The 2010s ended four years ago and the kids of that generation are now attending high school and college. While everyone is looking into the future and what to do with their life, let’s look at some trends toys, and other memories from the 2010s.

We should start with a game that is still prevalent now, Minecraft. I remember spending hours playing this game with the other neighborhood kids and my brother. All the girls would make these pretty and elaborate builds while the boys would be blowing up our work or mining for diamonds. Since it first became popular in 2011 there have been many updates but every once in a while I’ll still play for an hour or two, even with the changes this game still can give me and others a sense of nostalgia from our childhood.

This one’s for the girls, the popular childhood store Justice with their colorful sequin clothes and cute animals, or their long-sleeved neon shirt with silly quotes about boys is a key memory for many of us. While their physical stores are closed now with no plans to reopen their online store is still up and running. Looking at the store now I still see ten-year-old me wearing a tie at the bottom t-shirt that I begged my mom for even though I only ended up wearing it once or twice. I remember some girls would wear exclusively justice. While we matured in clothing, I think we still do something similar with other brands such as Lulu Lemon and Brandy Melville.

Another thing that both guys and girls did at least once was “Rainbow loom”. Some of us would spend hours weaving intricate bracelets and keychains. Some people even created characters from shows and cartoons. A few kids had bracelets up their arms and would even try to sell them to other kids.

Speaking of kids trying to sell things to others there were a few other things girls would try to sell such as duct tape wallets. Those wallets were always colorful, oftentimes the duck tape had mustaches of some kind on them. We would also try to sell slime but that quickly stopped when schools put an end to it due to the mess it would make or the drama it would cause among young friend groups.

Pokemon cards were a big thing young boys collected, while a lot of people never actually knew how to play the game, just collecting the colorful cards was a fun challenge many kids would set out to do. Girls collected those cards too but I remember a lot of girls collecting other small things as well such as Shopkins. Some had even bigger purchases of American Girl Dolls. Each doll had its unique backstory which is what drew a lot of little girls into the pricey dolls.

Whether you were a Disney or a Nickelodeon kid one thing I think a lot of us could relate to is watching what I would say is peak kids shows eras. With shows on Disney such as Liv and Maddie and Jessie and their iconic Halloween episodes. From actual cartoons such as The Amazing World of Gumball and Teen Titans Go and their immature jokes, there was something for everyone. A big show people still reference to this day is Spongebob Squarepants. Some people weren’t allowed to watch that show but for the ones that could, I know that show is engraved in our heads in some way. If you watch the show now and their current episodes the show is way different than it was then. Rewatching the old episodes however you can still get the feeling of nostalgia almost like you’re a kid again, or some people might start to understand why your parents didn’t let you watch it. Not because it’s inappropriate but because it is annoying.

So while we all are growing up and moving on from our childhood, it is still fun to look back on what we did as kids and appreciate it, because for a lot of us the age we are now is the age we were looking forward to then and we aren’t getting any younger.