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The flying toy you powered with a hand pump: crank air into the tank, let go, and the Sky Shark's propeller spun the plane across the yard. Later the brand went radio-controlled with tiny indoor helicopters, but the original was pure compressed-air magic.
The craft kit where you arranged colored beads on a peg tray and spritzed them with water to fuse them into art—no heat, no ironing. A 2007 hit that turned into one of the decade's most alarming recalls when the beads' coating turned toxic inside the body.
The moldable indoor "sand" that played like dough and, famously, never dried out. You could pack it into molds and crumble it back apart again and again—no water needed—which is exactly why it ended up ground into so many living-room carpets.