Handclap Games of the Eighties
By Julie Anderson Brrrrrrrrinnnggg!!! You close your fuzzy-kitten Trapper Keeper and stow it under your desk. Your second grade class lines up and thunders outside for playtime. The boys head directly toward the sharp steel seesaws, tetherball, and merry-go-round, those wildly unsafe and now-defunct playground structures we adored. And sure, dizzying centrifugal force and strangulation hazards were exciting, but if you were a girl,...
Little Professor
How a Generation Learned Their Multiplication Tables Those of us who came of age in the 80s were little kids in the 70s; and one of the coolest toys of the late 70s was the Little Professor handheld reverse calculator. It was the first electronic educational toy developed by Texas Instruments (which later went on to develop the immensely popular Speak & Spell series). Little Professor was first introduced in 1976, and kids were so...
Top Video Games of the 80s
By Stuart Kerr of Liberty Games As gaming evolves and we’re now able to fight our way through realistic warzones, face hordes of undead or stop nuclear attacks from giant robots, I can’t help but feel like video games just aren’t as fun anymore. Don’t get me wrong, I love next generation gaming as much as the next guy! However, you have to admit that the 80’s golden age of gaming was a lot more lighthearted and enjoyable than wading...
Speak & Spell
Speak & Spell was created by Texas Instruments’ Paul Breedlove in the late 70s and introduced to American markets in 1978. It went through several redesigns, but the basic idea remained the same: in a British-ish accent, the toy would ask you how to spell a word. You’d type it in, and the toy would tell you if you were correct or wrong. Minigames, such as Mystery Word and Secret Code, were included in the original console. All of...
Dungeons and Dragons
By Julie Anderson It’s 1984. A little girl eavesdrops outside her older brother’s bedroom. Inside, he and three of his teenage friends are clustered around a card table littered with exotic dice, tiny metal figurines and complicated hand-drawn papers. She listens. They talk about “hit points” and “melee rounds” and the all-powerful “Dungeon Master.” They visit the “elemental plane.” They encounter a “water weird” and a “gray slime.”...
The Green Machine – Childhood Bliss
Ok, so this toy is technically from the late 70s (see the awesome commercial below from 1978), but for those of us that were teens in the 80s, we played with the toys of the late 70s! The Green Machine was so cool – so much cooler than its ride-on-vehicle-rival, the Big Wheel. It left a regular ole Big Wheel in its dust; the nimble Green Machine’s rear wheel swivel action design ran circles around the lumbering, clunky Big Wheel....
Chat with Author of Totally Tubular 80s Toys
We recently had the good fortune to review a copy of Mark Bellomo’s newest book, “Totally Tubular ‘80s Toys” and ask the author a few questions. If you haven’t seen this book, it is a veritable treasure trove of information on the toys of the 80s. With great photography of the toys and a year-by-year structure, this is as much a reference work as it is a fun trip down memory lane. For each year, he leads off the chapter with all the...
Fashion Plates
By Julie Anderson My mom was a career woman; she earned two Master’s degrees and was (and is) a computer systems analyst. So, it may not surprise you that she wasn’t all into girly toys for me when I was growing up. Macintosh computer and calligraphy set = YES Barbie = NO French horn and piano lessons = YES Princessy dress-up outfits = NO Add to that the fact that my dad was a structural engineer and I didn’t have a sister, and you...
Top 5 Things that Never Should Have Existed in the 80s
By Ryan Zimmerman Ryan here. Back with my weekly top 5. This week’s top 5 is “Top 5 Things that Never Should Have Existed in the 80s.” 5. I Want Your Sex (sung by George Michael) Seemingly, in trying to sex up his image and forget the more delicate Wham days of “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go,” George Michael penned this crap-sterpiece, probably in about 4 minutes. George! You are so much better than this!...
Top 5 Unsung Toys of the 80s
By Ryan Zimmerman Back again with this week’s countdown. . . . This week: Top 5 Unsung Toys of the 80s. We all know the Rubik’s Cube and Atari and Cabbage Patch Kids reigned supreme on toy shelves in the 80s… but the following are 5 fun toys that played second fiddle, but were first in my heart. 5. Pillow People “Pillow People are lovable . . . Pillow People are huggable. Pillow People are lovable, huggable, friends.” Ahhh —...
Do You Know This 80s Toy?
Help us identify this 80s toy sent in by Jenny C. . . . “I was wondering if you could shed some light on a subject that my sister and I can’t seem to agree on. We recently found an old stash of figurines that our parents bought us back in the 80’s and found a doll (attached) we can’t seem to place. She was with our She-Ra dolls but I’m thinking she’d be more of a Conan girl. Any idea where she came...
Top 20 Classic Arcade Games of the 80s
By Old School Tim Honorable Mention: Space Invaders and Asteroids These are some of the originals, so I wanted to at least pay homage. They were never my favorite games, though they did receive a good number of my quarters along the way as well. Both of these arcade games were released back in 1978 and helped start a revolution which is still evolving today into game systems like Wii and Xbox 360 and hi-tech arcade games that cost a...
The Cootie Catcher – 80s Fortune Telling
Got a burning question you’ve just got to know the answer to like, Will I marry Scott Baio? Use a cootie catcher! It’s all the craze – or at least it was in 1982 when the Like Totally 80s crowd was in the 5th grade. But, don’t let Mrs. Asher catch you with it, or she’ll grab it up and you’ll have to make a whole new one . . . Sometimes called a fortune teller or scrunchie, cootie catchers were the arts...
Play 80s Arcade Games Online
Paul Neave of Neave Interactive has done a very good thing. He has created flash-based clone versions of some of our favorite early 80s video games. You can play these games on his site for free using the links below. Play Online Here Asteroids Space Invaders Pacman Frogger Simon Tic Tac Toe (like from the 1983 movie WarGames) Tetris Galaga Donkey Kong In making my way through the games on his site I am struck with how shamefully out...
MASH Game
The fortune-telling game of pre-teen girls in the 80s. Oh, the hours whiled away figuring out just who I’d marry, where we’d live, how many kids we’d have, the kind of car I’d drive and so on. Strangely, this game did not accurately predict that I would live in the South, have one child and drive a Nissan Murano (navy) and work on the Internet – oh well. They didn’t have Nissan Muranos in 1983...
