Where did this odd and obnoxious phrase come from?
“I picked up this bad boy at a garage sale for $5.”
“Can I get a copy of that bad boy?”
“Yo, forward me that bad boy!”
Here’s a 2001 data point, to get us going. Surely there are earlier cites.
Great question, BTW!
I love this list of slang words meaning “unspecified item(s), ‘stuff’, ‘thing(s)’” – spoiler due to a few naughty words:
•bad boy – bitch – cheddar – crap – da kine – doohickey – foo – hot stuff – jawn – jizz – jobber – jobbie – junk – mufkin tass – mug – shit – swag – swank – tat – thang – thing-a-majig – this and that – whatchamadingy – whosawhatsit – widget
People have been calling black and brown resistors “bad” and “boys” for awhile now. 
More recently, it was popularized by celebrity chef and douche extraordinaire Guy Fieri.
Me and my friends have been using it since the late '70s.
Interesting thread. I’m going to bookmark this bad boy.
I can personally vouch for before the late 80’s. I had a stepbrother that used it as a stock phrase back then.
Looks like it started to pick up in the late 80s.
“American Slang” By Barbara Ann Kipfer, Robert L. Chapman dates that usage of it to the 1980s. Like PlainJain though, I also remember it being used in the 1970s.
I wouldn’t trust that. There are too many other uses of “bad boy” that are likely mixed into those results, and adding “this” and 'that" probably isn’t adequately filtering those out. The urban slang “badboy” also shows a similar jump in the 80s.
That said, I have a hunch that even if you could filter off the other definitions of the phrase, you’d still see it rise significantly in the 80s.
I learned it as referring to lost objects. As in, it would be a “good boy” if it were where you thought you left it, but it’s a “bad boy” for magically wandering off because you simply forgot putting it there. :rolleyes:
Only later did I learn the usages in the OP.
Ditto.
I think I’ve only noticed it in the past decade or so. Can’t say where I first heard it.
Who got it from Tim “The Toolman” Taylor on “Home Improvement”.
I specifically recall it as being used in 1983. It was common then, but I can’t date it to any earlier.
hh
Tim Allen made a big deal out of “bad boy” in his stand-up days, before the Home Improvement series was built on his fascination with power tools. I’m sure I had heard the expression before then, but it was omnipresent afterwards.
Just my memory. No cites.
ETA: Just now spotting the Fear Itself post above.