The Top Christmas Gifts from 20 Years Ago – 2000
Christmas 2000 was approaching and we’d all forgotten about the Millennium Bug and were all singing along to the Christmas Number 1 “Can we Fix it?” by Bob The Builder… or perhaps not, but do you remember what was the big Christmas toy that year?
Teksta the Robotic Puppy
Who needs a real dog when you can have a robotic one? Hmm well it seems like every child in the year 2000 wanted a Teksta dog, to give him his credit, he was actually pretty clever! The world went crazy for Teksta (also known as Tekno the Robotic Puppy) winning all sorts of awards and media coverage, TV appearances and even the cover of Time magazine! Teksta had over 160 emotions and functions such as walking, barking, eating and could even be taught to respond to voice commands. Teksta proved such a success in following years there was a kitten, mouse, parrot and even dinosaurs. Teksta is still popular today with newer versions able to connect up to phones and tablets.
Razor Scooter
Christmas 2000 also saw a return to more traditional outdoors fun. With so many Christmases being dominated by the latest games console 2000 was a breath of fresh air with a new craze for Razor Scooters. These were a more modern take on the classic scooter being made from aeroplane grade aluminium and easily foldable. But they weren’t just for getting around, they lent themselves extremely well to stunts making them more popular with older children and even developed into it’s own sport, freestyle scootering where you perform similar tricks to BMX and skateboarding. In 2000 the Razor was named Toy of the Year and sold over 5 million of them in 2000 in the USA alone!
They are still popular today, if you go to the park you’ll see children of all ages using them (and other rival brands).
Who wants to be a Millionaire board game
Back in September 1998 the first episode of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire aired on ITV hosted by Chris Tarrant and the nation was hooked. Millions would watch every week, often shouting the answer at the television and watching in horror as contestants gambled huge amounts of money on a hunch. The beauty of the show lay in every question having jeopardy with ever bigger amounts to be either won or lost, and multiple choice always have the temptation to have a guess. Just about everyone wanted to have a go, how hard could it be to answer 15 questions with three lifelines to get to that Million? Perhaps it was so popular because people were slowly beginning to realise they would never pick a random string of six numbers correctly for the lottery, maybe they could quickly become a millionaire by using their knowledge, so everyone wanted a go.
Getting on the show was a huge challenge with so many people entering by calling a premium rate number (and raising huge sums of money for ITV in the process) so the board game gave people the chance to give it a try for themselves so they would know if they could take up the hot seat and really win a million.
The board game debuted in 2000 which was perfect to establish it as the s game for families who were tired are arguing over Monopoly at Christmas!
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