A 1980s Childhood (13 page)

A Nintendo Game & Watch from 1983, featuring the Donkey Kong II game.
(Courtesy of Evan-Amos/Wikimedia Commons)

Playmates Toys Inc. released a plethora of merchandise on top of this, including PEZ dispensers, skateboards, lunchboxes, toothpaste and even breakfast cereals. Then, in a move that rocked every kid’s world in the nineties, a Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles film hit cinemas. As a result, the action figures range exploded, with even more variations of the main four (like turtles in disguise, where Michaelangelo got to realise his
raison d’être
by becoming a surfer), plus new characters like Bebo, who was a mutant pig, and Rocksteady, a mutant rhino. Accessories meant extended fun time, too, with the choice of a Sewer Party Tube and an armoured Party Wagon.

It was only when the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers hit the scene in the early 1990s that the turtles were forced back into the sewer. Nevertheless, in 2007 Turtle Power returned with another big-screen hit, and, having been a staple Happy Meal gift in the nineties, many a turtle can now be found at car boot sales.

Does a V8 engine beat a V6 in Top Trumps? This was a debate that raged on in our household and has never been resolved to my satisfaction. If you were playing the Racing Cars pack then a V8 would definitely beat a V6 because it provided greater acceleration and overall power. However, if you were playing the Saloon Cars pack then you might argue that a V6 provided greater fuel economy and lower emissions in a lighter and more compact engine. My grandfather, an ex-racing driver, was called in to adjudicate on at least one occasion ruling in favour of the V6 (incorrectly so in my opinion).

The original Top Trumps games were launched in 1977 by a company called Dubreq and comprised a series of eleven different packs priced to be affordable to little boys with a few weeks’ pocket money saved up. Each pack of Top Trumps was presented in a red plastic case with a clear lid and inside were around thirty cards, slightly larger than regular playing cards. Each card had a picture of the subject on it, be it a car or an aeroplane, for example, and a list of its vital statistics, like top speed, weight, length, horsepower and so on; the idea was to take it in turns to compare one of the statistics on your card with that of the other players. The player with the best statistic would win the other players’ cards. In the event of a draw, the players would put their cards in a pile in the middle to be acquired by the winner of the next hand. Simple, really, and because of that simplicity, affordability and convenient pocket-size, Top Trumps became hugely popular, mainly with young boys who would take the cards to school to play in the playground.

Aside from the frequent arguments caused by ambiguous comparisons of values, I can safely say that Top Trumps was one of my favourite games in the eighties. Over the years I amassed a respectable collection of dozens of different packs, including military aircraft, tanks, motorbikes, warships, helicopters, hot rods, super dragsters, world airlines, rally cars, new spacecraft, experimental aircraft and all sorts of others. As the years went on the range of cards became more and more diverse and began to explore categories other than transport, eventually including such oddities as Millipedes and Centipedes (who has the most legs, I guess), FHM Cover Girls (not comparing the expected vital statistics) and Squirrel Trumps, where players compare the number of bird feeders destroyed, cats evaded and general fluffiness.

There were many more fantastic toys and games in my childhood than I’m able to cover in this one brief chapter and, while it’s tempting to spend more time rummaging through our toy cupboard of the eighties, it really is time to continue. Let’s press on and remind ourselves of the way the technology boom transformed our lives in the 1980s.

It’s been well over twenty years now since Michael J. Fox hover-skated around Hill Valley in
Back to the Future II
and I’m really disappointed I still don’t have a hoverboard. Technology has given me a 3D BluRay HDTV, a Blackberry with Bluetooth, an iPad, an iPod and a thing in my car that goes beep to help me park, so why has no one been able to make a simple hoverboard? Back in the 1980s, I was certain that one day I would own a hoverboard because I was living in a decade where technology was advancing at such a rapid and exciting pace that it would surely only be a matter of months before someone had figured out how to make one. After all, this was the decade in which a man had flown a jetpack around the Olympic stadium in Los Angeles at the 1984 opening ceremony, so anything was possible.

While it turns out that no one was actually working on hoverboard prototypes, the technology industry had certainly been busy preparing all sorts of other exciting surprises for us and had seemingly been waiting until the 1980s began before unveiling all their new products at once. The technology assault began with the iconic arcade game Pac-Man, launching in Japan on 22 May 1980, closely followed by the equally iconic Sony Walkman in the USA just a few weeks later in June. This signalled the beginning of what was to become a relentless flood of new gadgets and devices throughout the eighties that, in most cases, owed their existences to the ever-increasing power and ever-decreasing price of the microchip.

The microchip (otherwise known as a silicon chip or integrated circuit) had been invented many years earlier in 1949 with the first working example produced in 1958. Partly as a result of well-funded US government space and defence departments that needed silicon chips for guiding their rockets, the price of microchips was gradually driven down to what was considered an affordable level for use in industrial applications, and it wasn’t long before microchips were being produced in such high volumes that they became accessible to the average consumer. While microchips had already begun appearing in some homes in the mid-1970s, in the guise of digital wristwatches and early Atari consoles, the real technology boom began in the 1980s as the commercial potential of the microchip was increasingly realised. Now, thanks to the low price and high power of the microchip, I was able to use coupons from a cornflakes packet to buy a digital wristwatch that not only told the time, but also played the James Bond theme tune to promote the 1985 film
A View to a Kill
.

