Your Memories of an Eighties Childhood

[Damini]

This will show up the young whippersnappers amongst us, and the codgers too What are your memories of growing up in the eighties, what events, objects, fashions do you remember as a distinctly 80s thing?

For me:

Snoods: A type of woolen foreskin for the head.

Earmuffs: Every girl in the playground had them.

Coca Cola Yoyos: A summer of people trying to "walk the dog"

Big Yellow Teapot: I didn't have one. I remember the rage that this fact gave me.

Soda Streams: Only the richest people at school had a soda stream at home, and whenever you went round their houses, giddy at the carbonated power at your fingertips, you would try and embue common liquids with fizzy bubbles (milk, gravy, vinegar)

Nerds: Best sweets ever, until someone shoved glass in the packets.

Different colour neon socks: Because matching socks in dull colours are so conformist.

Sticky hands: Hands made out of some odd gloop that you could slap across objects to stick. Commonly used in people's faces.

Anyone else?

 

[mank!]

i'm not strictly an 80's child, only being born in 86 but i remember most of them.

nerds and dweebs were ace. i wish you could still get em.

 

[Gray]

Staypuft Marshmellow Man

 

[Munkey]

I'd forgotten about sitcky hands They were awesome, and i always did wonder where Nerds had gone.

Ear-muffs and coca cola yoyos. I remember the yo-yos vaugley, and remember having a strong attachment to them as a kid, but i cant remember what they looked like

But i definitley remember the ear-muffs.

 

[Tom]

Marble wash jeans

Pringle sweaters

Those big denim jackets with the stripey blue lining

Viz

Refreshers (the squat yellow chewy bar)

10p Jubblys

Marathon bars

White pumps

Yazoo

Five Star

 

[throdgrain]

I grew up in the seventies, spent my years from 16 to 26 in the eighties. I always thought it was the worst decade, full of shit music rubbish fashions and Margeret Thatcher. I was banned from every pub in Crawley Town Centre, bar one, through most of it

 

[Tom]

Margaret Thatcher was the greatest Prime Minister we've ever had.

 

[Overdriven]

All I remember is WHAM =( Since I was born in the late 80s =(

 

[throdgrain]

Margaret Thatcher was the greatest Prime Minister we've ever had.

She wasnt mate.

 

[Sharma]

Sticky hands: Hands made out of some odd gloop that you could slap across objects to stick. Commonly used in people's faces.

I was a 90s kid really, but bloody hell I remember slapping people a lot with these till the stick stopped and they were covered in unmentionable stuff.

Personally, 90s TV was far superior to the shit thats on now and Saturday nights actually had decent TV.

 

[Tom]

She wasnt mate.

Better than Neil Kinnock, or Michael Foot.

 

[Skyler]

Damini what scares me is that a lot of those things you mentioned.. I remember.. yet I've never considered myself a child of the 80's..

Was I really that young when Coke Yoyo's were all the rage? I loved them dearly..

Nerds were amazing, they were like niknaks in sweet form.

My neighbour had a Soda Stream, it was the coolest thing in the world for about a week..

omg those sticky hands.. I remember having one of them, it got all dusty and stuff but it felt so cold and comfortingly squishy in a way that can only be described as jelly like!

I remember the Marathon bar, my most distinctive memory of it is nagging my mum if I could have one endlessly, but she hated me having so many nuts so I was always unsucessful... now I can at least say "because you never let me have that Marathon bar on that day they had to change the name" or "you denied me a Marathon forever.. "

I remember the earmuff thing, usually accompanied by mittens that had the cute thread that went through the girls coat sleeves and were never worn, only dangled around.

 

[Sockstuff]

Clackers (although this may have been early 90's)

There was a massive crazy for these in my primary school - they hurt many a finger.

Thundercats.... hoooooooooooo! I loved the Mum-Ra figure which came with a ring with an AA battery in it that you pushed into his back to make his eyes (just) light up. It was a flawed design as you had to push REALLY hard.

My sisters Sylvanian Families things. She had millions of the things. http://www.sylvanianfamilies.com/

The Chocolate Box. A newsagents on the walk home from school. They had a great selection of penny chews etc. I loved black jacks and those bubble gums with the transfers.

Having my first (and only) threesome. However this was at infant school.... and was just kissing....in the playground. Mellisa and Rebecca looooooved me.

*edit* Again this is early 90's but meh...

Finding a MASSIVE stash of porn on the way home from school in the woods. First time i saw a ladies front bum!

 

[Zill]

Spectrums, C64s, Crash! & Zapp! Computer Magazines

Garbage Pail Kids stickers. I used to have a few of them stuck on my pencil case.

