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After all, their older brothers and sisters had similar fixations about cardboard and metal discs called pogs, the digital pets called tamagotchi, plus teenage mutant ninja turtles and smurfs.
Just innocent fads, crazes, rages and trends that erupt spontaneously every once in a while? Hardly. They are created by international corporations and spoonfed to gullible consumers on children's television programs.
Yesterday's "in" things, by contrast, usually oozed out of Southern California or the nation's heartland by accident, not design.
No smoke-filled boardrooms generated the diabolical crazes known as smile buttons, talking to plants, Kilroy Was Here, Nehru jackets and go-go boots.
And sailors were wearing bellbottoms and turtleneck sweaters long before they became de rigueur in the 1960s.
Lets get back to the innocent days of yo-yos, swallowing goldfish, streaking and granny glasses. Just poke Pokemon and those other commercial fads.(21 NOVEMBER 1999)
