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The Weirdest, Most Profitable Toy Crazes

Be glad it isn’t 1996.

Especially during the holidays, fads in children’s toys can seem completely unhinged. Why did cheap rubber bracelets with silly shapes become a $200 million industry for just a few months around Christmas 2009? How did the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles go from a weird underground comic title to selling $1 billion worth of green plastic in just a few years? Here, we count down five of the goofiest and most  profitable toy fads of all time.