>>133348
i am also gen z
they were the thing you used for external storage before optical disks increased default capacity a lot
i cant tell them apart from zips because i have not seen them much
i still have a few, and i also have a few magnetic tapes and i am thinking of digitizing them

dad said that when they were young they would wait for a cool song on the radio and record it with a tape and it was hard to time the beginning of the song well and dumb kids would have the first second or two cut
and then they traded it because copying a tape infinitely could easily be a death sentence on even the first copy attempt for the original and the copy that would be lower quality anyway and nobody would consider it a precious item
so they generally waited for the song each time to record it again
i am sure they recorded the second side of the tape but i wonder how dangerous it was, i will ask dad LOL

they also traded posters of music bands in particular
and they traded stories written on the inside of candy wraps
there is no collectible anything related to wrapped candies nowadays but in order to keep kids hooked they wrote stories, comic pages (you had to find all to read the comic) or pictures
and there was a time where you would find those kid temporary tatoos in candy wraps that kids traded
and there were metal chips with pictures in snack bags and kids would trade them, there were also gambling games with these where rules are set and if you lose - your chip belongs to the winner

1. there was a game where you would place bets with your chips, walk away a bit and you and your opponent would try to throw the chip from the same distance aiming for a point you two selected and the person whose chip is closer to the point is the winner
2. a game where you would spin your chips at the same time and the person whose chip spins longer wins
3. a game where you would place your chips of gambling on the table in a symetrical configuration and so would your opponent, you two are assigned starting points from which you would accelerate by flicking them with your fingers (usually index but some kids used middle finger) aiming at chips of your opponent and if you hit your opponents chip so hard that it falls off the table - it belongs to you, but there was a lot of reginal sets of rules and every person and circle would have different rules
4. there was also this game https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4FQmtFf5s8 where some kids used these chips as gambling items but not all chips were fit for this game, if you get your opponents chip into the bowl - it belongs to you, there was a set amount of attempts in sequence usually or a set amount of sequences because it was not easy, kids did not care much if you scratch or damage a chip because your favorite pokemon is still visible on it