I’m fascinated by toys from the 1980s as they would have been the items that I would beg my parents to buy for me. The 1986 “My Coloring Cup” would have been one of those toys, as it would have been a toy that I could bring to the table, literally.

I purchased an unused version of this toy from a Milford consignment shop. There were two reasons why I bought it: 1) it was made in the 1980s and 2) it was made in Barrington, Illinois, where I spent almost 5 years working on one of my consulting projects. I wanted to see what happened to this 1980s toy company made in the Land of Lincoln.

Unfortunately, like many of the other toys from the 80s, the company went nowhere. I quick google search shows there is nothing left of the company. The patent office has no records either. The box has many search points, but they were all dead ends: the address 255 Bluff Court, is a street that hosts 13 or so condo units and not a factory. The UPC has no results on eBay, Amazon or any barcode lookup.

I finally found one close match to the product on a Taiwan Merchandise site. At first I was not going to even click on the link as Chrome warned me the connection was not secure. But when I went to the site, I found a close match to the product with a listing of many other 80s toys. The company boasted that it could easily clone the product of your choice for a small fee.

I guess that is where toys from the 80s go. The physical copies go to thrift stores and landfills while the concept of the product goes to offshore vendors that will easily mass produce it for eBay.