Snoopy Sno-Cone Machine

The Snoopy Sno-Cone Machine dates to 1979, when Hasbro put the beagle's doghouse on a toy idea that went back to the early 1960s. Designer Sam Speers had come up with the idea in the early 1960s as the Frosty Sno-Man Sno-Cone Machine, which pushed shaved ice out through Frosty's belly. When Frosty faded, Snoopy, by then the most popular licensed character in retail, took over the housing, and the redesign stuck. The box held paper cups, a syrup bottle, one packet of unsweetened drink mix and the red plastic shovel. The instructions were the whole pitch: just add sugar, water, and ice cubes.

There were no batteries and no motor. You dropped cubes into the top of Snoopy's head and turned the crank on the back, and, as Time put it when it named the machine one of the 100 greatest toys of all time in 2011, it "dutifully ground hunks of ice for as long as your arms were willing to work the crank." The reward was a snowlike mixture that took whatever you poured over it, usually the packet, sometimes fruit juice, occasionally something braver.

That is also why it outlived the decade it was born in and became a 90s summer ritual. It never needed updating. Hasbro CEO Al Verrecchia called it an "annuity" in 2004: "It just keeps coming off the line, year after year." Cra-Z-Art took over the license in 2012 and added an easier crank and a table clamp, but the doghouse looks the same, which is why a parent can hand one to a kid today and feel their own forearm ache.