% of children, and that were boys. PEYTON So how did G.I. Joe become so entrenched in American culture? MARISSA A guy named Stanley Weston came up with the idea and sold it to Hasbro in 1963, for only $100,000. PEYTON One innovation that really stood out, this toy could move. CHRIS B His articulated joints were such another breakthrough. He not only could bend, but he held his poses. CHRIS After its launch in 1964, G.I. Joe was a tremendous success. � G.I. Joe, G.I. Joe, fighting man from head to toe � � Yo, Joe � CHRIS B G.I Joe came with outfits, vehicles, and buildings, and friends. It's a lot like the Barbie model and that's exactly what Hasbro was hoping for. MARISSA G.I. Joe hit a little bit of a snag in the '70s. Parents were feeling a little bit anti-war at the time, with the Vietnam War going on. ERIN In 1982, G.I. Joe got a makeover. Hasbro was trying to duplicate the success of the Star Wars figurines, action figures, which were smaller than the original 12 inch G.I. Joes. CHRIS They brought it down to three and three quarter inches, and that made it possible for kids to collect a lot of them and play with them in a very different way than one single doll. CHRIS B And when G.I. Joe made his reintroduction, G.I. Joe got reformulated as an adventure team rather than a military man. PEYTON And just like that, Joe got his own TV series. � G.I. Joe, American hero � � Battling the Cobra foe � CHRIS G.I. Joe is still popular today. It's got one of the biggest fan bases out there. Adult male collectors really love G.I. Joe. AARON G.I. Joe really has a special place. And I actually believe that G.I. Joe will be reimagined and reborn at some point in the future, in a way that makes sense for the children of today. PEYTON So what can top G.I. Joe? I can tell you this, it's more than meets the eye. At number seven on our list, Transformers. AARON Transformers absolutely deserves to be in the greatest of all time. JACKIE Multiple generations love Transformers. ERIN Transformers inspired so many other toys that transform in some way. And then of course, the TV show, the movies, the legacy is far reaching. CHRIS B Transformers were pretty much a breakthrough. RUTLEDGE I mean, it's pretty brilliant. They made noise, they lit up. PEYTON So how did all this get started? JACKIE There was a rising popularity in toy robots in Japan, following World War II. The problem is that materials to create toys in general were very hard to come by after the war. AARON There was a lot of excess aluminum, as a result of all the ration cans and material that were left bEHI nd by American soldiers. MARISSA Japanese toy giant Takara recycled these materials and then they had another brilliant idea, make the robots change. This was really revolutionary and it got the attention of US toy maker, Hasbro. JACKIE In 1983, Hasbro executives attended the Tokyo Toy Show. PEYTON Hasbro decided the best way to launch Transformers, was to create a comic book that fleshed out the characters, and gave them a backstory. MARISSA And here's something cool. They did it with Marvel comics. JACKIE There were 28 different characters. AARON It showed the characters in action. It explained their personality. PEYTON In 1984, Transformers made the leap to the small screen, and into the hearts and minds of youngsters around the globe. RUTLEDGE Transformers, more than meets the eye. I mean, love the cartoon. DAVID The viewership created enormous amount of interest with the toys. AARON And kids loved that idea that they could have this gigantic robot friend, that had all of these powers. CHRIS B Hasbro was brilliant in creating comic books, and animated series, and toys, that all fit together comprehensively. That really sent Transformers into the stratosphere. CHRIS Transformers really brought transforming into the toy industry. That had always happened in kids' imaginations before, but now, suddenly, they're actually literally able to do it. PEYTON Transformers are truly in a category of their own. They're not just a cool toy, they're two cool toys in one. Coming up, a little toy that travels around the world. CHRIS It's one of the simplest and oldest toys out there. They said they found a version of it when they opened the pyramids. MARISSA That's innovative? Why don't we just put a hoop and a stick on the list while we're at it? PEYTON Find out, when we return to The Greatest Toys of All Time. PEYTON Wow, we've covered some pretty awesome toys and we still have another six to go. As we've seen, being one of the greatest toys of all time can take many forms. It can be high tech and flashy or deceptively simple, like our next contender. Coming in at number six, who hasn't played with one of these? RUTLEDGE Oh yeah, Yo-Yo has GOAT staying power for sure. It deserves to be on the list. ERIN People love their Yo-Yos. They spend all their time practicing and coming up with new tricks. The Yo-Yo is iconic. AARON Putting a