You know how, whenever there's some really popular toy, a dozen and a half other toy companies will try to copy it, or -- because copying it too closely might result in lawsuits -- try to make an eerily similar toy? Case in point: when I was four, my cousins and I were all given Cabbage Patch Kids for Christmas -- well, we all (or at least I) thought they were Cabbage Patch Kids. Years later I began to wonder why my supposed Cabbage Patch Kids didn't have the LOOK of a real Cabbage Patch kid -- you know, the dimples and all of that. That's when I realized our parents had ripped us all off and had actually given us all Flower Patch Kids. Anyway, in the 80's (as some of you may remember) Transformers were all the rage. More than meets the eye, those little buggers had their own TV show (with a catchy theme song that I found myself, at age four, singing loudly while playing on my swingset... don't ask), stickers... but best of all were the toys themselves. One minute you had a toy truck, and the next? A walking, arm-flailing robot. I was enthralled with the things. I've always been big on things that have secrets... secret rooms, secret passageways, Popples... but oh, Transformers rocked my preschool world. In the midst of all of this Transformers hype, the Galoob company (remember them?) came out with a line of toys called Sweet Secrets. If they'd had a catch phrase, which they might have but I wouldn't know it, it was probably something along the lines of: "Transformers... for girls!" Which, as we all know, would have been a really stupid catch phrase, seeing as how I was a girl (and still am, they tell me) and I was all about the originals; boys be darned. Still, when my parents gave me a Sweet Secrets toy for Christmas, I could hardly complain. Yeah sure, it had a jewel on it and was obviously geared toward my gender, but I was not feministically conscious at that time and I just thought, Hey, neato! It transforms! One of the first ones I ever received was this bird -- and damn, did it prove to be an enigma! First off, I (I was six at the time) could NOT understand how they could call it a bird, as I was not aware that they had intended the jeweled part to serve as the beak. Second, I ended up breaking the wings off within hours of receiving it, trying to get them to move (little did I know the wings were just for show... whoops.) So yeah, here are some photos of some other Sweet Secrets toys that I still have... The largest one, the big yellow and blue thing, was originally a notepad/pen set. I say "originally" because, as you can see, the notepad is no more. I loved to draw. It got used up. The end. Actually, I think every Sweet Secrets toy was meant to serve purposes beyond just being... well, toys. Several of them had clips on the back so that you could attach them to a necklace and wear them. The little blue and pink piano/horse (lower left) had a keychain hook on it. The pink cat (lower middle) was part of the Sweet Secrets cosmetics line -- if you opened it up, you would find a mirror on one side and pink blush stuff on the other. (I believe there was also one that contained lip gloss.) Makeup for six-year-olds... the very idea! (Actually, this was probably a good way to keep little girls out of their mommy's cosmetics collection.) When I was seven, I was given one of the coolest Sweet Secrets of all... a tiny electric guitar that transformed into a pink-haired punk rocker girl. The guitar had little buttons on it that actually played music. One sad, sorry day, punk girl got left outside in the rain, and... that was the day the music died. (Oh come on, like you didn't know where I was going with that.) I can't say Sweet Secrets were my favorite toys growing up (that title would probably go to these guys) but hey, they were fun and cool and I'm feeling nostalgic today. (Which, I suppose, is akin to saying "today is a day ending with a "y", but hey, thanks for reading.) 7/15/2005 Leave a message in the guestbook to comment on this article. :) Back to Misc. Back to Main (c) 2005 AlligatorJuice.com