 

[Kryten]

Too many to remember.

Some classic TV shows we used to watch :

Trapdoor (dont open it!)
Duckula
Dangermouse
Button Moon

I remember blue smarties going in for the first time. That might be early 90s though.

Those gooey hands gave rise to many other similar "toys" - like pots of snot. Just for the sake of being gooey and sticky, and in a handy pot to take to school and let people stick their mits in.

On that note - mittens? those damned gloves with string that went through your coat sleeves :/

 

[Sockstuff]

On that note - mittens? those damned gloves with string that went through your coat sleeves :/

I'm afraid these were only for simple children (like Ralph out of The Simpsons).

Buuuh MUMMY I can't letted go of my gloves!!!! *waaaaaaaaaaa* MUMMY! THEY WON'T GO AWAY!

 

[old.user4556]

Madonna.

 

[Zill]

Too many to remember.

Some classic TV shows we used to watch :

Trapdoor (dont open it!)
Duckula
Dangermouse
Button Moon

I remember blue smarties going in for the first time. That might be early 90s though.

Those gooey hands gave rise to many other similar "toys" - like pots of snot. Just for the sake of being gooey and sticky, and in a handy pot to take to school and let people stick their mits in.

On that note - mittens? those damned gloves with string that went through your coat sleeves :/

What about The Adventure Game, similar to the Crystal Maze except contestents solved puzzles on an alien planet to find the way home. I used to find it amusing when they bumped into the planet's ruler in the shape of a pot plant spouting out some alien dialect. They would be asked to bow and say "gronda, gronda" if they didn't want to make the thing mad. I'm sure there was some contestant who thought it would be funny to wave a can of weed killer in front of it, and was vapourised as a result.

Dungeons & Dragons (the greatest cartoon ever), He-Man, Dogtanian & The Muskerhounds, Thundercats. And who could forget Wacaday, Roland Rat and Mallet's Mallet.

And Chrispoher Lillicrap. I wonder whaever happened to him.

 

[Trem]

Fights over C64's and Spectrums.

Rentaghost.

Auf Wiedersein Pet.

Boys From the Black Stuff.

My dads Escort Mexico.

Toothache.

Dexys.

First kiss.

 

[mank!]

Pringle sweaters

still cool - FACT!

 

[throdgrain]

Fights over C64's and Spectrums.

Rentaghost.

Auf Wiedersein Pet.

Boys From the Black Stuff.

My dads Escort Mexico.

Toothache.

Dexys.

First kiss.

I did a few dexys in the eighties , no doubt about that

 

[Jupitus]

I did a few dexys in the eighties , no doubt about that

Me too

 

[`mongoose]

The eighties...

It all blurred a bit cos I was very young at the start of the eighties and approaching teens at the end...

My Vic 20

my chopper alike (wasn't a proper chopper but had the same design)

Grange Hill (not allowed to watch the first series or so with tucker in cos it was too subversive for my parent's taste)

Sigue Sigue Sputnik
In the Jungle on top of the pops
Hit me with your rythym stick

Willo the wisp - quality cartoon

Cagney and lacey, Starsky and hutch (although I guess it must've been a re-run) The A-Team and Knight Rider, Street Hawk, Airhawk - all those cheesy american hero things

Pastel shirts, white jeans,

those drain pipe jeans and the first 'stonewash' effects!

Living on a prayer (late eighties?)

Run DMC and Aerosmith doing walk this way..... (very late eighties?)

My first football bag - a cheap aston villa thing - not the smartest move in the world considering I lived in Cov at the time - and they hate villa here.

Cov winning the FA cup in 1987 and driving around town with people just cheering and having a street party all through the city - that was probably the happiest and best I've ever seen the place.

Orville and that keith bloke,

Rod hill and Emu

Record breakers

jim'll fix it

Doctor Who & Blakes 7

M

 

[caLLous]

Mysterious Cities of Gold - was this late 80's or early 90's? Whatever, it's still the best thing I remember watching in my childhood.

 

[old.user4556]

Knightmare with the helmet where you couldn't see.

Pole Position.

Thundercats.

 

[MYstIC G]

First kiss.

How many times.... your mum doesn't count!

 

[Trem]

My dad does

 

[Ch3tan]

Pretty much everything you mentioned Damini.

Rentaghost for teh win Trem

I dont remember much else, alcohol in the late 90's took away my memories.

 

[MYstIC G]

omfg uke:

 

[mank!]

the best bit of the 80's was town's record-breaking championship in division four under lou macari's tutelage, followed by successive promotions before being wrongly denied promotion to the first division after winning the 89/90 play-off final...the most one sided 1-0 win ever.