string around something round, and moving it up and down, is thousands and thousands of years old. MARISSA Yeah, I wouldn't put the Yo-Yo on the list. I wouldn't put cardboard box on the list. Basic toys that kids play with don't deserve the notoriety of, you know, Barbie. CHRIS The Yo-Yo is one of the simplest and oldest toys out there. They said they found a version of it when they opened the pyramids. ERIN We don't really know exactly where the Yo-Yo originated. According to some it may have originated in Ancient Egypt. According to others, 1000 BC in China. But we do know that it is very, very old. PEYTON Now, this might be the only ancient toy on the list, so I dare anyone to beat that kind of legacy. But the Yo-Yo as we know it, doesn't appear in the US, until the early 20th century. RUTLEDGE Pedro Flores came to the US from the Philippines and he remembered this toy that he played with as a kid, Yo-Yo, so he decided, you know what, I'm gonna make this. PEYTON In 1930, he sold the rights to his toy for $5,000, to a guy named Donald Duncan. That five grand is about 100,000 in today's money. Not bad in the middle of the depression, but wow, Donald Duncan made one really smart deal. CHRIS Donald Duncan really became the father of the American Yo-Yo. He created the American Yo-Yo and he fielded teams of Yo-Yo masters, so this was aspirational for kids. ERIN I mean, it's not easy to use a Yo-Yo. If you want to get good at it, you have to work at it. And I was always afraid of hitting myself in the face with it. AARON Doing tricks with Yo-Yos wasn't just a way to show off to your friends in the playground. It became something that professional performers honed and studied. CHRIS B Very few of us mere mortals could actually do all those tricks, but it gave you something to aspire to. RUTLEDGE In 1955, Duncan's Yo-Yo starts making the Yo-Yo out of molded plastic, and seven years later, 1962, they were selling 45 million units a year. CHRIS B The interest and love for Yo-Yos just exploded. With high level professional grade Yo-Yos that cost things like $500. ERIN The Yo-Yo hasn't just done some tricks down here on Earth. It actually has gone up into space. Although apparently doing tricks in zero gravity wasn't that fulfilling. CHRIS The thing about the Yo-Yo, it's never gone away. MARISSA Clearly the toy has some staying power. I think there's really something to the fact that Duncan made a toy that has been around forever, seem really cool. PEYTON Sure, I've had fun with the Yo-Yo, but the next toy on our list just so happens to be my personal favorite. Meet number five, Nerf. RUTLEDGE The Nerf basketball set was everything to me as a kid. You'd jump up there and slam it, and you think you're incredible. I love Nerf. CHRIS I absolutely think Nerf belongs in the top 10 toys of all time, because of the way it's evolved, because of the way it's fostered imagination. AARON Nerf is super popular and it's super fun. EHI Something about the design seems magical at first. CHRIS And what made Nerf such a hit was it broke a cardinal rule. And that rule was you can't play ball in the house. RUTLEDGE The only problem for me with Nerf is that they had this gravitational pull towards my mom's head. No matter what I did, if my mom was in the house, she would get hit in the head with any Nerf product I ever threw. I don't know how. ERIN It's just a piece of foam. CHRIS I would never have been really good with a regulation football, but I could throw the heck out of that PEYTON Manning football. PEYTON That's what I'm talking about. And here's a fun fact. The same guy that invents Nerf, also is the inventor of Twister. That's pretty amazing, right? Just don't try to play with them both at the same time. That's an injury waiting to happen. His name is also amazing. Reyn Guyer. Sounds like a character in Star Wars. RUTLEDGE Nerf was launched in 1969. CHRIS B Nerf wasn't going to be a standalone toy, it was a product that came out of looking for a new game. Players were throwing foam rocks at each other. The game was pretty stupid, but they really liked the foam rocks. PEYTON The company who produced Twister passed on Nerf, but Parker Brothers, the geniuses behind Monopoly, said, "Right on." Smart move on their part. By 2022, Nerf was valued at over $460 million. CHRIS B So one of the big developments in the Nerf universe has been all the lines of Nerf blasters, that shoot various forms of soft projectiles, that allows you to really have elaborate battles with friends, with colleagues at the office. (Nerf gun popping) And it is something that is really Nerf's signature line of products. CHRIS One of the things I've always observed is, the smaller the kid, the bigger the blaster they want. MARISSA The Nerf ball empowered kids. It was easy to throw, easy to catch, easy to throw a spiral even. And there was something about that, when you put it in every kid's hand, and it took away that