Of course, it wasn’t all about the microchip and plenty of other new technologies emerged in the eighties completely independently of the electronics boom, such as the high-speed TGV train that launched in France in 1981. But if you ask most people what they remember about technology in the eighties, they will reel off long lists of electronic devices with scarcely a mention of anything else. Think about it: what comes to mind when you look back at 1980s technology? It’s probably not the Hepatitis B vaccine that was invented in 1980 or the soft bifocal contact lense invented in 1983. Chances are you are thinking of electronic devices like VCRs, camcorders, Walkmen and microwave ovens. The rest of this chapter is unashamedly devoted to a handful of the, mostly electronic, technologies I remember fondly from my childhood in the eighties.

My recollection of the 1980s technology boom begins in 1981 when I watched an episode of the hugely popular BBC TV programme
Tomorrrow’s World
, which showcased exciting developments in the world of technology and science. While every episode was an enthralling spectacle of gadgetry and live demonstrations that often failed, this particular episode was more memorable than most thanks to the Compact Disc or CD. Presenter Kieran Prendiville introduced us to this remarkable new technology for the first time and explained that not only was the Compact Disc far smaller than the standard vinyl discs currently being used, but they were far more durable. To prove his claims, Prendiville took a brand-new Bee Gees CD and smeared it with strawberry jam before demonstrating that it could still be played in a CD player. The falsetto warbling of the bouffant, hairy-chested, medallion-wearing singers could clearly be heard despite the slathering of strawberry jam and, while their trapped-testicle voices made it sound like the CD player was malfunctioning, it was actually an accurate reproduction of the original recording.

The very first Macintosh computer from Apple launched in 1984 with a $1.5 million TV advert directed by Ridley Scott.
(Schlaier/Wikimedia Commons)

The CD was the first of several nails in the coffin of the vinyl record, which was in comparison bulky and fragile with a tendency to warp and scratch. CDs were much smaller and tougher and boasted the remarkable ability of being able to change tracks almost instantly and even play in a random order if necessary. To fully appreciate just what a giant leap forward in technology this was at the time, you have to cast your mind back to the 1980s and imagine you are trying to locate your favourite song on the mix tape you have recorded off the radio: fast forward for ten seconds and press play. Not far enough. Fast forward another ten seconds and press play. Too far, you’re in the middle of the song. Rewind for five seconds and press play. You’ve gone too far the other way now. This time you hold the play button halfway down as you press the fast forward button at the same time and hear high-speed Alvin and the Chipmunk-style renditions of eighties classics until you reach the point on the tape you were aiming for. At last, you press the play button and settle down to listen to your favourite track,
Agadoo
by Black Lace. However, after a few seconds you hear a strange rustling sound coming from the cassette player and on opening the door you discover a rapidly growing pile of thin black tape spewing out of the cassette and tangling around the rotating wheels.

Not only did the CD put an end to these nightmare scenarios, it also meant you could now listen to your music without the crackles and pops that you would get from vinyl or the hiss and distortion of cassettes. You could whack the volume right up and press play and have the music instantly burst out of your speakers with a clarity that was previously unheard of.

Despite its debut on
Tomorrow’s World
in 1981, it wasn’t until 1982 that the first CD player was commercially available for well over £1,000 in today’s money, and it was some years later still before most people had fully embraced the technology. Not only was the CD player relatively expensive, but it meant buying a whole new set of music on CDs and working out what you were going to do with all your old vinyl records.

While the CD was changing the way we listened to music at home, the arrival of the personal stereo in 1980 liberated us from sitting in front of our hi-fis and allowed us to listen to all our favourite music on the move wherever we were: at home, on the bus, walking home from school or secretly listening under the covers in bed when we were supposed to be sleeping. In order to fully appreciate just what a big deal this was for us back then, you have to remember that, prior to the arrival of the personal stereo, or Walkman as it became ubiquitously known, the closest most of us got to al-fresco music was the sound of an ice-cream van driving past. Now we could listen to our music
wherever
we liked, and not only that, we could listen to
whatevcr
we liked and as loud as we liked without our parents shouting at us to ‘turn off that terrible racket’. The personal stereo was way more than just a portable music player and became an icon of eighties pop culture representing musical freedom and technological advancement.

In 1978 a very clever Japanese chap called Nobutoshi Kihara built the first Walkman for Sony co-chairman Akio Morita, who spent a lot of time travelling on business and wanted to be able to listen to his favourite operas while flying across the Pacific. I say ‘built’ and not ‘invented’ because a very clever German-Brazilian fellow called Andreas Pavel actually invented and patented the first personal stereo some six years earlier, which he called the Stereobelt. As you might imagine, there was quite a kerfuffle when Mr Pavel became aware of Sony’s new ‘invention’ and a long battle followed which spanned twenty-three years, concluding with Sony paying a cash settlement estimated in the region of $10,000,000 and acknowledging Mr Pavel as the original inventor of the personal stereo.