GAME ON! What was your big thing as a child of the 80s, we asked editor Karyn Sparks: board games, early electronics, hand-cranked mechanical gadgets? Find out what floated her boat as a sprog
WHEN WAS IT BEST TO BE A KID? Those who grew up in the 1980s just smile smugly and think themselves very lucky – although I’m sure our claim to be the most fortunate generation could be hotly debated. There’s something about remembering childhood that brings a euphoric nostalgia and lends a strange magic to the simplest things – were those Spangles really such a treat? Of course everyone who shared an 80s childhood will remember things a little differently when it comes to toys. Some will recall playing quietly for hours at the dining table with the ingenious Spirograph (actually invented 1965, for purists, but we’re talking what was around for 80s kids); others noisily shooting cap guns at the passing neighbours (or just scratching the caps off with a fingernail!) Or what about throwing your Tonka Truck off a homemade ramp to see if you could break it? You’ll notice Barbie hasn’t made an appearance yet and, yes, I guess I was a bit of a tomboy, usually preferring my brother’s toys. (Even if he would have preferred me not to.) I desperately wanted his cool Raleigh Grifter instead of my pretty Raleigh Twenty with basket,
but then what girl wouldn’t? In the 1980s social media wasn’t about text messages but real stuff that you could share and swap, such as Pez dispensers and football stickers. While, if you were one of those kids who enjoyed being on their lonesome, then Pac-Man, Tetris, Rubik’s Cube and Slinky served the role of Candy Crush and Killer Sudoku to while away the hours of Billy NoMates. “Margaret? Margaret? A gentleman here wants pirate memory games. Ages 4 to 8... He wanted something a little less pirate-y...” Matt Lucas and David Walliams were both 80s kids and, although there were sadly no Little Britain-style pirate memory games back then, they may well have played with such real Christmas stocking treats as The Flag Memory Board Game, Simon and Guess Who? Because back before there was Google, kids had to actually remember things in their brains, so memory training was popular. In the olden days of making your own entertainment, there was Kim’s Game, played by Boy Scouts and Girl Guides up and down the country, which was just a matter of memorising things on
a kitchen tray and then trying to identify which one had been taken away. But of course that cost no money at all and by the shiny commercial 80s there was plenty of marketing nous poured into making must-have products to tempt the little grey cells. You only have to rewatch Big (1988) for the thousandth time to get a picture of the fortunes resting on capturing the toy market. For me as a child, the most fun to be had in life was thrashing my brother at any game! Some of the most heavily advertised box games on our two commercial TV channels (and before 1982 there was only one!) were Operation, Trouble, Connect Four, Battleship, Crossfire, Mouse Trap, KerPlunk, Buckaroo, Twister... the list goes on. (Call yourself a 1980s kid yet you don’t remember Trouble? Bet you remember the Pop-O-Matic, though, that rolled the dice!) Well that’s the trip down my memory lane. But where does yours lead? How many of these do you remember playing with? And – like Barbie – what childhood treasure of yours have we left out? ve
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TRYING YOUR PATIENTS Operation was up there as one of my favourites. It was a batteryoperated game of skill that tests players’ hand-to-eye coordination that was launched in the 1980s by Milton Bradley. The TV advert called Operation, “the wacky doctor’s game where you’re the wacky doctor!” The game consists of an operating table with patient Cavity Sam, who has a red light bulb for a nose. Players take turns drawing cards and removing various innards with a small pair of tweezers. Touch the sides and poor old Sam’s nose lights up! Nerve racking to say the least.
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‘Back before there was Google, kids had to actually remember things in their brains’’
NOT SO SIMPLE SIMON Before the advent of video games, smart phones and apps, there was a simple electronic memory game that required concentration, skill, and a bit of imagination – the original MB or Milton Bradley game Simon from 1978. Forming a bridge between board games and 8-bit media, this pop culture giant captivated audiences for nearly a decade with its blue/ green/red/yellow flashing buttons, each producing a particular tone when pressed or activated by the device. A round in the game consists of the device lighting up one or more buttons in a random order, which you must reproduce in the same order. Panic heightens as the number of buttons to be pressed increases and gets faster as the game goes on!
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HOW TO GET AHEAD
Pez dispensers have been collected for decades. But Pez actually began as an adult breath mint in Austria back in 1927, marketed in small tins as an alternative to smoking! It was only after World War II, when the 12-piece Pez dispenser came to the America, and Czech immigrant Curtis Allina had the idea of putting characters heads on top, that they took off with children. For collectors the options are endless – more than 1,500 in total – but the ones 80s kids sought out, fought over and swapped included Panda, Jack o’ Lantern, Tweety Bird, Batman, Bugs Bunny, Wicked Witch, Donald Duck, Bunny, Snoopy, Easter Bunny, Spiderman, Garfield, Sheep and – some of the very oldest designs – Santa and Mickey Mouse. 42 / October-November 2015 / ve
FAIR AND SQUARE
Invented in the mid-70s, Rubik’s Cube made its international debut at toy fairs from London to New York in 1980 and that was it for the decade! It won Toy of the Year in 1980 and 1981 and 100 million were sold by 1982 as we went crazy trying to put those scrambled colours all together across each side. No matter how the cube is scrambled, it only takes 25 or fewer moves to solve it – but we could never figure that out! (Can my brother and I be the only kids who pulled ours apart and fitted it back together as though we’d completed it?)
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SHIPS FOR BRAINS Another miracle of marketing, Battleship is based on an age-old pencil-and-paper public domain game that you can draw out yourself, but has been kept continuously in print by Milton Bradley (now owned by Hasbro) since 1967. Each player deploys their ships (of lengths varying from two to five squares) on a square grid in secret. Then each player shoots at the other’s grid by calling out a location of their missiles. The defender responds by “Hit!” or “Miss!” The first to deduce where the enemy ships are and sink them all wins. In 1983, the game was updated to a battery-operated version complete with lights and sound but otherwise similar. Each of the two playing areas include moveable switches and a firing button. The plastic pieces were modified to enable electrical contact to be made with the wires inside the plastic casing.
FLAGGING ENERGY Match 11 from Ideal was a flag memory game that was a favourite with my brother and me – we would spend hours playing it, and the knowledge gained really helped me out in later years! Launched in 1978 it is a very rare game today – I’ve only found a couple of complete sets on eBay for around £40 a pop. Like many 80s games, it was based on a traditional game, but gussied up in plastic. A plastic 8x8 grid holds flag markers that are flipped over during play. As with the Pairs game played with ordinary playing cards, you must try to remember where each flag is and try to match it to its pair. Movable plastic arrows slide along the edges as you score during the game. www.vintagexplorer.co.uk
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PATTERNS PENDING Advertised as: “A simple and fascinating way to draw a million marvellous patterns,” Spirograph produces endless geometric mathematical curves and shapes by revolving a series of plastic shapes inside one another with a pen placed in one or other of the holes. Developed by British engineer Denys Fisher, it was first sold back in 1965 and there have been numerous updated versions over the years but it reached peak popularity during the 1970s and 80s. This particular one was made in the UK by Palitoy in the early 80s. I remember mine fondly, though it was sometimes a bit fiddly to set-up with the pins. Maybe I was too eager to get on and design!
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