Showing My Age: 80’s Style- Vol. 1

Veggie Macabre posted recently about cheesy intro songs for 80’s sitcoms (videos included).  As I watched an insane amount of television in my childhood, these videos were a fun walk down memory lane.  While on memory lane, I thought I would reflect on a few more things I enjoyed back in the 80’s.  [This inspired my husband to do the same thing for the 70's.]

Choose Your Own Adventure books.  This series provided numerous decision points which would take you down varying storylines depending upon your selections.  I don’t recall being particularly impressed by any of the stories, but I enjoyed controlling my literary destiny, so to speak.  Books that I did find impressive were the Taffy Sinclair series, tales of grade school angst by Barthe DeClements, each and every Trixie Belden, Baby-sitters Club, and Sunfire historical romance. 

My Atari 2600.  I spent hours upon hours playing favorite games such as Pitfall, Mousetrap, and Swordquest Earthworld.  I played a couple of Nintendo games when I babysat as a teenager (Tetris and Super Marios Brothers), but my game playing days basically ended with Atari. 

All of the stylish shoe choices including, but not limited to colored high-top Reeboks, jelly shoes and Kangaroos with zipper pouches.  I never had the real high-top Reeboks…my mom wasn’t into expensive childhood fashions.  I settled for pink canvas Reeboks.  I was, however, permitted to have cheap jelly shoes to my heart’s content…oh, how they made my feet sweat!  I also remember putting safety pins with beads onto my shoestrings (I think it was intended to be a sign of friendship).

Fashion plates.  I was basically my own fashion designer with this little gem of a toy.  You could assemble an outfit, imprint the outfit to paper, color the woman, and, if you were exceptionally stylish, add some kind of pattern to the outfit.  Unfortunately, I lost a couple of the plates over the years, and my sense of fashion suffered as a result.

Some of my favorite 80’s tv shows included Punky Brewster, The Facts of Life and Kids Incorporated.  I consider myself a bit of a Facts of Life show expert.  I know how Mrs. Garrett left Diff’rent Strokes (good move), how Molly Ringwald didn’t return after the 1st season, that Natalie was adopted and that George Clooney played Nick.  Much to my chagrin, these facts are never Trivial Pursuit questions.  (If you look closely at the Kids Incorporated pic, you might notice Fergie.  Yes, that Fergie.)

The Run Yourself Ragged Game.  I played this game for hours, navigating the tiny metal ball through a plastic maze.  It’s called Screwball Scramble now (we just ordered it online).  I also liked Scotland Yard.

I can’t imagine a childhood without Smurfs, Monchichis, The Get-Along Gang, The Little, Shirt Tales, and Foofur.  Things I remember about the smurfs- Smurfette’s scratchy voice, Azriel, Gargamel, PeeWee, Johanne, using the word smurf as a verb, time travel (in later seasons) *sigh*.

How about some good 80’s movies like Goonies, Girls Just Want to Have Fun and The Sure Thing.  My favorite part in Goonies was when Chunk confessed to causing a mass vomit in the movie theater.

May we never forget or repeat fashion fads such as banana combs, stirrup pants, jelly bracelets, and crimped hair.  Is it wrong to hold Mary Lou Retton personally responsible for the stirrup pant trend?

Some of my favorite 80’s commercials were the “how many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll pop?”, “Where’s the beef?” for Wendy’s, and Morris, the finicky eater. 

And I would like to give a special mention to my favorite game show of the 80’s- The Love Connection.  I’m very grateful to the Game Show Network for bringing this show back to me.

Oh, and many thanks to Mindi for reminding me about the Holly Hobby easy bake oven.  I found out that I was getting this for my birthday and couldn’t wait until the special day.  I took it from my mom’s closet, opened the box and baked a little pre-birthday cake for myself.  I don’t know how many plastic spatulas I melted in that thing.

Feel free to share your 80’s memories!

Click here for Volume 2, or here for Volume 3.