your favorite 80's things -

[hm yeah]

i'm in the mood for 80's stuff, but admittedly i have little exposure to...a whole ton of things. so this "rec me" thread is very open.

list your favorite 80's things. toys from childhood, video games, activities, fads, movies, books, magazines, comics, music, cartoons, ads, consumables - anything at all. even if it's not exactly from the 80's but would fit right in. i want to know about it. can be broad or specific so i can further investigate.

...i like 80's computer advancements.

 

[CatParty]

the music

 

[Christ-Chan]

My favorite thing from the '80s is... CatParty.

 

[CatParty]

My favorite thing from the '80s is... CatParty.

(◡‿◡✿)

 

[Mourning Dove]

Myself.

Besides that I grew up during the 90's so I wouldn't know...

 

[Chikinballs]

the cartoons were way fucking better. transformers, gi joe, thundercats, and even silverhawks. i liked heman, too. i remember my first portable am/fm headset. i liked it, but boomboxes were king. tote that fucker anywhere, and make your own tapes recording shit off the radio, then rage out when your shit walkman ate it. i remember the first time i played a nintendo, the first game boy i saw. i honestly miss the fuck out of arcades.

also, you cant do that on television. i made an 'i dont know" refference at work a while back. nobody got it.

 

[Bugaboo]

 

[Anchuent Christory]

KNIGHTMARE!

For the uninitiated, Knightmare was a UK kids tv show that aired on ITV in the late 80's. It involved a team of four kids with one of them, the "dungeoneer", donning the "Helm of Justice" which was essentially a visorless helmet to prevent them seeing anything other than a short distance in front of their own feet. This was because the dungeon that they were attempting to conquer was entirely projected on bluescreen.
The other three would watch on a screen so they would see the dungeon projected around their teammate, it was their job to guide the dungeoneer by giving movement commands and describing the environments they were navigating, they would all work as a team solving the various riddles and puzzles in order to progress through the dungeon.

The other main character was Treguard of Dunshelm, who was the master of the dungeon and would assist at times, but was mostly their to make sure the kids played within the rules, and to add to the overall medieval theme of the show. Other characters in costume would appear in the dungeon and challenge the dungeoneer with riddles and such, or would bestow spells that would allow them to progress later on.

One thing worth noting, is that it was brutally difficult, the show ran for seven or eight years and only a handful of teams ever completed the dungeon, the riddles in particular were really tough. It's a really well loved show over here for those who are old enough to remember it.

 

[Chikinballs]

KNIGHTMARE!

For the uninitiated, Knightmare was a UK kids tv show that aired on ITV in the late 80's. It involved a team of four kids with one of them, the "dungeoneer", donning the "Helm of Justice" which was essentially a visorless helmet to prevent them seeing anything other than a short distance in front of their own feet. This was because the dungeon that they were attempting to conquer was entirely projected on bluescreen.
The other three would watch on a screen so they would see the dungeon projected around their teammate, it was their job to guide the dungeoneer by giving movement commands and describing the environments they were navigating, they would all work as a team solving the various riddles and puzzles in order to progress through the dungeon.

The other main character was Treguard of Dunshelm, who was the master of the dungeon and would assist at times, but was mostly their to make sure the kids played within the rules, and to add to the overall medieval theme of the show. Other characters in costume would appear in the dungeon and challenge the dungeoneer with riddles and such, or would bestow spells that would allow them to progress later on.

One thing worth noting, is that it was brutally difficult, the show ran for seven or eight years and only a handful of teams ever completed the dungeon, the riddles in particular were really tough. It's a really well loved show over here for those who are old enough to remember it.

looks kinda cool, actually.

 

[Grand Number of Pounds]

my brother (born in '84) and me (born in '85)

My earliest memories are about the Gulf War, so I don't remember anything about the '80s

 

[Chikinballs]

i was born in 78. i remember the eighties pretty well.

i remember mtv used to be the shit.

the smell of a new tape when you opened it, and being excited to see what all was on the inside cover.

the toys were way better, now all the big money is in electronics so the toys are dumbed down and lower budget. they also used to be made of metal. metal toys were better.

fast food was simpler, too. small, staightforward menus. however, there werent specialty foods on every corner like chipotle or mark pi. the most exotic chain restaraunt around my town was probably del taco.

nobody gave a shit about booze and tobacco. candy cigs were awesome.

