A 1980s Childhood (10 page)

The Paul Hogan Show

The Price is Right

The Real Ghostbusters

The Rockford Files

The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13¾

The Simpsons

The Smurfs

The Snowman

The Sooty Show

The Sullivans

The Thorn Birds

The Tripods

The Two Ronnies

The Val Doonican Music Show

The Waltons

The Wide Awake Club

The Wind in the Willows

The Young Ones

Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends

Three of a Kind

Through the Keyhole

Thundercats

Tiswas

To the Manor Born

Tomorrow’s World

Tom’s Midnight Garden

Top Gear

Top of the Pops

Transformers

Treasure Hunt

Tucker’s Luck

Ulysses 31

University Challenge

Wacaday

Wheel of Fortune

Why Don’t You (Just Switch Off Your Television Set and Go and Do Something Less Boring Instead)?

Willo the Wisp

Wizbit

Worzel Gummidge

Yes Minister

You Rang, M’Lord?

If your parents are to be believed, the children of their generation had nothing more to play with than a single broken marble and a small piece of lint. Apparently, they had it tough in their day and they never had all the fancy toys we were blessed with when we were growing up. And they didn’t get toys at Christmas either – instead, they were given a satsuma and a clip round the ear, and on special occasions, such as birthdays, the whole family would simply gather round the wireless to listen to the shipping forecast as a special treat. They were poor but they were happy.

Not so my generation. We were materialistic and greedy and we wanted more toys and better toys. We had so many toys we didn’t know where to put them all. I remember our next-door neighbours used to clear out all the old toys each year and take them to the tip to make space for the new toys that would arrive at Christmas.

The 1980s was a period when children were spoiled like never before and the number and variety of toys available to children was greater than at any previous point in history. We not only had the cool new eighties toys to choose from, but we still had most of the toys from the sixties and seventies as well, like Space Hoppers, Stylophones, Meccano, Fuzzy-Felt, Play-Doh, Scalextric, Pogo Sticks, Spirographs, Stickle Bricks and Weebles (they wobble but they don’t fall down). In fact, most of the toys we played with in the eighties were toys from the sixties or seventies, but as the decade wore on, an increasing variety of eighties toys were added to the mix.

Let’s take a rummage through the toy cupboard of a typical 1980s child and see what retro treasures we can find.

If you were a 9-year-old child given the task of delivering an apple to your father, how would you choose to do it? Would you a) simply walk over to him and hand him the apple, or would you b) get out your Big Trak robotic transporter toy, programme in a sequence of commands and then watch with glee as the Big Trak delivered the apple in its trailer to your father, before shooting the cat with its built-in photon cannon? I think the answer to that question is fairly obvious. After using the Big Trak for the first couple of times you quickly realised that it took so long to programme the sequence of commands that your dad had given up waiting, and anyway, the chances are you would enter a wrong instruction in the commands and send the Big Trak hurtling off in completely the wrong direction.