barrier of entry to sports. That's really impactful. RUTLEDGE I think we'll be talking about Nerf products a hundred years from now, for sure. I mean all the different ways that they have innovated toys, and how and where people play. Nerf's GOAT for sure. PEYTON Agreed, Rutledge, agreed. How Nerf didn't make number one, I have no idea. Tell me this. What toy can you still buy for about a buck today? AARON It is simple and yet complex. It comes in one shape that is instantly recognizable by all of us. RUTLEDGE They sold a million units their first year. Brilliant. PEYTON I'll tell you when we continue our countdown, to the greatest toy of all time. Stick around. PEYTON Welcome back, as we inch ever closer to the greatest toy of all time. Now you may be asking, how did we come up with this list anyway? Simple, we asked a panel of 100 experts to anonymously rank their favorite toys, using our criteria of innovation, stats, and legacy. That brought us here, to our fourth spot, Hot Wheels. RUTLEDGE For me, Hot Wheels were everything. ADVERTISER Collect them by themselves or get them in wild new action sets. RUTLEDGE Let's be honest, I've built cars in real life to look like a Hot Wheels car, because that's what I grew up playing. DAVID Hot Wheels is one of the greatest toys of all time because who doesn't like a fast car? CHRIS Hot Wheels really was innovative. They moved faster than any other toy car out there and that was something that kids loved, was the speed. AARON I was not a big Hot Wheels kid. RUTLEDGE I think if anyone thinks that Hot Wheels shouldn't be on the list, I'm gonna assume they grew up in like a community where there were no cars, and their parents walked everywhere. CHRIS B Hot Wheels were a quantum leap in the world of toy cars. MARISSA Elliot Handler was really taken with Matchbox cars, and they were boring. ERIN The wheels didn't even move. Basically, he looked at this and was like, "Well, I could do this better." The big innovation with Hot Wheels, Mattel made the wheels move. CHRIS B The Mattel engineers came up with a technology so that these were on axles that were made of piano wire. Much thinner, much smoother, lubricated so it turned incredibly fast. And not only were these faster cars, but they just looked faster. These were not standard station wagons and sedans. These were hot rods. RUTLEDGE The joy of Hot Wheels is that no matter how much other things go up in price, they're still less than a dollar. Thanks Hot Wheels. PEYTON But Hot Wheels was about more than just cars. It came with accessories like tracks and loops, so kids could make their own racetracks, sending cars speeding and crashing throughout the entire house. CHRIS B That orange Hot Wheels track became so iconic. AARON Kids could race them, they could really send them good distances. They didn't have the sort of clunky sheet metal wheels that really didn't have any traction on tables, and floors, and rugs. ERIN Put your car on the track and it would go around the loop, and maybe fly off, and you know, hit your younger sibling. RUTLEDGE Since 1968, Hot Wheels has produced over 4 billion Hot Wheels cars. 4 billion. That's amazing. DAVID Hot Wheels deserves to be one of the greatest of all time because it has such a huge fan base, and such a legacy, that it spawned a whole collector industry. RUTLEDGE I wanted to drive cars in real life that look like my Hot Wheels. Honestly, when you think about it, I should call my therapist. That's really a defining line of my life. I've never put that together till this moment. But please Hot Wheels if you're watching, hey, what's up? Love your work. Let's talk. PEYTON Hard to beat a fast car. Our next toy might not be fast, but it's a classic. And unlike the other toys on the list, has a very distinct smell. Coming in at number three, you guessed it, Play-Doh. RICK Play-Doh absolutely has to be on the GOAT list. I mean, you think about it, three simple elements, flour, salt, and water. It absolutely deserves because kids have been playing with it for so long. AARON It's so distinctive. I think every child in America knows what that scent is. RUTLEDGE What a brilliant idea to take dough, add a ton of salt so it's super gross, and then food coloring, and let kids play with it. PEYTON It seems like a pretty simple formula to me. Add a couple eggs and you got yourself pasta. MARISSA I think it depends on how many times you've had to scrub it out of a carpet, maybe? Like your stance on Play-Doh might change a little bit. CHRIS B You basically can't keep your hands off of it, at any age. RUTLEDGE Every kid, if you didn't try to eat Play-Doh at least once, I don't think you actually played with it. And that stuff is gross. CHRIS B It started its career as a wallpaper cleaner of all things. RICK So back in the 1930s, Cleo McVicker is running this company called Kutol Products, and basically they had a really interesting product. CHRIS B You would