Colored in shades that made them the perfect physical embodiment of Wyler’s fruit drink flavors, Wacky Wall Walkers stuck around about as long as a pitcher of ice cold Wyler’s on a hot summer day, but you have to admit that they were quite the concept. Kids love to throw things–whether it be snowballs at cars, eggs at houses (Justin Bieber keeps this tradition alive to this day) or an unwanted baby brother or sister out the window. Wacky Wall Walkers were kind of a benign form of therapy that allowed children the world over to get this potentially dangerous urge out of their system without harming any property or lives.

And really, who hasn’t dreamed of owning their very own miniature octopus? You didn’t even need a tank of water for it! Of course they only actually stuck to the wall about one-third of the time, although the success rate was higher if you flung it against a mirror, so if your parents were one of those “swinger” types with a bedroom tricked out in mirrors all over the walls and ceiling you could maybe get your money’s worth out of these. Because the sad fact was, when you finally did get it to stick to something the odds of it actually “walking” its way down, instead of cowering in a lump for three seconds and dropping straight to the carpet, were pretty low, too. Speaking of carpeting, I seem to remember these becoming covered in nasty, adhesively-debilitating fuzz almost the instant they were pulled out of their packaging.

So basically Wacky Wall Walkers were completely useless. Still, they were deemed cool enough to have their very own Christmas Special and you can’t say that about most toys!