Upsetting Day: Flirt Squirts

It’s 1990; a toy company executive stands in front of a large piece of paper that says “girls?” Rumors abound that selling things to girls can generate money, but what things? They tried hiring the best male consultant on 12-year-old girls money could buy, but his Betty Crocker toy toaster, toy toast included, was a huge flop. They perfectly recreated the experience of waiting for toast, and those ungrateful little monsters didn’t care!

Then they tried to sell five-year-old girls fitness kits with little leg warmers and tiny weights! It had fun slogans like “pump and run” and “get with it, look fit!” Yet little girls are apparently unconcerned with getting swole? The pump meant nothing to these heathens. It’s like they’ve never even heard of Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Then suddenly, in 1992, a toy executive finally cracked it– the two words that would change the girl toy industry forever. It was all so clear now. It was flirt squirts. What do little girls love? Flirting. What do little boys love? Being sprayed directly in the face by water? This miracle product combined both of those things into the toy/torture device of the century.

Flirt Squirts came in Cool Treats Candy™, Shimmers Nail Polish™, Fancy Squirts Compact & Lipstick™, Sunsplashers Sunglasses™, Sound Squirt Cassette Player™, and Splashy Times Calculator™. They couldn’t find a way to work the word squirt into all of these products? Cowards. Make that calculator squirt. At least they worked it into the catchphrase for the fruit candy version, “Give them a sweet squirt!” Aw.

I have to admit this product does incorporate something I recall loving as a pre-teen girl: vengeance. The back of the flirt squirt box even came with a squirt scorecard, where you could make a cute little hit list of your potential victims and check them off one by one as their watery fate befell them. There’s also a section for a squirt score, which is, I guess, a rating of how surprised and upset they were to be squirted. Not only does this product encourage children to waterboard their friends, it lets them rate their satisfaction with their discomfort! For ages 3 & up!

Once the product made it to the commercial phase, the details of its intended purpose became more fuzzy. The original concept would seem to suggest this is a spy gadget for teen girls to use exclusively for flirting. However, the Flirt Squirts jingle mentions a variety of reasons you might want to squirt someone that hopefully aren’t flirting because it includes squirting family members. They’re still worth points, though! Mark those Squirt Scores down!

Let’s conduct a careful scene-by-scene breakdown of the Flirt Squirts commercial and the thinking that went into building the brand world of this product. First, picture a jingle with the clapping, electric guitar, and manic beat of something produced by a cool church trying to make “Bye, Bye, Bye” into “Christ, Christ Christ.” Now imagine a clean-cut lad approaching a young woman in an extra large scrunchie, innocently typing away on her calculator.

He’s so interested in what she’s calculating between classes in the middle of the hallway that he leans in real close to check out those sweet numbers. That chump gets flirt squirted right in the face, and the jingle brags about it. “I got Tommy in the hall, Flirt Squirts!” Tommy is clearly pissed.

We immediately move on to this girl’s next victim. She has purchased multiple Flirt Squirts in case Tommy spread the word about her crimes. Everyone knows not to fall for her nifty calculator trick anymore, so this time, she offers the child candy and strikes. “I got his friend down at the mall, Flirt Squirts,” the Greek chorus teases the boy. He doesn’t even get a name. The casting sheet probably said, “Tommy’s idiot friend: a kid who looks like a real chump.”

After establishing this relatively simple pattern, the song immediately breaks it. We’ve clearly set up how this is a toy made for flirting, but it wants the consumer to know it’s also an outlet for your wrath. “You can get your brother for telling your Mother,” it says as a young girl fills a nail polish bottle with water. There’s no subterfuge involved in this one; she just casually walks up to her brother and nails him right in the eye, and the brother reacts as if no one told him that was going to happen. This poor teen model makes the most involuntarily ugly face he’s ever made in his life during this national commercial. He goes full T-Rex arms of shock.

Everyone in school now knows that our main character is a menace who owns two Flirt Squirts, but she’s back in the next line, and she’s out for revenge. “Cool sounds?” her friend asks her as she listens to music, which is the most alien way you could possibly ask someone what they’re listening to. I feel like the line was “good song?” but the kid got nervous, and all that came out was “COOL SOUNDS?” Does she think this child is listening to industrial noise, or whale songs or something? Did teen girls do that in the ’90s? Toy companies had no idea, so they just left it in.

Anyway, you can guess her fate. The protagonist responds, “Listen!” and then Flirt Squirts her directly in the eyeballs like a threatened horned lizard. Kids don’t have a representative on set to watch out for them like dogs do, I guess? Is it okay to scratch this many children’s corneas for a toy commercial? The ’90s say yes! The more children blinded, the more fun the product.

“Or use them to get back at the girl who flirts with Jack,” the jingle continues—expecting the flirter to use the very same method they use to flirt to avenge flirting. Do I not understand what flirting is? Is it meant to be painful?

We then move to “I got my best friend after school,” and then, oh my God, is that Tommy again? This kid cannot stop putting his face as close to teen girls as possible. He might actually be into this. That little spray of water might actually be helping him. It’s like when a cat is naughty, and you give it a little spritz to calm it down.

The jingle ends with, “I saw my teacher but changed my mind. We’re Flirt Squirtin’ all the time!” Does that mean the child and the teacher are Flirt Squirtin’ all the time, or she and her friends are doing all of the Flirt Squirting? We’ll never know.

It turns out Flirt Squirts wasn’t the toy that finally cracked the preteen girl’s psyche wide open for the toy company executives. It’s closer to what girls actually want than what they’d gotten before. There was a time when all girls could look forward to at Christmas was a set of heavy silver hair brushes with a little girl on the cover who looks like she’s already planning the special day she murders her rich husband.

With toy movies all the rage after the success of Barbie, I wonder if we’ll get to see a Flirt Squirts movie sometime soon! Oh, wait, I just googled it, and it looks like there are already several movies with that title! Wow, I guess this product was more popular than I realized. Time to be entertained by a lot of Flirt Squirting!

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