 

[Anchuent Christory]

looks kinda cool, actually.

It was properly good, and I'm sure it took the lion's share of kids tv viewership during it's heyday. Another thing worth mentioning is that it was just as popular with the parents as well as the kids and after rewatching the first series recently I see why, it was well produced, intelligent television that didn't talk down to children.

 

[Chikinballs]

fraggle rock was fucking good. miami vice and magnum pi were fucking awesome. better comedy movies. people could afford to buy things, and gas cost next to nothing. nobody had computers or internet,and most folks had rotary phones in their house somewhere. people actually did things. the mall was FUN. nobody was hardly ever indoor. news wasnt a constant avalanche of bullshit spewed all day every day live, it was just a nightly show and a morning paper.public shootings were next to unheard of. nobody fucked with perscription pills. bicycles kinda sucked, but werent all cheap and gimmicky. everything was in english everywhere, and nothing had warning labels.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

The 80s was when Voyager(s) 1 and 2 were on the "grand tour", and I remember being really excited as I kept up with the Neptune flyby. I also read a lot of space books.

I also vaguely remember the Challenger disaster.

My favorite TV from the 80s was Star Trek: The Next Generation, Reading Rainbow, Muppet Babies, PeeWee's Playhouse (sucks that his actor went to jail for perverted stuff). Broadcast TV was so much better then, it seemed.

My family got our first computer around 1988, a Tandy that ran DOS. It could display a whopping maximum of 16 different colors simultaneously. Being a bit of a nerd, I also liked computer animation from then. Examples can be seen in this collection called "The Mind's Eye" and a documentary called "Computer Animation Magic". What took powerful (by 80s standards) computers to render frame by frame can now be done in realtime by even portable consoles nowadays.

Yeah, I'm old.

the toys were way better

This. For example, Legos® were really generic and allowed you to use your imagination a lot more. There was just a generic "space" theme, a "pirate" theme, a "castle" theme, etc. None of this popular franchise crap. And the men weren't called "minifigs" or "minifigures", and they just had a generic : ) expression, not all these different ones they have now.

My favorite thing from the '80s is... CatParty.

His avatar is looking mighty 80s ish. (Yeah, tie-dye is a 60s thing, but somehow it looks like 80s CG or something.)

 

[Chikinballs]

tv channels would go off air, so there was a chunk during the night where no entertainment was just pipelined into your house. it was like the dark ages.

there was no giant database at everyones fingertips, so often times questions went unanswered. this made urban legends, especialy localized ones, stick better. like the black van kidnapping kids, a spot where gypsies died in a fire, etc.

 

[hm yeah]

there was no giant database at everyones fingertips, so often times questions went unanswered. this made urban legends, especialy localized ones, stick better. like the black van kidnapping kids, a spot where gypsies died in a fire, etc.

this in a nutshell is my absolute FAVORITE thing about being a kid in the 90s with video games. i am so extremely sad that this era is over.

 

[Something Vague]

I'm more of a 90s kid since I was born in the early 90s, but I guess if I had to just pick one thing it would be my childhood cat who was born in the 80s five years before I was born so I grew up with him until I was 9 when he died due to thyroid complications and he was quite old anyways. I miss him.

Aside from him, it would be the popple, the G1 Ponies, and whatnot my aunt and I would find at thrift stores and garage sales back when I was a kid.

 

[Chikinballs]

this in a nutshell is my absolute FAVORITE thing about being a kid in the 90s with video games. i am so extremely sad that this era is over.

wait, what?

 

[hm yeah]

wait, what?

you know, the "no database at our fingertips allowed for urban legends to develop and fluorish" thing. that's what made my 90's childhood so fun. we kinda live in the era of "nuh uh". urban legends are great for developing our childhood imaginations.

 

[Null]