Perhaps some that you yourself participated in. Right now, I have tons of students who are wearing little rubber bracelets which, when taken off your wrist, form the shape of animals and various other objects. One walked in today with like 2 dozen on his arm. I guess they can be traded around for extra fun.
In my youth, every 18 months my school would have a yoyo craze, and every boy had to have one. Then after a couple of months that got old, and they vanished from the playground, only to come back to life again later.
I’m 23 now. I remember us going through in elementary school in early-mid/late 90s:
slap bracelets
friendship bracelets
WWJD bracelets (not even for religious reasons though?)
pogs
Tamagotchis
yo-yos
toggles on our Adidas jackets
IOU sweatshirts
No Fear
flannel
peace signs/smiley face/yin yang stuff
shoelace hair ties and side ponytails
Umbro
And I most definitely participated in all of the above except No Fear which boys generally wore.
I was in elementary/middle school in the late 70s/80s. We used to make “friendship pins” - safety pins with beads on them - that we traded and attached to our Keds.
My kids are all about the Silly Bandz. I bought them a few packs and now they have a hundred and something little rubber bracelets. They fought so much over the four purple dogs that I took them all away and now I dole them out 10 at a time.
Swatch watches, jelly shoes or beaded safety pins worn on the tennis shoe laces. And those bead necklaces you wore like ten of all twisted together. I used to wear them as belts. I think those were pre-teen or just into to the teen years. That’s when neon everything hit, and I thought I was Cyndi Lauper for the next four years.
Those rubber bracelets are a real phenomenon. One week ago I’d never heard of them; now they’re all over the place. In another week someone will realize they’re harmful to wildlife and a choking hazard, and the party will be over as soon as it started. They’ll go on the scrap heap with silly string and those gel snack cups.
My elementary school days seem to go back quite a bit further than others who have posted here (late 50s/early 60s), so there were fewer mass-produced fads around then.
But the yo-yo craze very definitely hit bigtime in about fourth grade for me. Everyone had them, myself included. As I recall, Duncan was the only brand around, and you could get the cheapo wooden model, the “butterfly,” or if you were well-heeled, the Duncan Imperial (translucent plastic) for a buck.
An indelible childhood memory: for some reason my mom and I went to the local airport one day. Although she was almost always very kind and even-tempered, Mom must have been in a bad mood that day. As we walked from the parking lot toward the terminal, I was playing non-stop with my yo-yo (hmm…there must be a better way to say that!), and she told me to cut it out.
I failed to comply, and shortly thereafter, upon seeing me still at it, she hissed at me “I told you to put that damn thing away!!”
Whoa! Mom swore at me! I can’t honestly recall any other time she ever did that. Fifty years gone by, and I still remember.
The teenager came home with some of those animal bracelets today, and a story about a neighboring school supposedly banning them because they were tied to gangs; which led to us discussing the colorful bracelets everyone her age was wearing a few years ago that were supposed to be a coded way to tell other kids which sex acts they’d performed, or were willing to perform, or something, according to the media. The LIVESTRONG style bracelets with different sayings were popular for a while, too.
My middle school had a short fad where people wore their shirts backwards and inside out.
Does anyone else remember the sweatshirts the girls were wearing around 93 or 94 that head cartoon heads saying things like “whatever” on the front? It’s unrelated, but a lot of girls were into carrying around pacifiers around that time period, too.
Canvas sneakers covered in duct tape
hacky sacks - Do kids still play that game?
clackers
Clackers were big
Bubble necklaces
Slap bracelets (I saw a girl wearing one the other day, so they are still around)
Eating baby food for lunch (I never personally participated in this, but I remember it)
Pogs
Keychains on the backpack (10 or 20 hanging from one zipper)
I am sure that there were more. Mostly, what I remember about fads was that my mom never bought us what was popular until long after it had faded away. Ah, the torment of youth.
Man I remember a lot of these… If pressed I could probably still make friendship pins and bracelets (I still have a book on how to make the latter! Maybe I should make myself some of the thin flowered ones again… I loved those ones…).
High school for me was Sailor Moon and Pokemon (seriously). Totally remember the soothers, I had a few even.
Slap bracelets and friendship bracelets(but I never had enough patience to sit there and make my own.)
But I loved the erasers and shit from San Rio we used to trade. I liked Keroppi the frog the best.
I remember most of these. I still have a bunch of pogs and I have no idea what you’re supposed to do with them except put them in a container and occasionally look at them.
There was also:
Beanie Babies (I have a ton of those, too)
Elmo stuff
Jnco jeans with giant back pockets
boys’ hair gelled flat on top with only the bangs sticking straight up
putting 50 keychains on your backpack zippers
Pokemon cards
vests
epic Spice Girls vs. Hanson and BSB vs. 'NSync battles
Totally ridiculous looking back on it. My friend’s brothers got into a Pokemon-related fistfight because one of them accidentally threw a Charizard card into the community swimming pool and they “only” had 3 left after that. It was supposedly really valuable. Probably worth $0.07 today.