If you grew up in the eighties, post here!

Indy's brother said:

Bump. Any other relics of the 80's wish to chime in?

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Are we really considered relics now? Probably... I find it hard to connect with teens nowadays. Sigh... I am getting old.

Anyway, I'm a child of the eighties. Born in 1977.

I remember our first PC was an Apple IIe. I did find an old Coleco pong game and Sinclair in our house that looks like have never been used, but never got them to really work.

As for home video, we had a betamax... It would be years before we shifted to VHS.

I remember recording Raiders from a local channel that aired it around the time LC was going to come out. I'd stop recording when the commercials aired and record again a few seconds before they finish... And I did that manually!

Anybody here remember the Game n Watch fad of that era? Now those were the first handheld videogames! We had 3 when I was a kid... I actually still have one of 'em... And it's still working!

Aaaahhh... The 80's...

*** edit ***

Here's the game n watch I was talking about...

From 80 to 89 I was 10 to 19. So a kid for the most part.


Hell, I'm still a kid.

I grew up in the '80's. The summers of '86 and '89 are still two of the best summers of my life.

I was born in 1983.I guess that would make an 80's kid?I remember some shows from the 80's like:Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,Heath Cliff(though I've seen it in reruns), and Garfield.I'm sure there are more,but I have a hard time thinking back that far.

I'm 40, and back in the 80s, I was the tv remote. "Hey, change it to 4." Wasn't a tough job since we only had three channels. That was country life in the 80s, unless you had a satellite dish the size of the Death Star's superlaser.

And forget about cable boxes with twist dials. We had a dial that rotated the tv antennae on the roof.

My first Indy hat was a grey cowboy hat I buried in a pile of coal for a few days. And I got my parents to make me treasure maps and leave clues all over the house, so I could have Indy adventures inside and outside.

Recently I saw a truck go by with a full size Pac Man in the back. I said to my son, "Hey, check it out, Pac Man." His response: "What's that?" Somehow he didn't seem too impressed by my description of the game.

I remember our first microwave, first CD player, first VCR, and trips over and over to the video store to rent Back to the Future. My dad was a computer programmer, so I also remember when his office was the computer, which took up about 500 square feet. Punch cards and those giant metal disc things.

Nostalgic '80's kid here. Here are some completely random memories:

- Saturday Morning cartoons, including Thundarr the Barbarian & Goldie Gold/Action Jack (who else remembers these?! LOL)

-After school cartoons, including Masters of the Universe & Super Friends, and Thundercats.

- Garbage Pail Kids stickers

- Renting VHS tapes at early video rental stores; sometimes waiting years before a movie made it's way onto VHS after it hit theatres; a good example was Return of the Jedi (1983), which didn't get released onto VHS until 1986.

- Primitive (by today's standards) home video game platforms, i.e. Atari 2600 - I have fond memories of playing Pitfall, Pac Man, Donkey Kong, etc.

- Masters of the Universe, Star Wars, and G.I. Joe toys.

- Great pop/rock music, including The Police, Men at Work (RIP G. Hamm, 2012), U2, & INXS (among others).

- M.U.S.C.L.E. figurines.

To add to my last post:

-Great movies, including obviously the IJ films, ESB & ROTJ, The Breakfast Club, Aliens, Beverly Hills Cop I & II, Predator, Terminator, Batman (1989), Ghostbusters, etc.

- Great TV shows, including Knight Rider, Street Hawk (I'm probably one of 5 people who remembers that show - LOL), Bring 'Em Back Alive, Tales of the Gold Monkey, the '80's Twilight Zone, the '80's Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Amazing Stories, Simon & Simon, etc.

In regards to TV in the '80's, one of the things I don't miss about that time period is dealing with the stupid rabbit ear antennae on top of the TV (we never had cable during that time).

Born in '76.

I remember:
* seeing ToD in the theater.
* blowing on my nintendo games in hopes they would work, which they often did.
* playing zelda, mario, metriod, mike tyson's punch out.
* seeing LC at the drive in.
* playing with star wars figures.
* watching saved by the bell.

The list goes on and on. Good times. Definitely different than todays "give me maximum enjoyment, right now" attitude.

phantom train said:

To add to my last post:

-Great movies, including...The Breakfast Club...

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A little mentioned classic these days.

Brat Pack movies were hot stuff.

And on the subject of Molly Ringwald, I still have a softspot for the movie Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone.

phantom train said:

- Great TV shows, including ...Street Hawk (I'm probably one of 5 people who remembers that show - LOL)...

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I remember it - but back then there seemed to be a show for every mode of transport: Knight Rider, Street Hawk, Air Wolf.

phantom train said:

Tales of the Gold Monkey

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I wish I remembered that one better.



Sadly I remember Manimal much more clearly. At the time the transformations looked cutting edge.

phantom train said:

In regards to TV in the '80's, one of the things I don't miss about that time period is dealing with the stupid rabbit ear antennae on top of the TV (we never had cable during that time).

