This article is a very special one for me. It’s the very first article I ever posted on Manic Expression. I am sure if I had not done that, and stayed on TGWTG, I would have stopped doing this a loooonnnngg time ago. Certainly when they switched web sites and all their old stuff was deleted! But instead Les worked with me on my concerns, and here I still am. 7 YEARS LATER!! So to celebrate I decided to repost this by changing a few things. Mostly, making it more of a focus on authentic 80’s toys. I mean, they still have action figures today so that isn’t really decade specific. Plus I’ve talked about the various franchises elsewhere. I fixed the pictures which are long gone, and I also took away an insult toward video games of today that I had made which was really unfair. Video games today are AMAZING and I just came off as an old person saying “In my day we didn’t have these things…” I guess wisdom does come with age.
As you know by now, I was a kid of the 80’s. I loved the toys and games we had then! Course who doesn’t fondly remember the toys of their youth. Here is a look at some of the 80’s things I had as a kid, and as usual this list is in no particular order.
Rubik’s Cube
Does anything say 80’s more? It’s such a simple idea, it’s a 3-D puzzle and all you have to do is line up the colors on each side. Easy, right? Frustrating is more like it. I spent hours playing with this thing, it was lots of fun. Everyone had their little ways of cheating, mine was to peel the stickers off and replace them. No wonder I bought them so much. If you think that’s bad, you should have seen what I did to my slinky!
Laser Tag
I guess these are till around, but they were huge in the 80’s. Most people these days hear Laser Tag they think of the laser tag arenas where people go to. Before it became a version of paint ball, it was in homes. You strapped on a belt with a sensor, and if the laser hit the sensor then it would beep. This was lots of fun.
Pound Puppies
I don’t think there was a kid in the 80’s that didn’t have one of these. I had a puppy and a purrie, and they were real soft and cute. The catch was you would actually “adopt” them, which meant naming them and everything. They basically were to us what The Build-a-Bear Workshop is to today’s kids. Except we didn’t help put them together. They were still really soft and cute.
Speak n Spell
I loved this freaking thing. I don’t know why, considering it was just a spelling toy with a really robotic, almost annoying, voice. However, it did have games which were kind of fun. You gotta have respect for a toy which had a pivotal role in one of the greatest movies ever made, E.T.
View Master/Etch a Sketch
And yes these are not 80’s things per se, but I’m gonna talk about them anyway. I loved View Mastter. It’s a little stereoscope where you put reels of images from cartoon inside. Man there is no way to make that not sound boring. But it was cool! As for the Etch a Sketch..we all had one of these right? Do I really need to explain what that does? And I LOVED COLORFORMS as a kid!!!! I could sit and play with those for hours.
Trivial Pursuit
I wish I had a dollar for every time I have played this over the years. It’s such a simple premise, answer trivia questions and college pieces of colored “pie”. Each color was a different category (why was brown always the toughest?) When you have all the pieces you win. One problem, the questions were kind of hard! I loved this game; I had the regular version, the young players, the 80’s, the TV, and probably a few others I can’t remember right now. I’ve talked elsewhere about the sillier board games that came and went n he 80;s
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FYi, this game was AWESOME!!
Simon
When I mentioned Connect Four I said the appeal was its simplicity. If simplicity is key that explains why this little creation was so popular. I don’t get it, even though I did have one. It’s basically memory only with sound and lights.
Cabbage Patch Dolls
Ever see a TV show or movie where there is a riot in a toy store and think, “that could never happen!”. Well, let me tell you about 1984. These little dolls debuted, and they were beyond sensations! Personally, I don’t get it (course I didn’t being a boy) but people went crazy over these things.
Lite Brite
Every kid has these at some point. And we play with it once and never look at it again. Nah just kidding.
Video Games
Man I miss the old fashioned Atari system. This was the daddy of all video games. Pong was the granddaddy. Don’t know what that is? Look it up. The game was simple, move pac-man around a maze collecting little pellets. Along the way four ghosts try to catch you, but if you get a power pellet you can eat the ghosts! I loved this, and played it all the time. We also had classics like Frogger and Q-Bert, which was tons of fun. Anyone else miss arcade’s?
why yes, this is the sophisticated and hi tech game consoles we had back them. Amazing huh?
For those kids who preferred Nintendo we had this in the 80’s:
I love that Mario and all those games where a spin-off of this original classic! And speaking of Mario, when I did finally get myself a game boy late in the 80’s there was one game I LOVED….
While not a Nintendo fan, I couldn’t get enough of this game and in fact I played it so much I finally conquered it. Which is the only game I can ever say I did that.
Oh, and while I didn’t own one of these but my sister did and…yeah it’s a little weird to have the dead eyes on this thing talking to you!
Finally…….
So I’ve had this memory in my head for years of watching clips from Disney’s classic “Lonesome Ghosts”. I thought it was a view master, but I distinctly remember the fun I had going back and forth rewinding the cartoon (no sound of course). In fact I can’t watch the cartoon without remembering that. So if not View Master, what the heck toy was it? Well I searched and searched and searched….and finally I got it!
This was a Fisher Price movie viewer, and it did just what it said. Put the cartridge in and you could watch cartoons, and could fast forward and rewind the images. And given the age’s on the box I must have been VERY little when I was rewinding and fast forwarding the cartoon. Making this a 70’s toy, I always forget I was little in the 70’s. Not little enough that I never forgot those images (or the telltale clicking noise that the thing made).
Damn, now my eyes are all watery.
Guess that will do for now, and yes I neglected the more girly items like Rainbow Brite, Strawberry Shortcake, Glo Worms and My Little Pony (no offense they were girly when I was a kid). If I missed a toy or game from the 80’s you feel should be mentioned comment and let me know.
I leave you with a video of one last nostalgic item I didn’t mention:
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