A 1980s Childhood (12 page)

When America went to war in the early 1940s, the military took an interest in the devices as a cheap way to train troops. They purchased a staggering 100,000 View-Masters and over 6 million reels. In 1951 Sawyer’s acquired the Tru-Vu Company, their main competitor. This deal included the rights to their stereochrome viewers and, more importantly, the right to show Disney characters. Soon, kids everywhere were begging for a View-Master. In 1966 a company called the General Aniline and Film Corporation (or GAF) purchased Sawyer’s invention. A maker of Super 8 film and slides, they were able to license the rights to dozens of films and TV shows over the next two decades. With a heavy slant towards tourism still remaining, attractions such as Universal Studios, Marineland and the Detroit Zoo were also quick to produce discs.

A red GAF View-Master – Model G to be precise.
(Courtesy of ThePassenger/Wikimedia Commons)

The View-Master reached its peak of popularity in the early 1980s when it went hand in hand with all the 3D programmes TV channels were clamouring to broadcast at the time. Remember getting those red and green plastic glasses free with your weekly comic or copy of the
TV Times
? They’re probably still stuck down the side of some people’s sofas.

Since 1939, twenty-five variations of the View-Master have been rolled out, including a Talking View-Master, various different-coloured designs, and 1.5 billion discs have been produced. The View-Masters are still popular today, although in 2008 Fisher Price announced it would cease producing slides of tourist attractions. Luckily for us, it would continue with its range of animated character slide sets. We can’t wait to see what’s next …

‘Catch them if you dare!’ went the slogan. And very apt it was, too, for these bouncy little balls were the most grotesque and disgusting things you had ever clapped eyes on. They were, therefore, an instant hit – particularly with little boys.

Madballs were rubber balls measuring approximately 3 inches in diameter and decorated with disfigured, monster-like faces. They were the brainchild of AmToy which unveiled a range of eight ‘characters’ in 1985, promising that their grossness would not affect their bounciness as a ball.

Each Madball was its own little character, so they were instantly collectible. The range included Screamin’ Meemie, Slobulus, Aargh, Hornhead, Dustbrain (a time-ravaged mummy), Oculus Orbus (who was basically one large bloodshot eye), Skull Face and Crack Head (who had his brains exposed). Due to their popularity a second series was released, including Badballs: Wolf Breath, Bruise Brother and Lock Lips. This was followed up with a range called Super Madballs, and later still some sports-themed Madballs joined the ranks. One of these was Foul Shot, who suffered from worms in his eye. As time went on, the grosser and more goo-filled they became.

The toys became so popular that they got their own animated TV series, a run of comics from Marvel/Star, and a video game for the ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC and Commodore 64.

While kids’ greed for all things disgusting kept growing, Madballs just couldn’t keep up, and they eventually lost their bounce. But that doesn’t mean they’ve been forgotten. Some may still have nightmares about them …

Being a little boy in the 1980s with two brothers and no sisters, I had absolutely zero interest in or awareness of girls’ toys and was sheltered from the mere existence of Barbie, Sindy or any other dolls of the time. However, my blissful ignorance of girls’ toys was shattered in 1983 by the much-hyped arrival of the ugly, and yet insanely popular, Cabbage Patch Kids.

The Cabbage Patch Kids were a collection of dolls that originally began life in 1978 as part of an art exhibition, where their creator, Xavier Roberts, offered them up for adoption. He later began selling the dolls at Babyland General Hospital in Cleveland, Georgia, which was an old clinic converted into a shop. Roberts went the whole hog with this set-up, making everyone who worked there dress up and act as doctors and nurses, making sure that they cared for the dolls as if they were real children that had just been born.

The dolls themselves were ugly with podgy round faces, stumpy arms and small, close-set eyes; a computer-controlled manufacturing process randomly made small changes to each doll so that no two dolls were the same. The doll came complete with an adoption card, which the new owner would send off with their details, and on the first birthday of the doll, a card would be sent from the manufacturers.

The toys became immensely popular and began to attract media attention which, in turn, boosted their popularity further, until the toys achieved ‘craze’ status in the run-up to Christmas 1983. The first time I became aware of the Cabbage Patch Dolls was when I watched
John Craven’s Newsround
and learned of the riots and fist fights occurring in shops across America as desperate parents literally fought each other to get their hands on the limited supply of dolls for their children. In fact, one ‘crazed maniac’, as described by the toy store owner, said she had travelled hundreds of miles to get the doll and she didn’t even have any children! Another man, unable to get the dolls in America, flew to London especially to buy some for his daughter.

Thanks to the Cabbage Patch Kids I learned two important lessons at a very young age: first, never underestimate the power of marketing; and second, never underestimate the danger of a mother on a mission.

The television advert for Domino Rally featured several well-groomed children cheering and punching the air with uncontained excitement as their elaborate domino display toppled and rattled over a series of obstacles, including bridges, loop-the-loops, a flight of stairs and ultimately a launch pad that catapulted a plastic rocket in the air.

What they didn’t show in the advert was the same well-groomed children laboriously setting up the hundreds of flimsy plastic dominos, one at a time, holding their breath and sticking out their tongues with the immense concentration required to prevent the dominos from falling over and destroying hours’ worth of work prematurely. They also didn’t show the rough edges of the dominos left over from the injection moulding process which made them inherently unstable and prone to spontaneous topplage.

