Continuing my visual retrospective of 80s/early 90s toys.
Garbage Pail Kids Get Along Gang – Here’s an episode of their cartoon Get In Shape Girl Holly Hobby Hugga Bunch Dolls Inhumanoids – My brother had this and used to scare my cat with it. We found it in the attic recently and now it’s living in my brother’s old room again. Jem & The Holograms Sweet Secrets Keypers Little Professor Calculator Madballs Make It Bake It Maple Town – Toys and also a cartoon Marble Works Micro Machines Monchichi Mr. Mouth My Little Pony Perfection Pizza Party Crossfire Pogo Ball Play Doh Fun Factory Polly Pocket Popples Pound Puppies Puffalumps Shirt Tales Shrinky Dinks Skip It Spirograph Sweet Pickles Sylvanian Families Teddy Ruxpin
A fun visual retrospective of toys from the 80s/early 90s that I used to have or remember playing with at my friends’ houses (or things I wanted, but my parents wouldn’t buy me). While browsing this website, I stumbled upon a whole bunch of things I haven’t thought of in years, so I thought I’d do some blogs about these almost forgotten items from the past.
Alphie Etch-A-Sketch Animator Barbie & The Rockers – I had a lot of these things…the stage, 2 dolls, accessories. Battle Beasts – my brother had these Bristle Blocks Cherry Merry Muffin – My crazy little cousin had this and took it everywhere with her. Colecovision – Our next door neighbor had this…my brother and I used to go crazy playing Frogger Colorforms – I really loved these things! And BTW, this ad below is extremely campy! Cricket Doll – And seeing her now, wow…this doll was really creepy. I didn’t have one, but a friend did. Crocodile Mile Dizzy Dizzy Dinosaur – my brother had this during his “dinosaur phase” Furskins
Continuing from my last post. My visual retrospective of foodstuffs from the 80s/early 90s.
Giggles Cookies
Keebler’s Magic Middle Cookies
Hubba Bubba Gum
Doublemint Gum (this ad is from the 80s, if you can’t tell from the clothes )
Juicy Fruit, ad from the 80s
Ice Cream Cones Cereal
Crispy Critters Cereal….I completely forgot this existed ’till I stumbled upon this ad on YouTube. We used to get this all the time.
Bubble Yum, ad from the 80s
McDonald’s McLean Deluxe
O’Boise’s Potato Chips
PB Max Bars
Oatmeal Swirlers…we never got this, I think it was probably too “junky.” But I remember these ads running ad naseum on Nick:
Peanut Boppers….I loved these!
Quackers Crackers
Clearly Canadian
Fruitopia
Lifesavers Holes
Mondo Drinks
I’ll admit that I’m rained in today and getting a bit stir crazy, which is partially why I’m writing these fun little retro posts. It’s a fun little way of passing my time today.
Anyway, here’s a nice visual retrospective of 80s and early 90s foods & candy that you may have forgotten about, but I personally remember eating or seeing people eating:
Big League Chew
Candy Cigarettes…before the PC police came along.
Charles Chips & Pretzels
Crystal Pepsi
Freshen Up Gum, the gum that squirted
Fruit Wrinkles
Bonkers Candy…I used to love their ads. I don’t think I ate the candy, I remember the ads more than the candy:
I stumbled upon a relatively lo-tech website, In The 80s today while looking for stuff about I.O.U. shirts. They also have a section for the 70s and 90s.
I was born in the late 70s, so I mostly came of age in the mid-80s through the 90s. I came upon so many things on this website that I haven’t thought of in years! I’m going to start on a little segment of visual retrospectives of these different things. I will start with 80s clothing that I remember using myself or seeing around my school:
Charm Necklaces, I had at least one or two of these myself and hadn’t thought of them since seeing them here
Sure, it’s kind of old news now, but the New Kids on the Block are back. They have a new look, a US tour and even a new album. Though, as a few of my friends pointed out, should they really be calling themselves New *Kids* on the Block when they’re all almost 40?
And how do I feel about this reunion? I’m not sure how I’ve felt about it all, but I do think it’s kinda cool and I wasn’t at all into going to see their tour, though at least 2 of my friends are seeing their concert. I was a big New Kids on the Block fan, circa 5th/6th grade, and very much got into collecting their merchandise and damn did they have a lot of merchandise. I was mostly a Donnie kinda girl and about 20 years later I’m so proud of the good taste I had.
As for the merchandise, I can think off the top of my head of what New Kids on the Block stuff I had and thanks to eBay, I found pictures of a bunch of them. And do they feel retro right now.:
Lotsa lotsa stickers
Large buttons, I had a Donnie one that I later drew all over with a black marker
Many, many small buttons
A Donnie pillowcase (though they only had a picture of a Joey one here)
One of those huge sippy water bottles
For my birthday during the summer of 5th grade my uncle got me the video of the Step by Step tour, which I watched over and over and over, driving my younger brother crazy since I eventually memorized every line from the video.
And I owned tons of New Kids books.
And of course I used to read all those silly teen celebrity magazines like Tiger Beat, Teen Beat and Bop to read all about their favorite foods, favorite movies and favorite cars. Embarrassingly I remember a whole lot of Donnie’s favorites.
I know I had so much less New Kids stuff than most of my schoolmates, but my junk did make me very happy.
I will end all this fun silly reminiscing with some New Kids on the Block music videos, but first a clip from their cartoon (remember that horrible cartoon?):
Hangin’ Tough
Funky, Funky Christmas (as performed on Arsenio Hall, remember that guy?)
Please Don’t Go Girl
Cover Girl
….
And as a special bonus, I’m posting a video from Tommy Page, who also reminds me of that crazy period:
I have about 13,000 songs on my iPod and usually people are shocked to hear that, but I really love my music and listen to pretty much everything. I am probably what you would call a music geek.
So, occasionally a certain song will come up and my mind will automatically flashback to the time when the song meant a whole lot to me or was the soundtrack to whatever was going on in my life. Today that song was Here and Now by Letters to Cleo. This wasn’t super popular, but reminds me of my high school years and just the whole atmosphere that was my life in the early 90s. These days I wish I had those problems I had then…back then I thought my petty little issues were going to be the end of my world, but now I’d love it if my only problems were how to get a certain guy friend to see me as more than that and wondering if I’d find a place to fit in. Anyway, today when this song came on I played it at least 3 times…it takes me right back to that place since, as I recall, I played it over and over when I was that age. I did find a video of it on YouTube. I love YouTube for having so many quirky videos like this easily available.
And eek! I found the video of Beavis & Butthead making fun of it. Their making fun of it was still funny to watch for someone that loved the song. Ah, the good ol’ days when B&B was considered such a “dangerous” show.
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