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Or mobile telephones that were as expensive as cars and almost as big!

That's one form of technology that really dates a film - when the characters had to stop and find a telephone box to call for help.

Montana Smith said:

A little mentioned classic these days.

Brat Pack movies were hot stuff.

And on the subject of Molly Ringwald, I still have a softspot for the movie Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone.

Sadly I remember Manimal much more clearly. At the time the transformations looked cutting edge.

Or mobile telephones that were as expensive as cars and almost as big!

That's one form of technology that really dates a film - when the characters had to stop and find a telephone box to call for help.

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IMHO The Breakfast Club, in addition to being a great film, was spot-on in depicting what it was like to go to a suburban high school in the '80's (at least in the U.S., not sure what it was like in other countries). Obviously, the other films by John Hughes were classic as well, i.e. Sixteen Candles, Pretty in Pink, Ferris Bueller's Day off, etc. And, St. Elmo's Fire was another '80's classic.

Here's a link to a great article on John Hughes & his films; this was written shortly after Hughes passed in 2009:

http://www.kevinsmokler.com/2009/08/john-hughes-the-audacity-of-empathy.html

Re: Molly R., I also really enjoyed Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone, though I didn't see the film until the 2000's.

Manimal was a great show! I remember seeing this back in the day, though it's probably been 30 years. I agree, excellent human/animal transformations. This is one of the many '80's shows I wish would finally get released to DVD (I also include the '80's version of Alfred Hitchcock Presents on this list).

Speaking of Manimal, this reminded me of the transformation(s) in the iconic 1981 film, American Werewolf in London - great horror movie, and this really terrified me as a kid when I caught parts of this back in the '80's (on VHS tape). And, I would have to say that the werewolf transformation scene in this is just as good (if not better) than anything CGI has come up with in the past 20+ years....

Oddly enough, I wasn't even aware of cell phones/mobile phones back in the '80's, though my understanding was that they had very limited usage at that time.

Re: payphones, you're hard pressed these days to find them anywhere. These are another thing I really don't miss about that time period....Everyone these days is so used to cell phones, it's hard to remember a time period without them & how inconvenient it was not to have one....

phantom train said:

IMHO The Breakfast Club, in addition to being a great film, was spot-on in depicting what it was like to go to a suburban high school in the '80's (at least in the U.S., not sure what it was like in other countries). Obviously, the other films by John Hughes were classic as well, i.e. Sixteen Candles, Pretty in Pink, Ferris Bueller's Day off, etc. And, St. Elmo's Fire was another '80's classic.

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...and Risky Business. That was a personal favourite.

Weird Science has been sitting in the DVDs-to-watch-again pile for too long.

phantom train said:

Manimal was a great show! I remember seeing this back in the day, though it's probably been 30 years. I agree, excellent human/animal transformations. This is one of the many '80's shows I wish would finally get released to DVD

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Incredibly, the show only lasted eight episodes. But it seemed longer. It was on TV again a few years ago.

phantom train said:

Speaking of Manimal, this reminded me of the transformation(s) in the iconic 1981 film, American Werewolf in London - great horror movie, and this really terrified me as a kid when I caught parts of this back in the '80's (on VHS tape). And, I would have to say that the werewolf transformation scene in this is just as good (if not better) than anything CGI has come up with in the past 20+ years....

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Terrifed me, too. Left a big impression. Especially the scenes in the Underground, and the final chaos as the vehicles were crashing. The monsters in the dream sequence were particularly scary, and gave me a few nightmares!

My first exposure to it, however, was a movie poster on the wall in the school library. I don't know why it was there, or who sanctioned putting it up.

phantom train said:

Oddly enough, I wasn't even aware of cell phones/mobile phones back in the '80's, though my understanding was that they had very limited usage at that time.

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I don't remember seeing them anywhere but in films. The preserve of the rich and famous!

Been re-visiting the '80's via DVD recently:

-Am re-watching the '80's Twilight Zone TV series - what a great show, with excellent episodes like Shatterday, Paladin of the Lost Hour, Nightcrawlers, Still Life, The After Hours (a re-make of a classic '60's TZ episode), Night of the Meek (another re-make), The Hellgramite Method, The Mind of Simon Foster, etc. Though the first season of this show was probably the strongest, I still enjoyed the 2nd & 3rd seasons as well.

- Thundarr the Barbarian was a great cartoon back in the day (early '80's) & was recently made available on DVD (through an on-demand program). Unusual cartoon for the time in that it was post-apocalyptic, i.e. it took place thousands of years after natural disasters had devasted Earth. Though the show obviously ripped from Conan the Barbarian & Star Wars (and probably other sci-fi/fantasy franchises), IMHO it was still well-done & nostalgic for us '80's kids.

Yes, I grew up in the '80's. I was born in 1975. I think the '80's was a great time to grow up in. I still wish I was younger, though.