If you grew up in the eighties, post here!

Canyon

Well-known member
Okay, so who else here grew up in the eighties? ;)

I see that there are quite a few members of the Raven who are in their thirties, and thought it would be fun to start a thread, so we can all post our stories or memories here.

One of my memories relates to videocassette.

For those of you who didn't know, if you wanted to buy a movie, you couldn't just go in a store and get one. You mainly hired out movies and if you did want to buy one, you had to pay megabucks!

Back in 1985 when I was twelve years old, I saw and fell in love with Back to the Future in the cinema.

Some months later, a friend of my sisters said that she knew someone who had the movie and would happily lend it to me! So a few days later, she comes to the hose with the video tape and I'm jumping up and down...until I realise something.....

...the video tape is a Betamax and we only have VHS. :mad: I was devastated to say the least. :(

There were no i-pods, mp3's, no internet or the ability to watch a movie on cable when you wanted. As some of you know, it was a whole different world to the one we live in now. :)

Oh yes, and lastly, post your age also. I'm 36, BTW. ;)
 

Agent Crab

New member
80's kid here.

I remember tape cassets and VHSes. Hell, we even had a record player. I also remember how cool alot of the songs in the 80's were. I also remember little figures such as MUSCLE.

Damn.. I feel old.
 

Indy's brother

New member
I remember our first vcr. It was a magical experience that teens of today wouldn't understand. The power to watch the one movie we owned--"The Karate Kid"--over, and over, and over, and over......

Hell, I remember our first color TV. And our first tv with a remote. They had these things in stores, but my folks pinch a penny so hard that lincoln takes a crap in the palm of their hand. So options like color and remote had to be pretty much standard options before my parents would give in. Oh, and our tv had to pretty much wear out, too.

I also have fond memories of envying my best friend's Commodore 64.

I will be 38 in September.
 

The Man

Well-known member
Our first VCR was a monumental occasion. December 1988. The Lost Boys and A Nightmare On Elm Street all weekend...

I'm 31.
 

Indy's brother

New member
Watching the evolution of video games through the course of my life has been interesting, too. I remember my dad and my brother returning from a fishing trip to Canada. All they could talk about was something they saw in a truck stop. Something called Pac Man. Apparently they had spent about 10 bucks (that's 40 games) playing it. At the time I had no idea what they were raving about. All I had seen up to that point was Pong on a black and white tv, which seemed more like a novelty than anything else. Now I have a psp, psone, ps2, gamecube, xbox, xbox 360, and a wii.

Technology as a whole has leapt so far ahead since the 80's that my familiarity with ancient tech makes me sound like more of a dinosaur than I consider myself to be. I remember when call-waiting was a luxury. then came caller id. then cell phones. Now I don't know many people with a land line in their home. Saying the words "I remember when there was no such thing as the internet" sounds like I came out of the dark ages. My 2 1/2 year old son will never read a newspaper or use a phone booth. Not that it's important that he does, it's just weird to think about.


Of course, being a child of the eighties meant growing up on the cusp of the information age, which allowed for more of a sense of wonder than can be afforded to kids today. Finding the answer to every question that crossed my synapses in my childhood would have required spending all of my spare time sorting through the Dewey Decimal System and wandering through a library, whereas now, my answers are a mere click away.

In short, I am glad to have been able to have a foot in both worlds within one life. Growing up in the 80's has made me better appreciate some of the same things that I find myself taking for granted most of the time.

Cool thread, Canyon. I'm rating it 5 stars. Thanks for helping to remind me that growing up 80's style was pretty great.
 

Nurhachi1991

Well-known member
I was born in 91 but might as well be considered an 80s kid in spirt.


For godsake I used to have a micro cassete player!



