When I was ten years old, my schoolfriends and I would whizz from one craze to another. One or two of these crazes diabolo, yo-yos, conkers, roller-skates are still with us. But many more have disappeared.
Whatever happened to the Gonk, for instance? The Gonk was a cylindrical doll covered in brightly coloured fur, rounded off with two little bulbous eyes.
It wasn’t long before Gonks gave way to younger, pushier, trendier rivals: Trolls, Wombles, Smurfs, Cabbage Patch Kids, My Little Ponies, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Tamagotchis.
For a short while, the Gonk lived on as a term of abuse directed at dim-wits, but even insults are subject to crazes, and this one soon died, just as the expression ‘dim-wit’ died.