When I say, “playing with electricity,” I’m not referring to sticking your finger in a wall socket; I’m speaking of the electronic gizmos that fascinated us as children. Our parents were excited by toys that consisted of spinning a wood ball down an aluminum tube or poking a lead cube with the frayed end of a twig, but we were blessed with toys that had life.

Bop It/Bop It Extreme!
You may think that the words “Bop it! Flick it! Twist it! Pull it!” are an excerpt of dialogue from a badly produced porno, but in reality, they are the exciting commands of Bop It Extreme! Bop It was always a blast to play alone at home. It was when the game continued playing without you that it got annoying. I would always get bored after about two and a half minutes of game time and then start to smash buttons in a frantic attempt to get it to shut off, but it would only yell, “Whoaaaooww!” like I had actually been trying to play. Then it would just start its cute little beat over again for the next round.

Poo-chi
I got one of these robot dogs as a birthday present in elementary school. The kid that gave it to me now goes to Ballard and doesn’t wash his clothes very often. Need I say more? No, seriously, he’s actually a pretty cool guy, and it was a heartfelt gift, but this was one of those electronic toys that had a bunch of cool sensors and motions but lacked the most important component: an on-off switch. It would continue beeping and growling in my closet all night long after I was done playing with it. I now own a cat.

Gameboy Color
Some aficionados might claim that this is a hand-held video game console, not an electronic toy. They’re right, but Gameboy Colors were in the PBJ-smeared hands of my generation so constantly that it can’t be excluded from this list. I still remember the feeling when I beat The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening for the first time. It was like a first kiss-except way tighter, ‘cause during my first kiss I wasn’t wearing a cute green tunic and didn’t get to use my hookshot. That sounds slightly sexual, I know, but you get what I mean.

Electronic Yahtzee
My cousins always had five or six of these little handheld Yahtzees lying around. Needless to say, they were too poor for real board games, and their version of Pictionary was sub-par. It’s hard to draw a bundle of hay in 30 seconds with an old can of house paint while using Grandpa’s ashes as the game pieces. But Yahtzee fascinated me, because I always felt like there was a chance I could do better next time. I rarely did, but every once in a while the double “Yahtzee!” was all that was needed to bring some extra excitement to the usual old family gathering.