Zhu Zhu pets
With adorable names like Chunk, PipSqueak, Mr. Squiggles, and Num Nums, these tiny hamster robots—which, if you take it from the commercials, were so smart that “they decide what to zhu”—could purr and run and snuggle and even talk to their owners. They were so insanely popular during the 2009 holidays that many toy stores sold out almost instantly, and the few remaining Zhu Zhus were selling for prices inflated by up 500 percent.