Chris Johnson: Where are all the Weeble Wobbles?

"What's a Weeble Wobble?"

You should have heard the gasp that came out of my wife's mouth when these words were uttered by a teenager across the lunch table from us. Heck, you probably did hear it.

"WHAT'S A WEEBLE WOBBLE?!"

You'd have thought the kid had never heard of Elvis Presley, who was a bit weebly-wobbly himself in his later years.

"Google Weeble Wobble!" my wife ordered me, and let me just say that when you say "Google Weeble Wobble" loudly in a restaurant, folks turn their heads as if there might be a deranged turkey on the loose. Seriously, say those three words loudly and see if you don't get a few funny looks.

But I did as I was told and showed them pictures of Weeble Wobbles, which virtually every kid of my generation owned at some point -- along with the Weeble Wobble Treehouse, the Weeble Wobble Camper and, of course, the Weeble Wobble Oil Embargo Playkit. The Seventies were amazing!

The teens were not impressed by the pictures, so I tried the science angle: "You see, you'd push on them, and they'd look like they were gonna fall over, but, wait for it, they DIDN'T! They'd weeble and they'd wobble, but they wouldn't fall down." Blank stares.

I further explained -- OK, stole from Wikipedia -- that "a Weeble was comprised of two unmixed solids with the volume of the lighter solid being greater than the heavier solid and the whole thingamajiggy's overall shape with a constant positive curvature with the relationship between the heavy and light solid such that any orientation off the vertical axis must cause the centroid to raid and become offset with, obviously, only one position in which it can achieve stable mechanical equilibrium. You know what I mean?"

"Well, duh. Is there any more honey mustard sauce?"

Now, I admit that a Weeble Wobble offers only slightly more excitement than when my grandma would tie two sticks together and tell us to run around the yard -- or highway, depending upon her mood -- and pretend they were little airplanes. (You know you grow up poor when a phrase like "That's a nice stick" is part of your lexicon.) And it's significantly less interesting than Grand Warcraft Halo Undead 6. But you can't just let iconic toys like Weeble Wobbles disappear.

What's next to go from my childhood? Tinker Toys? Lincoln Logs? Sit-n-Spin-n-Vomits? Cherry Bombs? It just feels wrong. What happened to tire swings?! Rope swings?! ANY swings?! Evel Knievel bikes?! Army men?! Stretch Armstron?! Lite Brites?! Etch-A-Sketch?!

"Whoa!"

Exactly! Now you kids finally understand how serious this is!

"Nah, I mean this ketchup bottle's empty. Somebody Google 'empty ketchup bottle'."

Alas, these kids today just aren't as impressed with the simple things in life like we were -- things like Weeble Wobbles, teeter-totters, coo-coo clocks and polio. I'm afraid that the Weebles make a real comeback is if Apple comes up with an iWobble.

Connect with Chris Johnson at Facebook.com/KudzuKidWriting.

This story was originally published April 18, 2015 at 10:41 PM with the headline "Chris Johnson: Where are all the Weeble Wobbles?."