rub down your expensive wallpaper, to remove soot. RICK 1954, McVicker has a sister in law, who's a teacher at that point in time, and says, "I've got a better idea. Why don't you let me use it in the school?" So they bring it in and the kids start to play with it. And suddenly they realize, this thing that was a cleaning product, could be a toy. And Play-Doh is born. � Play-Doh, Play-Doh, Play-Doh in your fun factory � PEYTON The geniuses behind Play-Doh decide to partner with one of the biggest kids' TV shows of the time, Captain Kangaroo. CHRIS B They paid him royalties on every can of Play-Doh sold. And Bob Keeshan, the actor who played Captain Kangaroo, loved it so much that he featured it on his morning show more often than even his contract required. CHRIS Captain Kangaroo came into almost every home that had a TV in the nation, before school every morning, and any product that Captain Kangaroo had on there, became a huge hit. MARISSA It was such a hit that more than 3 billion cans of Play-Doh have been produced in the last 50 years. RUTLEDGE Turns out he retired on Play-Doh Money. Yeah, made way more money doing that, than the actual thing he was doing there. How crazy is that? Play-Doh should be on the list just for visual brand recognition alone. PEYTON 3 billion cans? Now, that's a lot of dough. Can you believe it? We are almost to our number one. Coming up. CHRIS Well I think no other toy has been around for 63 years, changed to reflect the culture at every single turn, and stayed relevant to its audiences throughout that entire time. MARISSA It's a show stopper. It's something that everyone wants to look at and feel for themselves. PEYTON Find out what it is when we return to History's Greatest of All Time. PEYTON We're back to History's Greatest of All Time. I've had a blast reliving all these fun toys with you guys. But before we reveal our number one, our runner up is the GOAT of dolls. Sorry Cabbage Patch Kid, it's Barbie. NATALIA Barbie is the greatest of all time in terms of toys because she's so powerful. EHI Barbie literally becomes anything. She went to the moon. She's been a president, she's been a surgeon, a veterinarian, she's been a superstar. RUTLEDGE Barbie had a Corvette, she had a dream house, she had an RV, she had cool clothes, right? Friends, maybe she got an inheritance? CHRIS I think among the most amazing things that Mattel has done with Barbie, is to keep her contemporary throughout the past 63 years, without ever compromising the core value, which is play. She is pretty authentic. AARON One thing that made Barbie different was that Barbie was the doll of an adult woman, and dolls previously were really baby dolls. PEYTON This game changing doll was the brainchild of Mattel co-founder, Ruth Handler. NATALIA She'd seen her daughter and other little girls play with paper dolls and kind of emulate them going to work, or being students, or having kind of more grown up lives than baby dolls allowed them to have. And she's like, there's no adult doll that allows girls to play out this part of their fantasy play life. PEYTON It all begins on a family vacation, where Ruth Handler sees a doll in a shop. It's shaped like a grownup woman and that gives Ruth an idea. EHI The other executives were very skeptical and they couldn't quite understand, why would a six-year-old girl be interested in something like this? But Ruth Handler understood, what I love about Barbie is that you just want to embody all the cool things you get to do, when you grow up. BARBIE DOLL Hi, I'm Barbie, what's your name? NATALIA She and her husband worked together to manufacture the first prototype of who becomes Barbie. CHRIS Barbie was named after her daughter. NATALIA She is born in 1959 at a toy fair, for the price of $3. CHRIS Now the thing about Barbie in 1959 was she had two options, teenage fashion model or bride. That was it. EHI But as it gained momentum and Ruth Handler realized that, oh, you can just sell the outfit separate from the doll, that's when the magic of Barbie is unleashed. PEYTON But Ruth doesn't stop there. CHRIS B She bought all the advertising on the Mickey Mouse Club show, to reach her consumers directly. CHRIS Then it went on TV and by the summer of that year, it had really started to take off and Barbie was off to the races. 