We even had a Betamax :p
 
I have way too many thoughts and memories to add to this thread and I don't know where to start, but I'll try anyway...I want to first say that any era in which someone grows up is going to feel both the joy and pain of life more acutely; I have mixed feelings about the decade, and many of my fond memories were me creating my own comforting world (only child, divorced parents, moved around a lot etc.). But I guess any decade, regardless of one's age has its share of beauty and horror.

Anyway...

I've recently come to the conclusion that the 1980s was the last decade where kids were allowed to go out and play for hours on end--on their own! And not have to come back home until dusk. We were able to build tree forts, investigate dilapidated buildings, and pretty much move about on our own. We weren't in constant supervised day care prisons, rode our bikes in the street without helmets, and the idea of a "play date" was laughable. We had saturday morning cartoons, too. Whatever happened to those???

I'm not the biggest 1980s fan, despite growing up in that decade, but it has turned out to be the last Golden Age to be a kid. I think my views will soften as I grow older and that time seems farther away.

My friend had the now-forgotten home game system "Intelevision", a wood-paneled, top-loading VCR in 1982 and the thing lasted for twenty years!

I'll be 38 on August 22.
 
I grew up in the eighties, but with 5 brothers who grew up in the seventies. So I rejected Michael Jackson, (excepting the Jackson 5 hits), Culture Club and the rest of the faggy girl music in favor of The Beatles, The Allman Brothers, The Ramones, early Springsteen. The faggiest I ever got by choice was listening to classical music.

I started a list of good things that came out of France and so far I have:
Andre the Giant
Champagne
The Statue of Liberty
BJs (aruguably but since the list is so short, and they called them frenchies in the Wild West I'm inclined to extend it to them untill the list lengthens).

Likewise there's the list of good things that came out of the 80's
Indiana Jones
Cheers
Cal Ripken got his World Series
Roller Blades, (now I don't have to run around in the summer to play hockey)
Spinal Tap
Bill Hicks/Sam Kineson

the list goes on, of good...but mostly bad.
 

deckard24

New member
Ahhhhhhh, the 80's!

The tail end of BETA, the rise of VCR, ATARI, Nintendo, U2, The Police, The Breakfast Club, Vans shoes, Ocean Pacific clothing, Members Only jackets, Supersoaker waterguns, the Reebok Pump, Kelly Kapowski, Gremlins, Ghostbusters, Winnie Cooper, Blade Runner, metal Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom lunchboxes, Hulkamania, Guns n' Roses, Kenner's Jabba the Hutt playset, The Princess Bride, The Simpsons, A Nightmare on Elm Street.....what a great time to grow up!
 
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Canyon

Well-known member
Thanks for all of the cool replies, guys! (y)

Indy's brother said:
Cool thread, Canyon. I'm rating it 5 stars. Thanks for helping to remind me that growing up 80's style was pretty great.

Hey, thanks and you're welcome. ;)
 

westford

Member
Betamax? VHS? Not in our house - we had Video 2000! Double-sided tapes - c'mon! :whip:

The first games console I ever played was my brother's Atari 2600, but then we got a Sinclair ZX Spectrum (with floppy disc drive - how advanced!).

I was born in 82, so don't remember Back to the Future at the cinema, but I do remember the day Back to the Future II was released the queue outside the Odeon cinema in Glasgow was about a mile long (our parents refused to take us to see it that day :( ). I don't think I saw another queue like that until Jurassic Park hit the UK...
 

Crack that whip

New member
'80s kid here, too, and of course I grew up with Indy movies both in theaters and on video in the early days of the home video revolution, at least to the extent I can be said to have grown up (Raiders of the Lost Ark was actually the first movie I bought a copy of on video - and it was on Beta).

I just turned 41 last week. :eek: :dead:

Agent Crab said:

I still have one, and still use it for watching certain movies I don't have on DVD yet. It was my primary format for watching movies on video until I got my first DVD player in 2001, and my main way for watching the Indy movies until the first boxed DVD set came out in 2003 (I still have my letterboxed laserdiscs of all three).
 
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