If you could really be bothered to spend a gruelling and frustrating three hours setting up a Domino Rally display, you would be rewarded with a disappointingly brief demonstration that usually resulted in the Domino Rally being packed away at the back of the toy cupboard and forgotten forever. It was far easier and more entertaining to watch the fruits of other people’s labour on television shows like
Record Breakers
with Roy Castle and Norris McWhirter, where groups of students would set up millions of dominos in old aircraft hangars and set them off in colourful and intricate displays often recreating famous paintings, flags or scenes from around the world. Even the ‘professionals’ got it wrong sometimes and Norris McWhirter mournfully recounted the tale of hundreds of thousands of dominos being accidentally toppled after a photographer dropped his light meter at a record attempt in Japan.

Domino Rally was a short-lived craze thanks to the short attention span of most children, but the world record attempts for domino-toppling continue to this day.

When you were little and secretly watching your mum and dad host another soirée from the top of the stairs, that heady mix of prawn cocktail, Babycham and Trivial Pursuit seemed like the height of sophistication. In years to come, we all realised that neither prawn cocktail nor Babycham were the slightest bit sophisticated, but there was indeed something rather special about Trivial Pursuit.

Maybe it was something to do with the board game’s classy racing-green packaging – the same as the iconic MG sports cars, no less. Or the Trivial Pursuit logo emblazoned across the front as if with a quill. This is one game that isn’t shallow by any means and has shown enough merit to keep generations playing, and learning, since it arrived on the scene in 1981.

Trivial Pursuit was one of the first trivia-based games to really flex our grey matter and give dear old Uncle Geoff a chance to shine in the sports and leisure round. As well as sports and leisure, which is signified by the orange places on the board, there are questions on geography (blue spaces), science and nature (green), history (yellow), entertainment (pink) and arts and culture (brown). When you land on a square, another player asks you a question corresponding to the colour of the space you are on. If you get it right, you keep going; get it wrong and it’s the next person’s turn.

A correct answer bags you what is affectionately known as ‘a piece of pie’, since each player has a plastic holder in which to place a segment of a circle – one for each trivia category – making it look like a pie. Once you’ve filled your pie, it’s a race to the centre of the board to answer one final question and be crowned king or queen braniac.

Castle Grayskull was the type of toy you really, really wanted, but probably didn’t get. After all, it was big and expensive and the slime-green demon-skull fortress just didn’t appeal to parents as much as it did to gore-loving 9-year-olds. Fortunately for me, my parents found a second-hand Castle Grayskull at a car-boot sale and gave it to my little brother for Christmas, so I got to battle my He-Man action figure against my brother’s Skeletor figure on the ramparts of Castle Grayskull.

In the animated television series
Masters of the Universe
, Castle Grayskull was said to be located on the fictional planet of Eternia and was believed to contain secrets so powerful that whoever controlled the castle would control the whole of Eternia. Of course, everyone knows that baddies like powerful secrets and always try to rule the world, so Castle Grayskull naturally became a beacon to Skeletor and his evil friends, Hordak and the Snake Men, who spent most of their time tying to ambush the castle.

Fortunately, the much-coveted secrets in the castle were guarded by He-Man and his buddies. He-Man was the muscle-bound, basin-headed alter ego of Prince Adam who rode around on a green tiger called Battle Cat and hung out with the likes of She-Ra, moustachioed Man-at-Arms (proper name Duncan), and levitating elf-like thing Orko.

Although the Castle Grayskull toy was impressive and featured an elevator, a trap door, a cannon and a drawbridge, I never did discover any powerful secrets within its walls and I fear that my valiant efforts to defend it against the assault of my little brother and his Skeletor may have been a futile exercise.

Cowabunga, dude! Who didn’t love playing with the ‘Heroes in a Half Shell’? Michaelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael and Donatello were better known as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (and later the Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles so as not to look like they were encouraging violence in kids). Like most toys in the 1980s, they were action figures, complete with fully moveable plastic bodies and limbs that you could spend hours on end putting into poses. But they didn’t start off like this.

Originally, the fearsome foursome were part of a humorous comic strip which was a parody of several other comics of the time. Created by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird, the turtles lived in the sewers of New York, ate a lot of pizza and talked like they’d just hopped off a flight from Hawaii. The back-story goes that they started life as four regular turtles, who accidentally got covered in toxic waste which turned them into 6ft-tall mutations, hence the name Teenage
Mutant
Hero Turtles. Just like they were our heroes, the turtles had a hero of their own: Master Splinter, a rat with a knack for martial arts and wise words. Under Splinter’s supervision, the foursome became great warriors, wearing bandanas in different colours to differentiate them, and they took on the likes of petty criminals around the city, as well as the infamous Shredder. A reporter called April was often on the scene and I think she quite fancied one of the turtles.

By the late eighties, the Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles had gained their own Saturday morning cartoon series, which was swiftly followed by the action figures so we could recreate episodes in our own living rooms. Each turtle came with their weapon of choice: Michaelangelo wore an orange bandana and carried nunchaku; Donatello wore a purple bandana and carried a staff; Raphael wore a red bandana and carried a pair of sai fighting knives; and Leonardo wore blue and wielded two samurai swords.