1963, she got her boyfriend, Ken, who is named after Ruth's son. RUTLEDGE I think Ken probably met Barbie in high school and he was like, I'm gonna hitch my wagon to hers. I'll just do whatever she wants me to do. And he's like, I'll ride in your Corvette, absolutely. CHRIS Then they started to have Midge and Skipper, and other friends. But it wasn't until like 1967 or '68, that we actually saw a black Barbie come into the fold. AARON Barbie has been incredibly nimble over the years in changing who she is, and what she represents, so that she remains incredibly relevant. EHI A hundred Barbie dolls are sold per minute, and that adds up to 58 million Barbies per year. JACKIE Barbie should definitely be considered as one of the greatest toys of all time. She has a complicated past. But her longevity is endless. She has been everything for everyone. CHRIS No other toy has been around for 63 years, changed to reflect the culture at every single turn, and stayed relevant to its audiences throughout that entire time. So we are now in the third generation of people who have loved and played with Barbie. PEYTON Way to go, Barbie, you've had a long-lasting legacy and you drive a pretty cool convertible. We finally made it to number one. When we return, we reveal the goat toy of all time. But I gotta be honest, not everyone agrees. MARISSA That's innovative? Why don't we just put a hoop and a stick on the list while we're at it? ERIN It is exquisite, and agonizing. RUTLEDGE And every time I saw it I was like, this is the greatest thing I've ever seen in my whole entire life. AARON Absolutely deserves to be in the greatest of all time. PEYTON Welcome back. It's time to reveal our top toy. And yes, the competition's been tough. From the Slinky to Barbie, we've unwrapped some incredible toys. But our number one towers above the rest. Let's hear it for the greatest toy of all time, Lego. RUTLEDGE Legos are truly unique because it is this great adventure of the mind. CHRIS B There is so much passion for Lego wherever you go, people love it. RUTLEDGE I never in my wildest dreams imagined that some of the greatest pain I'd ever feel in my life, was stepping on a Lego, and then violently falling, which is what seems to happen to most of us parents, with kids that play with Legos. ERIN I think you could disqualify Lego from the top spot for the pain that it has caused people, when they have stepped on a Lego. (man yells) And I will never have Legos in my house for that very reason. DAVID What kid doesn't have a box of Lego that used to be a firetruck or a house? ERIN It's like the Ikea furniture of toys. There are hundreds of pieces. MARISSA There are so many possibilities with Lego and what goes into the engineering of these kits, and figuring out which pieces fit together is beyond me, but it's very impressive. CHRIS B The history of Lego goes back to wooden products. In the 1930s, during the Great Depression, Ole Kirk Christiansen, was a woodworker, and one of the things he chose was to make wooden toys. DAVID He was making these wooden vEHI cles and selling it around Denmark, and continued to have success, and built on that. RUTLEDGE The turning point for Lego was in 1946, they bought their first injection mold machine, and that's how they're able to make all those bricks. PEYTON By the 1960s, Lego was selling all over Europe and got the attention of a major US manufacturer, but one with no experience selling toys. ADVERTISER Lego, the sensation of Europe, now made in America, by Samsonite. CHRIS At the time, the president of Samsonite was in Amsterdam, and he saw Legos in a window in a toy store there, and he changed his trip, and he flew to Denmark, and he talked to them and he got a license. He said, hey, I make plastic luggage, you make plastic toys. So he brought a suitcase of Legos back and they were made under license by Samsonite for many years, until Lego started creating their own factories, here in the United States. AARON The incredible engineering and precision that goes into making those Lego bricks, so that they lock together tightly, and yet can easily be removed by a child with the force of strength that a child has, it's not a simple thing at all. RUTLEDGE The real brilliance of what Lego did, was make those little circles on the bottom. That's how they were able to interlock. Without those little circles on the bottom of the Lego blocks, we might not even be talking about them. CHRIS B There is something really satisfying with how a Lego brick clicks onto the piece below it. Early Lego sets were to create a whole little village of different stores and houses, and buildings. It really let you create a landscape. CHRIS So you buy your first set and then you add onto it, and every time you add onto it, it's really a brand new toy. CHRIS B It gave a reason for consumers to return to the product line, and keep adding on. PEYTON One of Lego's big breakthroughs was adding wheels, creating Lego vEHI cles. But possibly an even cooler innovation, partnering with George Lucas, on Star Wars. DAVID When George Lucas was coming out with his second trilogy of Star Wars movies, one of the licensees he wanted was Lego. And they released the Star Wars Legos. And it was a huge success when the movie came out. CHRIS There are movies, and Lego Batman. All of those really reflect how much a part of the culture Lego has become, from this little brick, to this sort of global behemoth. We're in our third generation or more of Lego players, so they've grown up with it. It's really a part of our culture now. PEYTON I gotta say, as much as I love those Nerf footballs, I agree with our panel. Lego deserves to be our number one, the GOAT, the greatest toy of all time. It hit all our criteria and then some. But as you might expect, there are a few favorites that didn't make our list. We understand there were some disappointments, so we'll give everybody a moment to air their grievances. JACKIE One toy not on this list that deserves to be considered as one of the greatest toys of all time, is Cabbage Patch Kids. AARON I remember kids losing their minds and parents getting into fights in toy stores, to steal, you know, from another parent, that last Cabbage Patch Kid. It was a real mania, it's crazy. EHI The Rubik's Cube and the Super Soaker. CHRIS B The Easy Bake Oven teaches you patience because it takes about 15 minutes to warm up, 15 minutes to bake your cake, and after it's cooled down, you have a cake the size of a hockey puck. ERIN You know what, I'm gonna confess this. I will still sometimes go on eBay and look for the My Little Pony Paradise Estate that I had when I was young, that my mother got rid of and I'm still not over it. PEYTON And definitely add one vote for the Easy Bake Oven for me. Any toy that can make you a snack deserves serious consideration. What toy would you pick as your number one? Thanks so much for joining the debate on History's Greatest of All Time. AARON You can put the eye where the nose is, you can put the mouth where the eye is, and children love the humor of mixing it up, of getting it wrong, of getting it wrong on purpose. JACKIE There are currently 365 different pieces for the Mr. Potato Head line. Those hundreds of parts add up to 500 billion septillion configurations. RUTLEDGE You know what's crazy? Mr. Potato Head was so popular, that in 1985, in Boise, Idaho, Mr. Potato Head got four write-in votes for mayor. Four of them. That's four more than anyone thought was possible. AARON G.I. Joe was created off of military themes that had existed in World War II, keeping in mind that these baby boomers were children and their parents had served in that war. And G.I. Joe was the icon of the American army, of who American soldiers should be, their personalities working together in teamwork against a common enemy. CHRIS B They didn't want to present Joe as a doll, and he was so different from little green army men that had existed before, cast lead soldiers. He was so different in that they came up with a whole new category, and they called him an action figure. AARON The Cold War was strong, fears were high in America, and children felt those fears that their parents had, and they emulated them through those toys. As the Vietnam War continued to escalate, the anti-war sentiment in America increased, and the doll's popularity decreased as a result as well. CHRIS Kids weren't aspiring to necessarily being army people or service people. So the sales of G.I. Joe really went down. I mean, it wasn't something kids aspired to be anymore, so they weren't buying the toys. They decided to reintroduce G.I. Joe, not as somebody associated with the services, but as a character who was a hero, who was sort of kind of a generic hero. AARON And it created a whole world. DAVID So you had the Autobots led by Optimus Prime. Then you had the Decepticons led by Megatron. AARON The most iconic Transformer is Optimus Prime. He's the good guy and he is a gigantic robot man, who at the blink of an eye, can turn into a semi-truck. DAVID They lived on this planet called Cybertron, but they're running out of resources, and they end up looking out for resources. The Autobots go to Earth, the Decepticons on their tail, and they look around and they scan, and what do they see? They see automobiles. So they scan automobiles and they become the Transformers. RUTLEDGE I was always playing with the Transformers. I mean, who doesn't want a big rig, like an 18 wheeler that can also turn into this super bro that can fight everybody? CHRIS B Ruth Handler was essentially one of the co-founders of Mattel, one of the biggest toy companies in the world, and with her husband Elliot, they were a dynamite duo. NATALIA Ruth, who had had the idea for Barbie, was functionally the CEO of Mattel. But, because of the politics of the moment, it was really important to have a male figurehead. So it was actually her husband who assumed that role, even though she was bEHI nd the scenes, making things happen. CHRIS B Elliot had a lot of toy ideas. He controlled toy development. Ruth ran that company well and effectively. NATALIA She sees that there is this doll, Lily. She has a very voluptuous woman's body, brass tiny waist, but her toes are pointed like they're in high heels, and she is sold at like, tobacco shops, and kind of as a gag gift for men. EHI She brings it back to Mattel, which she has founded with her husband, and says to the other executives there, this is something we need to do.